ThingsBoard vs. AWS IoT Core 2026: Open Source IoT Platform vs. Amazon Cloud

WZ-IT operates thingshost. Current hosting starts from €159.80 net/month; setup and service level follow the proposal. Former package prices, location lists and cost comparisons in this dated article describe the previous offer, not current WZ-IT terms. View current service scope.

ThingsBoard and AWS IoT Core are not direct competitors – they solve different problems. AWS IoT Core is a granular cloud connectivity service that authenticates devices, routes MQTT messages, and executes rules. It's the base layer in an IoT architecture that must necessarily be combined with other AWS services (Lambda, Kinesis, Timestream, QuickSight, IoT SiteWise) to build a complete IoT solution. ThingsBoard is a complete IoT platform with dashboards, rule engine, multi-tenancy, and asset management out-of-the-box – open source, self-hostable, without per-message pricing.

Also worth reading: ThingsBoard vs. Grafana: The Definitive IoT Platform Comparison · ThingsBoard Hosting: Cloud vs. Self-Hosted vs. Managed

Quick Comparison: ThingsBoard vs. AWS IoT Core

Table of Contents

• What AWS IoT Core Really Is
• What ThingsBoard Brings Out-of-the-Box
• Pricing: Pay-per-Message vs. Flat Rate
  • AWS IoT Core: Granular Pay-as-you-go
  • Example Calculation: 1,000 Sensors, Every 5 Minutes
  • ThingsBoard via thingshost: Flat Rate
  • 3-Year Comparison for 1,000 Devices
• Architecture Comparison
  • AWS IoT Core: Cloud-Native, Granular
  • ThingsBoard: Vertically Integrated
• Detailed Feature Comparison
  • Dashboards & Visualization
  • Rule Engine
  • Multi-Tenancy
  • Asset Management
• Vendor Lock-in
  • AWS IoT Core: High
  • ThingsBoard: Low
• GDPR and Data Sovereignty
  • AWS IoT Core
  • ThingsBoard via thingshost
• When Does AWS IoT Core Still Make Sense?
• When ThingsBoard / thingshost Is the Better Choice
• thingshost: Managed ThingsBoard Without Lock-in
• Conclusion
• Sources

What AWS IoT Core Really Is

AWS IoT Core is not a complete IoT platform product – even if marketing sometimes suggests otherwise. It's a connectivity layer in a broader AWS IoT family:

• AWS IoT Core: MQTT/HTTP/WebSockets broker, device authentication, rules engine, device shadow
• AWS IoT Device Management: device onboarding, OTA updates, fleet indexing
• AWS IoT Device Defender: security audits and anomaly detection
• AWS IoT Events: complex event detection (support ends May 20, 2026, migrate to ThingsBoard)
• AWS IoT Analytics: ETL pipeline for IoT data
• AWS IoT SiteWise: asset modeling and industrial data
• AWS IoT TwinMaker: digital twins
• AWS IoT Greengrass: edge computing
• Plus: Lambda, Kinesis, Timestream, S3, QuickSight – to build a real IoT solution

A production IoT solution on AWS typically uses 5–10 of these services. Each has its own pricing, limits, and API. The complexity is enormous – AWS IoT Core alone is only 10% of the solution.

What ThingsBoard Brings Out-of-the-Box

ThingsBoard (developed by ThingsBoard Inc., New York; current v4.3.x, May 2026) is a complete IoT platform:

• Device management: MQTT, CoAP, HTTP, LwM2M; provisioning, OTA, RPC
• Rule engine: visual drag-and-drop editor with 50+ node types; JavaScript/TBEL custom logic
• Dashboards: 500+ widgets in 20+ categories (SCADA, charts, maps, tables, gauges)
• Asset management: hierarchies (Building → Floor → Equipment), relationships, aggregations
• Multi-tenancy: native Tenant → Customer → User hierarchy with data isolation
• Alarm system: threshold, inactivity, complex rules; lifecycle (acknowledge, clear, escalate)
• Time-series storage: PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB/Cassandra integrated
• Integrations: AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, Sigfox, LoRaWAN (PE), Kafka, RabbitMQ, MQTT brokers

All in one application that you can self-host or get as a managed service via thingshost.

Pricing: Pay-per-Message vs. Flat Rate

AWS IoT Core: Granular Pay-as-you-go

From official AWS prices (US East / EU Ireland, May 2026):

Important: Messages are billed in 5 KB increments. An 8 KB message counts as 2 messages. Free Tier (12 months) covers 500,000 messages, 2.25M connection minutes, 225,000 shadow/registry operations, plus 250,000 rules triggered + 250,000 actions.

Example Calculation: 1,000 Sensors, Every 5 Minutes

• Sensors: 1,000
• Send interval: 5 minutes = 12 messages/h per device = 8,640 messages/month
• Total: 1,000 × 8,640 = 8.64M messages/month
• Connection time: 1,000 × 24 × 60 × 30 = 43.2M minutes/month

Cost AWS IoT Core only:

• Messaging: 8.64M × $1/1M = $8.64
• Connectivity: 43.2M × $0.08/1M = $3.46
• Rules (1 rule per message, 1 action): 17.28M × $0.15/1M = $2.59
• Subtotal AWS IoT Core: ~$14.69/month

Sounds cheap? But that's just the connectivity layer. Plus:

Realistic total cost for a full-featured IoT solution with AWS: €200–800+/month – plus engineering time for architecture and implementation.

ThingsBoard via thingshost: Flat Rate

No per-message costs. No per-device costs. No data point limits in CE. Current plan limits are listed in the thingshost pricing overview.

3-Year Comparison for 1,000 Devices

Standard (CE) at €149.90/month is recommended for up to 100 devices. For 1,000 devices, the Premium tiering applies.

For SMB deployments, thingshost stays well below a full-featured AWS IoT solution once dashboards, asset modeling, and engineering effort are included. The real difference is predictability: a flat rate with no per-message and no per-device fees instead of five metered services.

Architecture Comparison

AWS IoT Core: Cloud-Native, Granular

Device ──► AWS IoT Core ──► Rules Engine ──► Lambda ──► Timestream
          (MQTT Broker)     (SQL Filtering) (Code)    (TSDB)
                                 │
                                 ├──► S3 (Long-Term)
                                 ├──► Kinesis (Streaming)
                                 └──► IoT SiteWise (Asset Model)
                                          │
                                          └──► QuickSight (Dashboards)

Each layer is its own AWS service with its own pricing, API, and configuration. Very flexible – but complex to build and operate.

ThingsBoard: Vertically Integrated

Device ──► ThingsBoard ──► Internal Rule Engine ──► Internal Storage
          (MQTT/CoAP/HTTP)  (Visual Editor)         (PostgreSQL)
                                  │
                                  ├──► Dashboards (built-in)
                                  ├──► Alarms & Notifications
                                  ├──► Multi-Tenancy
                                  └──► External Integrations (optional)

One application covers 90% of typical IoT requirements. External services (S3, Kafka) optional, not mandatory.

Detailed Feature Comparison

Dashboards & Visualization

AWS IoT Core: No built-in dashboards. You use either:

• AWS QuickSight (Reader: $3/user/month, Reader Pro: $20/user/month, Author: $24/user/month)
• Own application (e.g., React + AWS SDK + IoT SiteWise Monitor)
• IoT SiteWise Monitor (limited, primarily for industrial use cases)

ThingsBoard: 500+ widgets out-of-the-box in 20+ categories:

• SCADA HMI symbols
• Analog/digital gauges, traffic lights, status indicators
• Charts (line, bar, pie, area, scatter, heatmap)
• Maps (Google, OpenStreetMap, Tencent)
• Tables, lists, markdown cards
• Control widgets (buttons, sliders for RPC)
• Custom widgets (HTML/CSS/JS)

Rule Engine

AWS IoT Core: SQL-based rules like:

SELECT temperature, deviceId
FROM 'devices/+/data'
WHERE temperature > 30

Actions: Lambda, SNS, SQS, Kinesis, S3, DynamoDB, Republish, etc.

Pro: simple for AWS-experienced teams. Con: limited to simple filtering; complex logic needs Lambda.

ThingsBoard: Visual drag-and-drop editor with 50+ node types:

• Filter (Script, Originator, Type, Switch)
• Enrichment (Customer Attributes, Device Attributes, Related Telemetry)
• Transformation (Script, Change Originator, Map)
• Action (Save Timeseries, RPC Call, Save Attribute, Email, Slack, MQTT)
• External (REST API Call, Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SNS/SQS, Azure Service Bus)
• AI Request Node (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Ollama, Google Gemini)

Complex workflows modelable without code.

Multi-Tenancy

AWS IoT Core: No native multi-tenancy. Options:

• Multiple AWS accounts (administratively complex)
• Multiple AWS IoT Things Groups in one account (limited)
• Self-built tenancy layer in application code

ThingsBoard: Native Tenant → Customer → User hierarchy:

• System Administrator: manages tenants
• Tenant Administrator: own tenant setup, creates customers
• Customer Administrator: users in their customer
• Customer User: only data of their customer visible

Data isolation at database level, without additional architecture work.

Asset Management

AWS IoT Core: Via AWS IoT SiteWise (separate service with own pricing).

ThingsBoard: Native assets, asset profiles, asset hierarchies, asset relations. Included in the platform.

Vendor Lock-in

AWS IoT Core: High

A mature AWS IoT solution typically uses:

• AWS IoT Core (connectivity)
• AWS IoT Device Management (onboarding, OTA)
• AWS Lambda (data processing)
• AWS Kinesis (streaming)
• AWS Timestream or DynamoDB (storage)
• AWS S3 (long-term storage)
• AWS QuickSight or own frontend (dashboards)
• AWS CloudWatch (monitoring)

Migrating away from AWS means: rebuilding all integrations. Practically impossible after 2–3 years of production use. Add to that the lifecycle risk of the building blocks themselves: in 2025/2026 AWS ended or froze several IoT services, documented in our 2026 AWS IoT retirement list.

ThingsBoard: Low

Apache 2.0 license, open source, deployable on:

• Own hardware (on-prem)
• AWS, Azure, GCP, Hetzner, OVH, IONOS
• Kubernetes clusters anywhere
• Managed service (thingshost, ThingsBoard Cloud, other providers)

Migration: ThingsBoard backup, restore on new infrastructure. Days instead of years.

GDPR and Data Sovereignty

AWS IoT Core

• Provider: Amazon Web Services, Inc., Seattle (USA)
• EU region: eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) available
• CLOUD Act: Applicable (US company)
• EU-US Data Privacy Framework: AWS is certified, but Schrems III risk remains
• DPA: AWS Standard DPA, considered usable – but CLOUD Act conflict remains structural

Even the Frankfurt region doesn't solve the underlying problem: the CLOUD Act applies regardless of storage location because AWS is a US company.

ThingsBoard via thingshost

• Software: Apache 2.0 open source
• Hosting: German ISO 27001 and BSI C5 certified data centers (DE region)
• Operating company: WZ-IT Brands GmbH, Germany
• CLOUD Act: Not applicable (no US group)
• DPA: Available immediately in the portal

For strict GDPR compliance, the situation is clear: thingshost with German region.

When Does AWS IoT Core Still Make Sense?

There are clear reasons to choose AWS IoT Core:

• Your entire tech stack is on AWS – Lambda, S3, Kinesis, RDS, SageMaker
• You need deep AWS-native integrations – e.g., SageMaker for ML on IoT data
• You use AWS Greengrass for edge computing in the AWS world
• You have no own engineering team but lots of AWS experience
• You don't want a ready-made IoT platform but build your application yourself on AWS services
• GDPR is not a critical requirement for your use case

In these cases, AWS IoT Core is a strong choice.

When ThingsBoard / thingshost Is the Better Choice

• You want a complete IoT platform with dashboards, rule engine, and multi-tenancy
• You need customer-facing tenants (B2B IoT service providers, smart city projects)
• You want predictable costs without per-message pricing
• You have GDPR requirements and can't accept US cloud risk
• You want no vendor lock-in – the option to switch providers anytime
• You need fast time-to-production without weeks of AWS architecture work
• You want to offer OEMs and white-labeling (with Premium PE)

thingshost: Managed ThingsBoard Without Lock-in

For those wanting to use ThingsBoard in production – with full GDPR compliance and without DevOps overhead – use thingshost:

• Dedicated ThingsBoard instance (CE or PE) in 8 regions worldwide
• Germany: ISO 27001 & BSI C5 certified data centers
• Other regions: ISO 27001 & SOC 2 Type II certified data centers
• Standard (CE) from €149.90/month, no license-based device limit, recommended for up to 100 devices
• Premium (PE) from €249.90/month (50 devices) to €699.90/month (1,000 devices), PE license included
• No per-message or per-device fees
• 24/7 monitoring, automatic updates and backups
• Open source – migrable anytime, no vendor lock-in

Which services, regions and certifications sit behind that is shown on the managed ThingsBoard from German data centers overview.

Agree scope and provisioning with WZ-IT. Provisioning and contract terms are agreed with WZ-IT in the proposal. There is no self-service portal or automatic trial subscription.

Conclusion

ThingsBoard and AWS IoT Core solve different problems. AWS IoT Core is a flexible connectivity layer for teams who want to assemble their IoT solution from AWS services – with everything that comes with pricing complexity, engineering effort, and vendor lock-in.

ThingsBoard is a finished IoT platform – dashboards, rule engine, multi-tenancy, asset management out-of-the-box, open source and without per-message costs. With thingshost, it becomes a managed service in German data centers, at a fraction of AWS costs and with full GDPR compliance.

For 90% of IoT projects, ThingsBoard is the rational choice. For the other 10% whose tech stack is deeply integrated with AWS, AWS IoT Core remains useful.

Recommended reading: ThingsBoard vs. Grafana: IoT Platform Comparison · ThingsBoard Hosting: Cloud vs. Self-Hosted vs. Managed

If you are weighing the ThingsBoard vendor's own offering rather than the hyperscaler stack, the numbers are on the ThingsBoard Cloud alternative page.

Sources

• AWS IoT Core – Official Pricing Page
• AWS IoT Core Pricing Documentation
• AWS IoT Core – Additional Metering Details
• AWS IoT Device Management Pricing
• AWS IoT SiteWise Pricing
• Slashdot: AWS IoT Core vs. ThingsBoard
• TrustRadius: AWS IoT Core vs ThingsBoard
• SaaSHub: AWS IoT vs Thingsboard
• ACTE Technology: AWS IoT vs ThingsBoard Platforms
• ThingsBoard – Official Website
• ThingsBoard GitHub Repository (Apache 2.0)
• ThingsBoard Pricing
• ThingsBoard CE vs PE
• thingshost.io – Managed ThingsBoard Hosting