MQTT / device data

Fast and extendable I/O.with your agents.

Deploy CitusIO from one image on your infrastructure. Connect MQTT devices and add destinations through the public C Bridge SDK.

Use your preferred agent for installation, migration and day-to-day operations. Skills for setup, checks, upgrades and recovery are bundled in the image and available at /skills.

Get Start →Find your tier

Which part of the workload needs attention?

Every tier is intended for real use, including production. Choose the persistence, integration and service scope your application needs.

Free
Teams whose live data can be regenerated from devices
Run MQTT, inspect live state and deliver selected events to a webhook or your own adapter.
Do I need to persist every reading?Read the operating skill
Pro
Teams responsible for recovering device messages after a restart
Persist broker and delivery state in PostgreSQL, with TLS, secure WebSocket and standard support.
What must survive a broker restart?Read the operating skill
Max
Teams connecting plant devices and telemetry to business systems
Validate and transform messages, acquire industrial data and send bounded delivery work to configured sinks.
How does device data reach the system that needs it?Read the operating skill
Enterprise
Operations teams managing failover, identity and audited changes
Operate an active–standby pair with external fencing, verified roles, audit and governed command workflows.
Who can change this node, and when may a standby take traffic?Read the operating skill

Free permits production use. Memory-backed state disappears on restart; use application replay or select durable storage when the workload needs recovery. License and service terms.

Will your clients and protocols work here?

Check protocol version, QoS, transport and recovery before moving traffic. Verify current-source support against your installed image and configuration.

Requirement	Available behavior	Where to look
MQTT 3.1.1	Publish/subscribe at QoS 0, 1, 2, with retained messages, Wills and session behavior.	Exact MQTT profile
MQTT 5	Selected properties and QoS 0, 1. Subscription Identifier and enhanced authentication remain outside this profile.	Property and QoS limits
Transport	TCP/TLS in Free; secure WebSocket in Pro and higher.	Install and verify
Recovery	Live memory state in Free. PostgreSQL-backed broker and bridge recovery in Pro and higher.	Durability skill
Device and industrial protocols	Max and Enterprise add the selected gateway and acquisition profiles below.	Integration scope

Device protocols and delivery destinations

MQTT-SN (1.2); HTTPS (device ingress); CoAP (device ingress); LwM2M (1.2); Modbus TCP (daemon-owned polling); OPC UA (daemon-owned client); Sparkplug B (3.0 over MQTT); OCPP (1.6J over WSS); LoRaWAN (network server).

Use Modbus TCP and OPC UA to collect data from equipment. Check each protocol’s supported profile and configuration before connecting devices.

Configured destinations: PostgreSQL, HTTPS Webhook, MQTT, Apache Kafka, Redis Streams, ClickHouse, S3-compatible, InfluxDB, TimescaleDB, RabbitMQ / AMQP 0.9.1. The provider adapter catalog is included in Max and Enterprise. Customer-built C adapters are available in every tier.

Protocol acceptance is scoped to tested behavior. Full MQTT conformance, horizontal broker clustering and managed cloud service are outside the current claim. Machine-readable product facts.

MQTT export performance

MQTT 3.1.1 at QoS 1, measured on an Intel Core i7-3615QM with 200 connections and three physical cores.

Export rate by payload size

Measured image	128 B · msg/s	1 KiB · msg/s	64 KiB · msg/s
CitusIO Max · Alpine	80,000	50,000	1,000
CitusIO Max · Debian	80,000	50,000	1,000
Mosquitto 2.1.2	40,000	30,000	1,000
EMQX 6.3.2	15,000	15,000	1,000

Memory-backed export; 30-second runs. Capacity depends on hardware and workload.

Latency and resources at 10,000 messages/s

At 10,000 messages/s: 128-byte messages over five minutes. ACK latency measures publish acknowledgement; memory is peak sampled PSS.

Measured image	ACK p95	ACK p99	CPU time	Memory (PSS)
CitusIO Max · Alpine	0.659 ms	0.871 ms	431.69 core-s	466.9 MiB
Mosquitto 2.1.2	0.550 ms	0.713 ms	190.31 core-s	8.3 MiB
EMQX 6.3.2	0.728 ms	1.086 ms	1,274.40 core-s	488.1 MiB

CPU time covers the recorded collection window. See the report for measurement conditions and full results.

Measurement report →Download the evidence summary

Operate with your preferred agent

Installing or maintaining a node?

Use the setup and operations skills for configuration, health checks, upgrades and recovery.

Read the operations workflow →

Need a destination we haven’t packaged?

Use the public C Bridge SDK to add your destination. Follow the build guide to package the adapter and verify delivery with your agent.

Build and package a bridge →