Cloud Parts

HiveMQ

A Java MQTT broker built for clusters, sold as self-managed software or as HiveMQ Cloud, with an open-source single-node edition.

What it is
IoT device messaging
Type
Commercial product
Made by
HiveMQ GmbH
License
Proprietary (HiveMQ Platform and HiveMQ Cloud); the single-node Community Edition, HiveMQ Edge and the MQTT client and CLI are Apache 2.0
Facts checked
6 October 2026
Website Source code

What it is

Devices keep a long-lived connection open to the broker (MQTT over TCP, TLS or WebSockets, port 1883 by default) and publish small messages to topics such as plant/line1/temp. The broker remembers each client’s session: its subscriptions and any QoS 1 or 2 messages waiting while it is offline, plus the last retained message on each topic. It copies every message to each matching subscription. In the commercial HiveMQ Platform, brokers form a masterless cluster: nodes find each other through a static list, multicast, broadcast or an extension, and replicate persisted data across nodes (two copies by default), so nodes can join or leave at runtime without losing sessions. Java extensions running inside the broker handle authentication, authorization and message interception, and enterprise extensions forward messages to Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, PostgreSQL or MongoDB.

HiveMQ Community Edition is the same Java core as open source under Apache 2.0: one broker with all MQTT 3.1, 3.1.1 and 5 features, but no clustering, Control Center or enterprise extensions. The self-managed Platform has a free Lab licence (25 connections, 25 messages per second, renewed every 30 days), Launch at $299 a month and Run at $499 a month (one broker deployment, 10,000 connections, 500 or 1,000 messages per second), and Enterprise priced by connections and throughput. HiveMQ Cloud Starter is a managed dedicated broker from $0.34 an hour plus $0.80 per million messages, capped at 10,000 connections and 1 MB/s (list prices checked 6 October 2026). The free Serverless cloud plan is being retired on 31 December 2026.

Why teams pick it

  • Full MQTT 3.1, 3.1.1 and 5 in every edition, including the Apache 2.0 Community Edition; devices connect with any standard MQTT client, no vendor SDK
  • Masterless clustering with replicated sessions and retained messages; nodes can be added or removed while it runs
  • Ready-made extensions forward MQTT messages to Kafka (both ways), Kinesis, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, PostgreSQL and MongoDB; every self-managed plan, Lab included, comes with them
  • Same broker on your own servers or as HiveMQ Cloud; HiveMQ reported ramping one cluster to 200 million connections in a 2023 benchmark

Watch out for

  • The open-source Community Edition is a single broker: high availability, the Control Center and the integration extensions need a paid licence
  • Self-managed Launch and Run are one broker deployment each, limited to 10,000 connections and 500 or 1,000 messages per second (at a 5 KB normalised message size); beyond that, Enterprise pricing is by quote
  • Cloud Starter bills per hour plus $0.80 per million messages, caps at 10,000 connections and 1 MB/s, and has no Multi-AZ, Prometheus endpoint or database integrations (only Kafka and Kinesis)
  • The free Serverless plan is closed to new clusters, and clients can no longer connect to existing ones after 31 December 2026

Alternatives

What all iot device messaging have in common →
AWS IoT CoreAWSAWS’s managed MQTT broker for devices, with per-device certificates, a SQL rules engine that routes messages into AWS services, and cloud-side device state.Azure IoT HubAzureAzure’s device gateway: a registry of device identities, telemetry into an Event Hubs-compatible stream, and device twins, direct methods and cloud-to-device messages, sold in fixed-price units with a daily message quota.Eclipse ZenohIncubatingOpen sourceA pub/sub, query and storage protocol that runs peer to peer or through routers, from microcontrollers to the cloud; also a ROS 2 middleware.EMQXCommercialAn Erlang MQTT broker built for very large device fleets, with a SQL rule engine, now under the Business Source License.MQTTOpen sourceThe small publish/subscribe protocol most IoT devices use to talk to a broker, standardised by OASIS and ISO.

How it fits with other technologies

Run HiveMQ Community Edition and talk to it with the MQTT CLI · bash

docker network create mqtt
docker run -d --name hivemq --network mqtt -p 1883:1883 hivemq/hivemq-ce

# subscribe to every line’s temperature (the CLI speaks MQTT 5 by default)
docker run --rm -it --network mqtt hivemq/mqtt-cli \
  sub -h hivemq -t 'plant/+/temp' -q 1 -T

# in another terminal: publish a retained reading that expires after an hour
docker run --rm --network mqtt hivemq/mqtt-cli \
  pub -h hivemq -t plant/line1/temp -m '21.5' -q 1 -r -e 3600

Community Edition, self-managed Platform and HiveMQ Cloud#

All editions speak the same MQTT, so clients don’t change when you move between them. What differs is who runs it, whether it clusters, and which integrations come with it. List prices checked 6 October 2026.

Community EditionSelf-managed Lab, Launch, RunCloud StarterEnterprise (self-managed or cloud)
Who runs itYouYouHiveMQ, on a dedicated brokerYou, or HiveMQ
Licence and priceApache 2.0, freeLab free (30-day licence, renewable); Launch $299/month; Run $499/monthFrom $0.34/hour + $0.80 per million messagesPriced by connections and throughput (quote)
ScaleOne brokerLab 25 connections, 25 msg/s; Launch and Run 10,000 connections, 500 or 1,000 msg/s10,000 connections, 1 MB/sCustom
Clustering and high availabilityNoOne broker deployment; multiple brokers or sites need EnterpriseYesYes; Multi-AZ in the cloud
Integration extensionsNo (write your own with the Java extension SDK)All enterprise extensionsKafka and Amazon KinesisAll, including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Google Pub/Sub and Snowflake
Uptime SLANoneNone stated99.95%Up to 99.99%
  • Message rates for the self-managed plans assume HiveMQ’s normalised message size of 5 KB; Launch and Run are marked as a promotional offer on the pricing page.
  • The Serverless Free and Pay As You Go cloud plans no longer accept new clusters and stop accepting connections after 31 December 2026.

See it in a real stack

No architecture uses HiveMQ yet. Drop it into the playground and wire it up yourself.Open playground →
Where it came from2012–2026

In 2012 Christian Götz, Dominik Obermaier and Christoph Schäbel founded a company in Landshut, Germany, called dc-square. It was an early adopter of MQTT, the lightweight publish/subscribe protocol for devices, with roots in Germany’s automotive industry, and its product was a commercial MQTT broker written in Java: HiveMQ. HiveMQ 2.0, in June 2014, added MQTT 3.1.1 and bridges between brokers.

In April 2019 the company published HiveMQ Community Edition under the Apache 2.0 licence. Obermaier wrote that the code was based on the commercial product “being used in production by over 120 companies worldwide”. Clustering, the Control Center and the enterprise extensions stayed in the paid editions. A month later dc-square renamed itself HiveMQ. In January 2020 HiveMQ Cloud followed: a dedicated, managed broker cluster on AWS for $7.50 an hour.

After years of funding itself from revenue, HiveMQ raised €9.3 million in 2021 and a €40 million Series A in 2022. It now describes itself as an industrial data platform built on MQTT.

Why it’s built this way

Plain MQTT, no vendor SDK
HiveMQ Cloud launched as a service that is “100% MQTT compliant and doesn’t require a vendor SDK to connect a device”. Firmware written against any MQTT library works with every HiveMQ edition, and with other brokers.
A masterless cluster
Every node is equal and persisted data is replicated across nodes (two copies by default), so there is no single point of failure and the cluster can grow or shrink at runtime.
Open core: one free broker, paid clusters
The 2019 Community Edition targets learning, proofs of concept and small deployments. Elastic clustering, monitoring and enterprise integrations remain what customers pay for.
Java extensions inside the broker
Authentication, authorization and message interceptors are Java code loaded into the broker, which is how HiveMQ connects to enterprise identity systems and data platforms.

Timeline

  1. 2012

    dc-square founded in Landshut, Germany, to build the HiveMQ broker

  2. 2014

    HiveMQ 2.0 adds MQTT 3.1.1 and broker bridges

  3. 2019

    Community Edition open-sourced under Apache 2.0; dc-square renamed HiveMQ

  4. 2020

    HiveMQ Cloud launches as a managed broker on AWS

  5. 2022

    €40 million Series A led by Molten Ventures

  6. 2023

    Benchmark ramps one cluster to 200 million MQTT connections

  7. 2026

    HiveMQ 4.55 LTS ships; the Serverless cloud plan closes at year end

Sources17 · facts checked 6 October 2026

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