ThingsBoard

ThingsBoard Community Edition vs Professional Edition: What’s the Difference

Unlocking IoT Potential with ThingsBoard

ThingsBoard was originally created to help organizations worldwide unlock the full potential of IoT. Established with a vision to simplify and speed up IoT adoption, our mission is to make this technology accessible, scalable, and flexible for organizations of all sizes. We empower businesses to optimize operations, reduce costs, and discover new opportunities using cutting-edge tools.

To achieve this, we offer two powerful editions of our platform: Community Edition (CE) and Professional Edition (PE). Whether you start with the CE or the advanced features of PE, ThingsBoard provides a clear path to build, launch, and scale your IoT solution.

ThingsBoard Community Edition (CE): The Open-Source Powerhouse

ThingsBoard CE is the most feature-rich, open-source IoT platform in the world, and we are committed to keeping it that way. It is a fully-functional, scalable, and fault-tolerant solution that can be deployed in a cluster and used in commercial projects. CE provides a robust foundation for building anything from a small proof-of-concept to a large-scale IoT solution.

:gear: CE Features:

:pushpin: Learn more: Community Edition

ThingsBoard Professional Edition (PE): Enterprise-Grade Features & Support

ThingsBoard PE is built for enterprises and businesses that want to reduce time-to-market, cut development costs, and access more features out-of-the-box. Including all the powerful features of the Community Edition, we believe PE is the most feature-rich commercial IoT platform available. Our development model reflects our commitment to the open-source community, with 80% of our code changes contributed directly to CE, while PE receives additional enterprise-focused features and dedicated support.

:rocket: PE Features:

:pushpin: Learn more: Professional Edition


Feature Comparison

Feature Category Feature Community Edition Professional Edition
Platform Core Multi-Tenancy Yes Yes
  Scalability (Clustering) Yes Yes
  Rule Engine & Data Processing Yes Yes
  AI Models and AI Rule nodes Yes Yes
  End-user real-time dashboards Yes Yes
  Mobile Application Yes Yes
Device Management Device & Asset Modeling Yes Yes
  Device Claiming & Provisioning API Yes Yes
  Bulk Device and Asset Provisioning via CSV Yes Yes
  OTA Updates Yes Yes
Connectivity Standard IoT Protocols (MQTT/CoAP/HTTP/SNMP/LWM2M) Yes Yes
  Industrial IoT Gateway (Modbus, OPC-UA, BACnet, etc.) Yes Yes gi
  LPWAN Integrations (LoRaWAN, Sigfox) No Yes
  System Integrations (AWS IoT, Azure IoT, PubSub, Kafka) No Yes
Security & Admin User Management Yes Yes
  Audit Logging Yes Yes
  Advanced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) No Yes
  Single Sign-On (SSO) / OAuth2 No Yes
  Secrets Storage No Yes
Go-to-Market White-Labeling No Yes
  Reporting & Scheduling No Yes
  Solution Templates No Yes
  Device Payload Codec Library (400+) No Yes
Deployment Options Self-Managed (On-premise/Cloud) Yes Yes
  Managed Public Cloud No Yes
  Managed Private Cloud No Yes
Support Support Model Community Advanced + SLA

Migration From CE to PE

One of the most powerful advantages of the ThingsBoard ecosystem is the seamless migration path from CE to PE. You can start your project on CE to prove its value, and when your business is ready to scale, you can upgrade to PE without changing your core platform.

This reduces both technological and business risks, accelerates time-to-market, and enables building IoT solutions with a focus on growth.


How to start using ThingsBoard CE and PE

Choosing the right edition is only half the job. It’s equally important to select the right model to match your goals, resources, and infrastructure strategy.

:white_check_mark: Getting started with Community Edition

  1. ThingsBoard Demo The fastest way to start. Free Demo environment by the ThingsBoard team — just connect your devices and start. :link: ThingsBoard Demo

  2. Self-managed (On-premise) Full control in your own or isolated data centers, or offline/on-premise setups. :link: Self-managed


:rocket: Getting started with Professional Edition

Depending on your control, responsibility, and time-to-market requirements, ThingsBoard PE offers multiple deployment paths:

  1. ThingsBoard Cloud (Europe & North America) The fastest way to start. Managed by the ThingsBoard team — just connect your devices and start. :link: ThingsBoard Cloud

  2. ThingsBoard Private Cloud (EU, US, APAC) A dedicated and fully managed cluster with SLA guarantees. Ideal for scaling to hundreds of thousands or millions of devices. :link: Private Cloud

  3. Self-managed (On-premise PE) Full control in your own data centers. ThingsBoard provides remote support for self-managed installations. :link: Self-managed