Particlevs
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa: Amazon's voice-controlled smart home ecosystem
Particle
Edge-to-cloud IoT platform for connected devices
As of 30 August 2026, Particle is free to use. Particle provides a complete platform for building and managing IoT products. Softwr lists it under Smart Home. Particle is made by Particle Industries, launched in 2013, available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Particle does
Particle provides a complete platform for building and managing IoT products. With its own cloud platform, device OS, and hardware options, Particle simplifies the process of deploying connected devices at scale.
What people use it for
- Connecting cellular and wifi IoT devices to a managed cloud platform
- Deploying firmware updates and collecting device telemetry at fleet scale
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Particle.
- Paid capacity is sold in blocks of 100 devices rather than per device, so 101 devices costs the same as 200
- The Basic block is $299 a month and the Plus block $599 a month
- The free tier allows 100 devices and 100,000 data operations a month
- Data operations are the billing unit, so chatty firmware costs more than the device count suggests
- No overage rates are published at any tier, so exceeding an allowance has no stated cost
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Particle
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- ParticlevsGoogle Home
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- ParticlevsApple HomeKit
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- ParticlevsHome Assistant
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Pricing
What Particle costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Maker
Free
- 5 free devices
- Cloud access
- Basic features
Production
$100 /mo
- Unlimited devices
- Advanced analytics
- Enterprise support
Capabilities
Features
Device OS
Cloud Platform
Device Management
OTA Updates
REST API
Integration with REST API
WebHooks
Integration with WebHooks
Integration marketplace
Integration with Integration marketplace
3rd party services
Integration with 3rd party services
Particle devices support
Available on Particle devices
Custom hardware support
Available on Custom hardware
Cloud support
Available on Cloud
Mobile apps support
Available on Mobile apps
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
What are the Particle pricing tiers and their costs?
Particle offers Free ($0, 100 devices, 100K Data Operations/month), Basic ($299/month per block), Plus ($599/month per block), Professional (custom pricing), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Each block supports 100 devices.
SourceWhat is a Data Operation and how is it charged?
A Data Operation is Particle's billing unit for user-controlled activities. One operation is charged per device-to-cloud message, cloud-to-device message, Location Fusion call, Ledger sync, or Logic function run. Network transmission and management tasks are included at no additional cost.
SourceWhat location data retention does each tier provide?
Location data retention ranges from 3 days in the Free tier up to 6+ months in Professional and Enterprise tiers.
SourceAre there additional costs for support or single sign-on?
Premium support and SSO are available as optional add-ons to all Particle plans. The pricing page does not specify the cost of these add-ons.
SourceIs there a minimum contract length or can I cancel anytime?
The Particle pricing page does not specify a minimum contract length, suggesting monthly billing without long-term lock-in.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Particle
- Company
- Particle Industries
- Based in
- San Francisco, California, USA
Keep looking
Where to go from Particle
- Particle alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Particle pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Particle badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Smart Home softwareThe full category
- Best Smart Home softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Smart Home software for
Compare Particle with
- Amazon Alexa
- Apple HomeKit
- Google Home
- Home Assistant
- Blynk
- Arduino Cloud
- Node-RED
- Losant
- Thread
- MQTT
- SmartThings
- Zigbee Alliance
- Meross
- Nanoleaf
- OpenHAB
- Philips Hue
- Ring
- Roomba
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Particle, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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