EMQX vs ZeroMQ
EMQX
emqx.comZeroMQ
zeromq.orgSide by side
| Figure | EMQX | ZeroMQ |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $234/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Message Broker Software | 9.1 (#2) | 7.4 (#31) |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 9.1 (#2) | 7.4 (#22) |
| Documentation | The documentation site covers Cloud, Enterprise, clustering, installation and migration, data integration, security, APIs and troubleshooting guides. | The ZeroMQ Guide covers use of ØMQ with more than 60 diagrams and 750 examples in 28 languages. |
| License | From version 5.9.0, EMQX uses Business Source License 1.1; Apache 2.0 becomes available four years after each version's first publication, and clusters over one node require a license file. | The libzmq library is licensed under MPL-2.0, and the site says commercial applications do not need a separate commercial license. |
| Security | Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 certificate authentication, access controls, and audit logs. | The listed libzmq and many language bindings support PLAIN and CURVE mechanisms. |
Plans
EMQX
- ServerlessFree
- Dedicated Flex$234 a month
- BYOCPriced on request
- ServerlessFree
- EnterprisePrice not published
In their own words
EMQX
EMQX is an MQTT messaging platform for connecting, moving, and processing IoT business data in real time. EMQX Enterprise combines publish/subscribe messaging with durable message queuing, while a SQL-based Rule Engine and visual Flow Designer support filtering, transforming, enriching, and routing data. The platform supports MQTT and protocols or gateways including QUIC, CoAP, STOMP, and LwM2M; its listed protocols also include MQTT-SN, OCPP, GB/T 32960, JT/T 808, and NATS. EMQX says a cluster can handle up to 100 million concurrent MQTT connections and lists more than 50 native integrations. Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 authentication, access controls, and audit logs. Deployment options include Docker, a Kubernetes Operator, and installation packages, with macOS and Linux packages listed. Plans include free Serverless and Dedicated Flex starting at $234 per month, with a 14-day trial listed for Dedicated Flex. Serverless has limits including 1,000 sessions, 1,000 TPS, and a 1 MB message size.
ZeroMQ
ZeroMQ is a free, open-source asynchronous messaging library for developers building distributed or concurrent applications. A system using it can run without a dedicated broker, with patterns such as publish-subscribe, request-reply and client-server. It carries messages over transports including TCP, in-process and inter-process communication, multicast and WebSocket. The project lists language bindings and libraries for C, C++, C#, Dart, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, Java, Node.js, Perl, Python, Ruby, Rust and Zig. Supported protocols also include ZMTP, UDP, IPC, PGM, NORM and TIPC, and delivery guarantees are configurable. The project says libzmq and many bindings support PLAIN and CURVE security mechanisms. libzmq is licensed under MPL-2.0; the project says closed-source commercial applications do not need a separate commercial license. Installation guidance covers macOS, Linux distributions and Windows. One documented constraint affects Go’s zmq4 wrapper: it requires ZeroMQ and development files to be installed and cannot be cross-compiled. ZeroMQ is self-hosted and listed at free.