What is ThingsBoard? The Open-Source IoT Platform Explained

Build a sovereign, self-hosted IoT platform? WZ-IT designs, runs and integrates ThingsBoard on your infrastructure - open source, EU, no cloud lock-in. Explore the ThingsBoard platform

ThingsBoard is an open-source IoT platform for collecting, managing, processing and visualizing device data. It connects sensors and machines over MQTT, HTTP, CoAP, LwM2M and SNMP, processes telemetry in a visual rule engine and displays the results in configurable dashboards. The platform is multi-tenant and can be run fully self-hosted. The Community Edition is licensed under Apache 2.0 and is free - an honest alternative to proprietary cloud services like AWS IoT, Azure IoT or Cumulocity, without a per-device license explosion.

Table of contents

• What is ThingsBoard?
• Core features of ThingsBoard
• Architecture and components
• Supported protocols (MQTT, HTTP, CoAP, LwM2M)
• Editions: Community, Professional and Cloud
• How much does ThingsBoard cost?
• Running ThingsBoard self-hosted
• How WZ-IT works
• Further guides

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What is ThingsBoard?

ThingsBoard is an IoT platform that bundles the typical building blocks of an IoT project into one product: connect devices, ingest data, apply rules to it and make everything visible in dashboards. Instead of assembling these layers separately from an MQTT broker, a time-series database, stream processing and a visualization tool, ThingsBoard provides one integrated foundation.

The project is available as open source under the Apache 2.0 license (Community Edition). The current LTS line is v4.3 (first released January 2026, patch v4.3.1.2 in May 2026); the previous LTS v4.2 (August 2025) still receives security updates (thingsboard.io/docs/releases). ThingsBoard is used in production for smart metering, Industry 4.0, building automation, energy and environmental monitoring.

Core features of ThingsBoard

ThingsBoard addresses the four central tasks of an IoT platform:

• Device management: Devices are modeled, provisioned and managed through device profiles. This covers attributes, telemetry, server-side commands (RPC), firmware and software updates (OTA) and connection state. Assets, entity views and relations model complex installations as digital twins.
• Telemetry: Time-series data and attributes are persisted, queried and aggregated - the data basis for dashboards, alarms and analytics.
• Rule Engine: The visual processing layer of rule chains and linked nodes filters, transforms and enriches messages, raises alarms or calls external systems - without writing code.
• Dashboards: Real-time dashboards with more than 50 widget types (charts, maps, tables, controls) visualize data and allow devices to be controlled back.

On top of that comes multi-tenancy: ThingsBoard cleanly separates system administrator, tenant administrator and customer user. An operator can run many isolated tenants (customers) on a single instance - the basis for operator portals and white-label solutions.

Architecture and components

ThingsBoard is implemented in Java (Spring Boot), and the web frontend is built on Angular. Data storage is split in two: PostgreSQL holds entities (devices, assets, dashboards, relations), while time-series data (telemetry) can live in PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB or Cassandra depending on the load profile.

For processing, ThingsBoard relies on a message queue. In the simplest case it works in-memory; for scale, Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ are used. This yields two deployment forms:

• Monolith: A single service - ideal for pilots and smaller installations.
• Microservices: Transport, core, rule engine and web UI services run separately and scale horizontally. This is how ThingsBoard processes millions of devices and messages per second.

This separation allows a lean start that grows into a cluster when needed, without switching platforms.

Supported protocols (MQTT, HTTP, CoAP, LwM2M)

ThingsBoard connects devices over several standard protocols:

• MQTT: the most widely used protocol for IoT telemetry, lightweight and publish/subscribe based. Learn more in What is MQTT?.
• HTTP/HTTPS: simple REST connectivity for devices and backends.
• CoAP: a UDP-based protocol for resource-constrained devices and cellular networks.
• LwM2M: the Open Mobile Alliance device-management standard, common in NB-IoT scenarios.
• SNMP: to connect classic network and infrastructure devices.

For industrial environments, the ThingsBoard IoT Gateway adds protocols such as Modbus, OPC-UA and BACnet and translates them into the ThingsBoard world. LoRaWAN connects through a network server like ChirpStack - see the comparison ThingsBoard vs ChirpStack.

Editions: Community, Professional and Cloud

ThingsBoard comes in three flavors. The table below summarizes the differences:

The Community Edition covers the complete functional core - device management, rule engine, dashboards and multi-tenancy - for free and with unlimited devices. The Professional Edition mainly adds enterprise features: granular RBAC, white-labeling, 400+ ready-made data converters, automated reports, SSO/OAuth2 and preconfigured platform integrations (thingsboard.io/ce-vs-pe-diff). ThingsBoard Cloud is the vendor-hosted SaaS offering - convenient, but with data and license held by the vendor.

How much does ThingsBoard cost?

The Community Edition is free (Apache 2.0); you only pay for your own infrastructure and operations. According to thingsboard.io/pricing (as of June 2026), the Professional Edition self-managed starts at 10 US dollars per month (Maker plan, 10 devices) and ranges through the Prototype, Pilot and Startup plans up to 499 US dollars per month (Business, 1,000 devices); each extra device costs 0.10 US dollars. A perpetual license starts at 4,999 US dollars one-time. ThingsBoard Cloud bills per device and data points (Free 0 USD up to Business 749 USD/month).

These list prices are only part of the picture: what really matters is the total cost of infrastructure, operations and scaling. You can find the full cost comparison including self-hosted operation in the article ThingsBoard pricing.

Running ThingsBoard self-hosted

The biggest advantage of ThingsBoard for sovereign operators: CE and PE run entirely on your own infrastructure - on Proxmox, Hetzner or on-premises in your own data center. Data, platform and keys stay under your control, with no cloud lock-in and without every additional device class driving up license costs.

A typical setup consists of the ThingsBoard instance, PostgreSQL for entities, optionally TimescaleDB or Cassandra for time-series data and a reverse proxy for TLS. For high load, a microservice cluster with Kafka is added. Dashboards often also connect to Grafana when extensive reporting or visualization requirements exist. The article Install ThingsBoard provides a step-by-step guide.

How WZ-IT works

We design, integrate and operate ThingsBoard as a sovereign, self-hosted IoT platform on your infrastructure. This starts with the edition choice (CE or PE - honestly aligned to your requirements, not to license revenue), covers architecture, high availability, protocol and device connectivity, the modeling of device profiles and rule chains, and the integration of Grafana, ChirpStack or existing systems. On request, we handle design, build and ongoing operations end to end - as part of our ThingsBoard expertise and IoT platform development.

Further guides

• ThingsBoard expertise - consulting, integration and operations
• ThingsBoard pricing - editions, licenses and real costs
• What is MQTT? - the most important IoT protocol explained
• ThingsBoard vs ChirpStack - application platform vs LoRaWAN server
• Install ThingsBoard - self-hosted setup step by step

Planning your own IoT platform? Get to know us or take a look at our IoT platforms.