Articles · October 20, 2026
Free MQTT brokers in 2026: hosted options compared
You want your ESP32, Raspberry Pi or Home Assistant to talk over MQTT without running a server. Which free broker should you use? With HiveMQ Cloud Serverless shutting down at the end of 2026, the list has changed. Here is how the main options compare.
The short version
| Broker | Free limits | History | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| mqtty | 6 devices, 30 msg/min | 60 days | Private namespace, live dashboard, MQTT 5, TLS 8883 / WSS 8884 |
| EMQX Serverless | 1M session minutes + 1 GB traffic per month | None | Deployment stops when the quota runs out |
| Adafruit IO | 30 data points/min, 10 feeds | 30 days | Feed-based, its own topic format and dashboards |
| flespi | Capped sessions, aimed at testing | None | Powerful platform, limits set per account tier |
| Public test brokers | No account | None | Anyone can read your messages |
| HiveMQ Cloud Serverless | 100 sessions, 10 GB/month | None | Shuts down December 31, 2026 |
Limits change often, so check each provider's pricing page before you commit.
What actually matters for a hobby project
Privacy. On public test brokers such as test.mosquitto.org, broker.hivemq.com or broker.emqx.io, anyone can subscribe to # and see everything. They are great for a five-minute experiment and a bad idea for your front door sensor. Use a broker with authentication and your own namespace.
Predictable limits. Session-minute quotas are hard to reason about: one device connected all month uses about 44,600 minutes, so 1 million minutes covers roughly 22 always-on devices before the deployment stops. A per-account device count and message rate, like mqtty's 6 devices and 30 messages per minute, tells you up front what fits.
What happens at the limit. Some services stop your deployment when you exhaust a quota. mqtty never disconnects you for being busy: messages above 30 per minute are acknowledged and dropped, and your dashboard shows how many.
Message history. Most brokers forget a message the moment it is delivered. If you want to know what your sensor reported at 3 am last Tuesday, you need history. Adafruit IO keeps 30 days on its free plan; mqtty keeps 60.
Standard MQTT. Adafruit IO works well with its own libraries, but its topics follow an username/feeds/feed-name format. A plain MQTT broker lets you keep the topics your firmware, Tasmota, ESPHome or Zigbee2MQTT already use.
Which one should you pick?
- Learning MQTT for an afternoon: a public test broker is fine.
- Charts and widgets with no code: Adafruit IO is friendly and well documented.
- Many always-on devices with bursty traffic: a usage-billed cloud such as EMQX.
- A handful of devices, private topics, history and zero bills: mqtty was built for exactly that. It uses the same ports as HiveMQ Cloud, so moving off Serverless is a host and password change.
Try it
Sign in at broker.mqtty.com, create a credential and point any MQTT client at broker.mqtty.com:8883 with TLS. Your messages show up in the live dashboard right away.
mqtty gives every account 6 devices, 30 messages per minute and 60 days of history, with TLS and a live dashboard.
Start free with mqtty →