Apache IoTDB vs TDengine
Apache IoTDB
iotdb.apache.org
TDengine
tdengine.comSide by side
| Figure | Apache IoTDB | TDengine |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $281.25/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 12 |
| Spec score · IoT Analytics Software | 9.1 (#1) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Spec score · Time-Series Databases | 9.1 (#2) | 8.8 (#4) |
| Company profile | LinkedIn lists Apache IoTDB as a nonprofit software-development organization founded in 2017, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, with 51–200 employees. | LinkedIn identifies TDengine as a privately held software-development company founded in 2017 with 51–200 employees and headquarters in Los Gatos, California. |
| Deployment | The project describes cloud installation, a desktop terminal tool, and a data synchronization tool connecting cloud and on-premise machines. | Self-hosted deployments can run at the edge, in containers or virtual machines, on local servers, or in public, private, or hybrid clouds. |
| Documentation depth | The user guide spans quick start, deployment, basic and advanced functions, AI, tools, APIs, integrations, SQL, technical internals, reference and FAQ sections. | Official documentation spans installation, SQL, data modeling, ingestion, querying, subscriptions, stream processing, security, operations, integrations and kernel design. |
| Integrations | Documented integrations include Telegraf, NiFi, Kafka, Flink, Spark, Zeppelin, Grafana, DataEase, DBeaver and ThingsBoard. | The documented ecosystem includes Grafana integration, Kafka integration, MQTT, OPC, PI System and Excel connectivity. |
| Support | The project points users to QQ, WeChat, and Slack community channels and a developer mailing list for questions and help. | Annual licenses include business-hours standard support, while premium support offers 24×7 Severity 1 coverage; free-tier support is optional at $3,375 per year. |
| System requirements | Current source prerequisites include Java 17 or newer, Maven 3.6 or newer for source builds, and a 65,535 open-file limit. | The open-source build supports Linux Ubuntu 18.04+ or CentOS 7+, macOS 10.15+, limited Windows, x86_64 or ARM64, with 4 GB RAM and 2 GB disk recommended. |
| What it does | Apache IoTDB is an IoT-native time-series database for collecting, storing, managing and analyzing industrial time-series data. | TDengine is an AI-native industrial data platform combining a distributed time-series database with industrial data management, contextualization, analytics and AI capabilities. |
Plans
TDengine
- Free TierFree
- Self-hosted Free TierFree
- Starter$970 a month
- TDengine Cloud Starter$970 a month
- TDengine Cloud Small$1,740 a month
- TDengine Cloud Medium$2,570 a month
- Optional Annual Support$3,375 a year
- Starter$11,640 a year
- 7,500-tag Annual License$12,500 a year
- Self-hosted 7,500-tag annual license$12,500 a year
In their own words
Apache IoTDB
Apache IoTDB is an open-source industrial IoT time-series database for collecting, storing, managing, and analyzing device data across edge and cloud deployments. The project describes high-speed writes for millions of networked devices alongside fast reads. Query features include aligning time across devices and sensors, time-series computation, and aggregation by time dimensions. Ingestion options include IoTDB-SQL, JDBC, Java, C++, Python, and Go native APIs, REST, MQTT, CSV, and TsFile. Named analysis ecosystem examples include Hadoop, Spark, Flink, and Grafana. Deployment options include cloud installation, a desktop terminal tool, and synchronization between cloud and on-premise machines. The REST service is disabled by default and uses Basic Authentication except for the health check endpoint. Data and cluster permissions can be managed through users, roles, and privileges. The homepage states disk storage can cost less than $0.23 per GB. The project lists energy, aerospace, transportation, steel, and other IoT scenarios. Its JDBC documentation cautions that insert operations may not provide high-performance writing and recommends the Java Native API for Java applications.
TDengine
TDengine is an industrial data platform combining data ingestion, storage, analytics, modeling, visualization, and AI applications. Its two core components are TDengine TSDB and TDengine IDMP; TSDB is a distributed time-series database with built-in caching, stream processing, and data subscription. The platform connects to industrial sources including OPC, MQTT, and Kafka, and includes ETL for data cleaning and transformation. It offers a REST API described by OpenAPI, plus JDBC, ODBC, Kafka, MQTT, iframe embedding, and an Excel Add-In. Self-hosted deployments can run at the edge, in containers or virtual machines, on local servers, or in public, private, and hybrid clouds. Managed TDengine Cloud is offered on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. TDengine TSDB-OSS is open source under AGPL and includes clustering. The self-hosted Free Tier covers up to 5,000 tags. Listed plans include Starter at $970 a month, a 7,500-tag self-hosted annual license at $12,500 a year, and a 7,500-tag self-hosted perpetual license at $31,250 as a one-time purchase.