Qubitro vs ThingsBoard
An open-source IoT platform you can self-host, with a powerful rule-chain engine and a paid managed edition.
ThingsBoard is the strongest option in this comparison for one specific requirement: owning your infrastructure. It is open source, you can run it on your own hardware or cloud, and nothing about your data has to leave your control. If that is a hard requirement, the comparison is short — take ThingsBoard.
Qubitro is a managed platform. There is no self-hosted edition. What you get in exchange is that nobody on your team runs, patches, scales or backs up the platform, and per-device pricing is predictable enough to quote to a customer.
The honest framing is that ThingsBoard's licence cost and its total cost are different numbers. Self-hosting is genuinely free to download and genuinely not free to operate — someone owns upgrades, database growth, high availability and on-call. That trade is worth making for some teams and clearly not for others.
What ThingsBoard does well
- Open source, self-hostable, full control over data residency and infrastructure
- Powerful rule-chain engine for complex event processing
- Large community and an established ecosystem
- A generally available MCP server for AI assistant access
Side by side
| ThingsBoard | Qubitro | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting model | Self-hosted or managed cloud edition | Managed SaaS only |
| Licence | Open source, with paid editions | Commercial, per device |
| Who operates it | You, if self-hosted | Qubitro |
| Custom logic | Rule chains, visual and scriptable | JavaScript functions and JSONata expressions |
| Device templates | Community profiles and widgets | 291 templates with decoder and starter dashboard |
| White-label | Available in paid editions | Custom domain, branding and per-tenant theming |
| AI / agent access | MCP server generally available | MCP server in early access; REST API available today |
Choose ThingsBoard if
- Data residency, air-gapping or regulatory constraints require self-hosting
- You have the platform engineering capacity to operate and upgrade it
- You want to modify the platform itself, not just configure it
- You need the rule-chain engine's depth for complex event processing
Choose Qubitro if
- You would rather ship customer projects than operate a platform
- You want predictable per-device pricing you can pass through in a quote
- You want device templates that produce a decoder and dashboard immediately
- You have no dedicated platform or DevOps team to carry an on-call rota
Common questions
- Can I self-host Qubitro?
- No. Qubitro is a managed platform with no self-hosted edition. If self-hosting is a firm requirement, ThingsBoard is the better choice and we would rather say so than waste your evaluation time.
- Is ThingsBoard free?
- The community edition is open source and free to download. Running it in production is not free — you are paying in infrastructure, upgrades, database operations, monitoring and engineer time instead of licence fees. ThingsBoard also sells paid editions with additional features and managed hosting. Compare total cost of ownership rather than sticker price.
- How hard is it to move from ThingsBoard to Qubitro?
- Devices, telemetry keys and dashboards map fairly directly. The work is mostly in rule chains: complex chains need re-expressing as Qubitro Functions or JSONata expressions, which is a rewrite rather than an import. Historical telemetry can be exported from your ThingsBoard database and loaded into Qubitro.
The fastest way to judge this is to connect one device. The free tier needs no card, and if your hardware is in the template library you will have a dashboard in minutes.