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Networking · head to head

Eclipse Mosquitto vs Timeplus

Eclipse Mosquitto logo

Eclipse Mosquitto

Networking

Small, EPL-licensed MQTT broker that runs on hardware other brokers cannot

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Timeplus logo

Timeplus

Databases

Streaming SQL engine built on ClickHouse internals, shipping as one small binary

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Eclipse Mosquitto there is no clustering: Mosquitto is a single process, so high availability means building your own failover and accepting session loss on switchover.; Timeplus proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
  • They diverge on capability: Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, Timeplus covers Streaming SQL.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Eclipse Mosquitto and Timeplus actually diverge.

Attributes where Eclipse Mosquitto and Timeplus differ
AttributeEclipse MosquittoTimeplus
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month for cloud, quoted for self-hosted
PlatformsLinux, Windows, macOS, DockerLinux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web
CategoryNetworkingDatabases

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Eclipse Mosquitto

  • MQTT 5.0 support
  • Very small footprint
  • Bridging
  • WebSockets listener
  • Command line clients
  • Dynamic security plugin

Only in Timeplus

  • Streaming SQL
  • Unified streaming and historical
  • ClickHouse-based engine
  • Single binary deployment
  • External streams
  • Materialised views

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Eclipse Mosquitto

  • A home or building automation stack where the broker must run on the same small computer as everything elsenot Timeplus
  • An industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud brokernot Timeplus
  • Local development and testing of MQTT clients without provisioning a cloud IoT servicenot Timeplus
  • An air-gapped deployment where a broker with no licence server and no phone-home behaviour is a requirementnot Timeplus

Timeplus

  • Real-time alerting on Kafka topics where standing up a Flink cluster is more work than the use case justifiesnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Fraud or anomaly detection that must join a live event stream against recent history in one querynot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Streaming ETL from Kafka or MySQL change data capture into ClickHouse without writing Javanot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • A small data team that needs continuous aggregation but has no platform engineers to operate JVM infrastructurenot Eclipse Mosquitto

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Eclipse Mosquitto

  • There is no clustering: Mosquitto is a single process, so high availability means building your own failover and accepting session loss on switchover.
  • Persistence is a local file rather than a replicated store, so a disk failure or an unclean shutdown can lose retained messages and queued QoS traffic.
  • Practical capacity is a few thousand concurrent clients on typical hardware, so a growing device fleet eventually forces a migration to a clustered broker.
  • The Eclipse Public Licence is weak copyleft rather than permissive, which some legal teams treat as a blocker when embedding the broker in a shipped commercial product.
  • There is no commercial support to buy from the project, so production incidents rely on community mailing lists or on paying a third party who happens to know the codebase.

Timeplus

  • Proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
  • It is a young project against Apache Flink’s decade of production history, so the hiring pool, the connector library and the body of known failure modes are all much smaller.
  • Inheriting ClickHouse internals also inherits ClickHouse constraints: memory-hungry queries, awkward updates and a SQL dialect that is not portable to other engines.
  • Exactly-once semantics and state recovery guarantees are less battle-tested than Flink checkpointing, which matters if the pipeline moves money.
  • Cloud pricing is by provisioned instance size rather than usage, so a bursty workload pays for peak capacity around the clock or has to be resized by hand.

Pricing, plan by plan

Eclipse Mosquitto

Free
  • Eclipse MosquittoFree
    • Eclipse Public License 2.0 with Eclipse Distribution Licence
    • MQTT 5.0, 3.1.1 and 3.1
    • No client or message limits beyond your hardware

Timeplus

Free
  • Timeplus ProtonFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence
    • Single node only
    • Full streaming SQL engine
  • Timeplus Cloud$199/month
    • One to thirty-two CPUs
    • 4 GB to 128 GB memory
    • From 250 GB SSD storage
  • Self-hosted or BYOC$undefined/year
    • Multi-node clustering
    • Kubernetes or bare metal
    • Customisable compute and storage

Which should you pick?

Choose Eclipse Mosquitto if

  • You need mqtt 5.0 support.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker.
  • You also want very small footprint.
Eclipse Mosquitto review

Choose Timeplus if

  • You need streaming sql.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
  • You also want unified streaming and historical.
Timeplus review

Questions people ask

Is Eclipse Mosquitto or Timeplus better?
Neither clearly leads. Eclipse Mosquitto starts at Free and Timeplus at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Eclipse Mosquitto or Timeplus?
Eclipse Mosquitto starts at Free and Timeplus at Free.
Does Eclipse Mosquitto or Timeplus run on more platforms?
Eclipse Mosquitto runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker. Timeplus runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
Can I use Eclipse Mosquitto for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Eclipse Mosquitto best used for?
Eclipse Mosquitto is most often used for a home or building automation stack where the broker must run on the same small computer as everything else, an industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud broker, local development and testing of mqtt clients without provisioning a cloud iot service, an air-gapped deployment where a broker with no licence server and no phone-home behaviour is a requirement. Of those, a home or building automation stack where the broker must run on the same small computer as everything else and an industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud broker are not what Timeplus is typically brought in for.
What can Eclipse Mosquitto do that Timeplus cannot?
Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, Very small footprint, Bridging, WebSockets listener. Timeplus covers Streaming SQL, Unified streaming and historical, ClickHouse-based engine, Single binary deployment.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Eclipse Mosquitto: Can Mosquitto be clustered?

No. It is a single process. High availability requires an external failover arrangement you build yourself.

Timeplus: Is Timeplus open source?

The core engine, Timeplus Proton, is Apache 2.0. Timeplus Enterprise and Cloud are commercial.

Eclipse Mosquitto: What licence is it?

Eclipse Public License 2.0 alongside the Eclipse Distribution License, a weak copyleft rather than a permissive licence.

Timeplus: What is the difference from Flink?

Timeplus is one binary with SQL as the only interface; Flink is a JVM cluster with a Java and SQL API and far more operational surface.

Eclipse Mosquitto: How many clients can it handle?

A few thousand concurrent connections on ordinary hardware; beyond that, use a clustered broker.

Timeplus: Can Proton run in production?

It can, but it is single-node only, so there is no high availability without the commercial edition.

Eclipse Mosquitto: Does it support MQTT 5?

Yes, along with 3.1.1 and 3.1.

Timeplus: How much is the cloud?

From 199 US dollars a month, sized by CPU and memory, with a fourteen day trial.

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