EMQX
8.1#1 in message broker softwareFrom $234 a monthFree planWebAPILinuxmacOS
VisitEMQX vs NATS
What both publish
| Fact | EMQX | NATS |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | EMQX can run in Docker, through a Kubernetes Operator, or from packages on Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky Linux, Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, macOS and Linux. | NATS is designed for distributed systems and edge deployments, and supports topology growth using leaf nodes and superclusters. |
| Integrations | EMQX Enterprise provides more than 40 out-of-box integrations including Kafka, AWS RDS, MongoDB, Oracle, SAP and time-series databases. | The download page lists connectors and utilities for Apache Flink, Apache Spark, AWS, Elasticsearch, Fluent Bit, MongoDB, Prometheus, and other tools. |
| 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 NATS server and clients are open source under the Apache 2.0 license. |
| Purpose | EMQX Enterprise is an MQTT messaging platform for connecting, moving, and processing IoT business data in real time. | NATS is an open-source messaging system for building distributed systems across clouds and user-defined edge environments. |
| Security | Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 certificate authentication, access controls, and audit logs. | NATS documents authentication, subject-level authorization, TLS encryption, and isolated accounts for multitenancy. |
EMQX plans
- Dedicated Flex$234 a month
- BYOCPriced on request
- ServerlessFree
- Enterprise—
NATS plans
- NATSFree
Pick EMQX if…
EMQX suits teams building IoT systems that need MQTT messaging alongside data processing, protocol gateways, and integrations. Its deployment choices and management API may also suit teams that want to operate the platform through containers, Kubernetes, or installation packages.
Pick NATS if…
NATS suits teams building dynamic, loosely coupled distributed services across cloud and edge environments. It is also aimed at deployments on low-resource edge devices.