ThingsBoard: Open-source and commercial IoT platforms, protocol gateways and site software

ThingsBoard provides IoT device management, telemetry dashboards and rules through community, professional, cloud and on-site software products.

Summary

Best for
Teams building configurable IoT applications with device models, dashboards and rules.
Less suited to
Users seeking a preconfigured hardware system without software deployment or integration work.
Deployment
Self-managed community or commercial software, managed cloud and on-site ThingsBoard Edge.
Data in
MQTT, HTTP, CoAP and other supported transports; industrial protocols through gateway connectors.
Pricing
Community software plus paid professional, cloud and add-on plans; published pricing varies by deployment.

Overview

ThingsBoard provides software for connecting devices, storing telemetry and building IoT dashboards and automation rules. The company history describes an open-source platform first released in 2016, followed by commercial and managed products. Community Edition, Professional Edition, ThingsBoard Cloud, IoT Gateway and ThingsBoard Edge have different roles within that ecosystem. The platform's device and asset models support an application built around readings and events; the gateway supplies additional industrial connectivity. The local Edge product brings application functions to a site. These products are complementary, but they are not interchangeable names for one deployment package.

Offering

Professional Edition extends the platform with commercial application features including branding, entity grouping and advanced access control. ThingsBoard Cloud provides a managed deployment, while self-managed software leaves infrastructure operation with the customer. The device-connectivity documentation separates native device transports from platform integrations and gateway connectors. MQTT, HTTP and CoAP are among the direct communication paths. Professional Edition platform integrations connect upstream services and network servers using converters to turn incoming payloads into telemetry. The distinction is useful for a LoRaWAN project: its network server is a separate layer from the dashboards and data model in ThingsBoard.

Products and platforms

  1. ThingsBoard Community Edition

    IoT application platform

    Open-source device management, telemetry, dashboards and rules.1

  2. ThingsBoard IoT Gateway

    Protocol gateway software

    Connectors include Modbus RTU/TCP, OPC-UA, BACnet/IP, S7, BLE, KNX and OCPP.2

  3. ThingsBoard Edge

    On-site application software

    Local rules, dashboards and alarms with server synchronisation; distinct from IoT Gateway.4

Technology

The IoT Gateway connector catalogue includes Modbus RTU and TCP, OPC-UA, BACnet/IP, Siemens S7, Bluetooth Low Energy, CAN, KNX and OCPP. Other connectors handle MQTT, HTTP endpoints, database queries and network-management protocols. These are software adapters that translate external device data into ThingsBoard's model. The gateway can also expose command paths where a connector supports them. Its Edge comparison explicitly states that Gateway does not provide local dashboards, alarm processing or the local Rule Engine. Gateway therefore addresses protocol conversion; it is not the product that supplies a complete offline application at a remote site.

Markets

ThingsBoard Edge runs local rules, dashboards, alarms and device interaction with synchronisation to a ThingsBoard server. Its Professional Edition adds features such as role-based access control, entity groups, advanced integrations and branding. The documented architecture uses PostgreSQL for local data and describes production message-queue choices separately from development configurations. An IoT Gateway can sit below Edge when site devices require additional protocol adapters, but it is not mandatory for devices supported directly. The pricing catalogue separates cloud and self-managed deployments and optional functions, including local Edge instances and Trendz analytics, rather than assigning one universal licence to the entire ecosystem.

Company

ThingsBoard's company history distinguishes the project's 2016 start from the establishment of ThingsBoard Inc. in 2018. It names Andrii Shvaika as CEO and co-founder and Igor Kulikov as CTO and co-founder. The same page gives a company contact address at 110 Duane Street, Suite 1C, New York. The product timeline records Trendz in 2019, managed Cloud in 2020, ThingsBoard Edge in 2021 and the TBMQ MQTT broker in 2023. The team has expanded across platform engineering, gateway development, analytics, local processing, technical support and commercial services, alongside the community around its open-source software.

Alternatives in IoT and data platforms

What to look for in iot and data platforms

References

  1. ThingsBoard company history and team (opens in a new tab)
  2. ThingsBoard IoT Gateway connector catalogue (opens in a new tab)
  3. ThingsBoard Professional Edition (opens in a new tab)
  4. Why ThingsBoard Edge? (opens in a new tab)
  5. Connecting IoT devices to ThingsBoard (opens in a new tab)
  6. ThingsBoard pricing (opens in a new tab)

This profile does not imply a commercial relationship with ThingsBoard and may contain inaccuracies.