A selection of free MQTT brokers available online for testing. An online broker will be useful for testing communication outside the local network during the development of connected objects or the development of a home automation installation.
Online MQTT brokers (including 5 with a free offer)
In 2020, the MQTT protocol is very widespread. Several platforms have bowed out. The best known is undoubtedly ThingStudio which offered a completely free offer for Makers, Hackers and Designers: cry: MQTT.io and ThingMQ also disappear.
Fortunately, nature does not like emptiness, new entrants try their luck on the market.
Like Cayenne, the MQTT protocol has enabled manufacturers to offer new services and to be less dependent on the sale of equipment that is highly competitive with Asian cloners. This is for example the case of Adafruit with its AdafruitIO platform. The free offers are obviously limited, in number of accessories, bandwidth, etc … but it is more than enough for testing and even for personal use.
For personal projects or a startup that wants to test an idea, cloudMQTT and Flepsi remain two sure values. The free offer covers most needs and the advantage of being able to migrate to a robust professional offer.
A special note to Flepsi which also offers the sending of 10 free SMS per month.
MoQiatto is a completely free project developed by Çagdas Döner which uses the services (for a fee) from Amazon AWS to operate. Do not hesitate to support the project in front of Patreon of this Broker from 3.3 €/month. Several integration examples are available on GitHub. MoQiatto supports TLS / SSL security.
| Broker | Free offer detail | Free with limits |
| AdafruitIO | 30 data / minute. Stockage des données durant 30 jours. Triggers déclenchés toutes les 15 minutes | ★ |
| Flespi | 2 channels, 10 devices, 10 SMS | ★ |
| MoQiatto | Free without limitation. If you plan to use MoQiatto intensively, become Patreon to finance Amazon AWS services from € 3.3/month | ★ |
| MyMQTTHub | 50 connexions, 300 messages per minutes | |
| cloudMQTT | Free up to 10 connexions (10 Kbit/s), then from 19$/month for 100 connexions | ★ |
| IBM Bluemix | Free up to 375 GB/heure/runtime (3 runtime maximum) | ★ |
| Heroku | Free with Cute Cat offering up to 10 customers connected via add-on | |
| HIVEMQ | Price on request | |
| Microsoft Azure IoT | Free if you have an Azure account. Integration with the SDK Microsoft Azure IoT |
Other solutions to study but which do not have an online platform
- ActiveMQ from the Apache foundation or ActiveMQ Artemis dedicated to the development of micro-services
- EclipseIOT from the Eclipse foundation
- Professional solutions without free offer:
- Akiro MQTT
- EMQW, Open Source project available on GitHub with cloud service (EMQ X) for professional applications (5G, Internet Of Vehicles – IoV, Agriculture, smart home, medical…)
- IBM Watson IoT (old IBM MessageSight). A performance test with 400,000 client connections was carried out by Gambit Communication here
- RabbitMQTT
- VerneMQ
- Solace
Online MQTT Public Brokers for Testing
You can also do some online testing on some Brokers. Be careful, however, not to publish anything sensitive. Topics are accessible by anyone.
| Broker | Server | Ports | Websocket | MQTT versions supported |
| Mosquitto | iot.eclipse.org test.mosquitto.org | 1883 / 8883 1883 / 8883 / 8884 | n/a 8080 / 8081 | |
| emqx.io | broker.emqx.io | 1883 or 8883 (TCP / TLS) | 8083 or 8084 (TLS) | |
| Flespi | mqtt.flespi.io | 443 (SSL) or 80 (non-SSL) | 8883 (SSL) ou 1883 (non-SSL) | 3.1, 3.1.1, 5.0 |
| HiveMQ | broker.hivemq.com broker.mqttdashboard.com | 1883 | 8000 | |
| MoQiatto | maqiatto.com need a free user account | 1883 | 3883 | |
| Mosca | test.mosca.io | 1883 | 80 |
Tutorials and projects to exploit the full potential of the MQTT protocol
- Install the MQTT Mosquitto broker on NAS Synology (DSM 6.2+) with Docker
- MQTT router with Node-RED, connect all your Sonoff Tasmota modules to cloudMQTT
- CloudMQTT test, free online MQTT broker. Control Domoticz with the JSON API
- Xiaomi Mijia Honeywell Smoke Detector Test with Domoticz, Emergency Notification with PushOver
- Test Zigbee2MQTT gateway. Part 2, include Xiaomi Aqara or Mijia accessories to Domoticz with Node-RED
- #Test Zigbee2MQTT project, hack of the Xiaomo Aqara Smart Home Gateway. Part 1: assembly, demo with Node-RED, 3D printed case [update]
- ESP8266 + DHT22 + MQTT: make a connected object IoT and include it in Home Assistant
- Hack Sonoff 4CH Pro with firmware MQTT Tasmota, inclusion in Domoticz
- Include ESP8266 + DHT22 + Homie MQTT IoT in Home Assistant (HASS)
- Node-RED + MQTT + ESP8266: how to drive an articulated PTZ system in WiFi
- Install the MQTT Mosquitto broker on NAS Synology (DSM 6.2+) with Docker
- MQTT router with Node-RED, connect all your Sonoff Tasmota modules to cloudMQTT
- CloudMQTT test, free online MQTT broker. Control Domoticz with the JSON API
- Xiaomi Mijia Honeywell Smoke Detector Test with Domoticz, Emergency Notification with PushOver
- Test Zigbee2MQTT gateway. Part 2, include Xiaomi Aqara or Mijia accessories to Domoticz with Node-RED
- #Test Zigbee2MQTT project, hack of the Xiaomo Aqara Smart Home Gateway. Part 1: assembly, demo with Node-RED, 3D printed case [update]
You can also use flespi MQTT broker for free: https://flespi.io/mqtt
Isolated MQTT namespace, additional REST API for persistent sessions and subscriptions managements, SSL and WebSockets support.
You can try MQTTRoute ( https://www.bevywise.com/mqtt-broker/ ) which works with all standard MQTT Clients and at the same time can be customised to store data to any back end Big data engine or application. It has a ready to use Connectors( https://github.com/bevywise-networks ) which is a open source to customise. It can be hosted on.
Server Name: broker.bevywise.com
TCP Port : 1883
WebSocket Port : 8443
As I know, test server Mosquitto “iot.eclipse.org” now available by “mqtt.eclipse.org” address.
IBM Messagesight is now IBM Watson IoT https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/1/897/ENUS219-111/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en
We have tested 400,000 client connections as detailed at https://gambitcomm.blogspot.com/2019/01/200000-mqtt-connections-to-ibm.html
Thank you very much Uwe. I modify the post and add a link to your great test, in french too of course 🙂
You can use the free online MQTT 5.0 broker which is provided by EMQ X( https://www.emqx.io ).
Broker: broker.emqx.io
TCP Port: 1883
Websocket Port: 8083
TCP/TLS Port: 8883
Websocket/TLS Port: 8084
Thank you, you broker is added into the list. Hope see you soon here
This is useful！Thank you very much.
Thank you very much Spike 🙂
Did you see : shiftr.io ? Can we consider only or testing ?
Hi Giuseppe. Thank you for the info. I just signed up. For the moment, I advise you only to do tests with non-sensitive data