Tools & Applications for MQTT (2026 Guide): Web, Mobile, Desktop, CLI, Gateways, and Commercial Tools
Introduction
MQTT has become the de facto messaging protocol for IoT, telemetry, and real-time messaging. Beyond brokers and client libraries, a rich ecosystem of tools and applications exists to help developers, integrators, operations teams, and architects build reliable MQTT systems — from low-code dashboards to high-performance load simulators and protocol gateways.
This guide collects and categorizes the most important MQTT tools and applications you may reasonably need in 2026. Everything below is organized by platform and use case so you can quickly find tools for development, testing, monitoring, simulation, production operations, and bridging to other systems.
Web Tools & Applications
These browser-based and web-hosted tools are useful for quick diagnostics, dashboarding, development, and rapid prototyping.
FlowFuse
FlowFuse is a secure hosted Node-RED platform that allows you to easily create MQTT applications using low-code and visual programming.
MQTT Board
A diagnostic-oriented MQTT 5.0 client tool based on mqtt.js. Available open source — ideal for quick troubleshooting and testing MQTT 5.0 features.
MQTT Tiles
Open source MQTT-based dashboard visualization tool for building lightweight dashboards from MQTT topics.
MQTT over WebSockets (experimental)
From the mosquitto project — an experimental WebSocket layer enabling MQTT in browsers.
HiveMQ Websockets Client
A WebSocket-based client for your browser which supports publishing & subscribing.
mqtt-svg-dash
An SVG “live” dashboard built on MQTT — ideal when you want vector graphics dashboards that update in real time.
mqtt-panel
A web interface for MQTT — useful for lightweight internal dashboards and device control pages.
ThingStudio
ThingStudio allows you to create real-time HTML5 user interfaces for MQTT devices by writing simple HTML templates.
Moquette
An open-source Java broker for the MQTT protocol (note: while Moquette is typically a broker, it is relevant in the web tools section as it’s commonly used with web-based frontends and embedded in Java applications).
IOTSIM.IO
SaaS MQTT lab for web-based MQTT testing — convenient for teams that need a hosted test bed.
MQTT WebSocket Toolkit
Adopts the form of a chat interface; simplifies page operation logic and helps users verify MQTT application scenarios quickly.
MQTT.Cool Test Client
A web interface for testing interaction between MQTT.Cool and any MQTT broker.
Mobile Platforms & Mobile Tools
Mobile platforms and apps allow field engineers, operators, and developers to monitor and control MQTT devices directly from smartphones and tablets.
Mobile Platforms
- MQTT on Android
- MQTT on iOS
Mobile Tools
- MyMQTT — A simple Message Queuing Telemetry Transport client available for Android and iOS. Useful for quick connects, publishing messages, and validating mobile-device integrations.
Desktop Tools (Developers & Operators)
Desktop clients and GUIs provide advanced inspection, visualization, and diagnostic functionality. Many desktop tools offer features like hierarchical topic views, message replay, plotting, and scripting.
MQTT Studio
A practical desktop and web client designed for developers to efficiently create, test, and manage MQTT-based applications, enhancing development and support workflows.
MQTT Explorer
A client to visualize, publish, subscribe, and plot topics. Visualizes topics in a hierarchical view; intended for service integration, maintenance, and refactoring.
TT3
A full-featured Windows MQTT client application using Paho libraries. Includes additional features like performance testing and alerts.
mqtt-spy
An advanced open-source utility for monitoring activity on MQTT topics; based on the Paho Java client.
MQTT.fx
A Java-based MQTT client built on Eclipse Paho.
mqtt-stats
A tool for MQTT Topic Statistics — helpful to analyze message rates and topic popularity.
MQTT X
A cross-platform MQTT desktop client open-sourced by EMQ; supports macOS, Linux, and Windows. Uses a chat-like interface that simplifies testing and quick verification of MQTT/MQTTS connections.
MqttInsight
Open-source cross-platform MQTT desktop client. Supports table and dialogue views; supports Node.js-compatible scripts for message decoding, forwarding, and automation.
MQ3T
A simple MQTT Desktop Client for developers. Visualizes the broker in a tree view and supports repeatable actions via an action system.
MQTT Viewer
A modern, open-source MQTT debugging and visualization tool for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Command Line Tools
Command-line tools are essential for scripting, CI/CD, automation, and headless testing.
mosquitto_pub / mosquitto_sub
Publish/subscribe command-line clients provided with the mosquitto package — the de facto standard CLI tools for MQTT.
mqtt-spy-daemon
A headless (command-line) version of mqtt-spy for non-GUI monitoring and automation.
MQTT CLI
A powerful CLI supporting MQTT 5.0 and 3.1.1 backed by the HiveMQ team — useful for advanced scripting, automation, and CI pipelines.
curl
Basic support for publish and subscribe — handy in environments that already depend on curl for automation.
NanoMQ pub/sub
A high-performance command-line toolkit for MQTT debugging and benchmarking (provided with the NanoMQ package, backed by EMQ).
ThingsOn MQTT Bench
A cross-platform .NET Core benchmark tool that measures maximum message throughput to a broker in a specified time window.
Commercial Applications & Simulation Tools
Production-grade simulators, testbeds, and commercial apps let you simulate scale, test resilience, and validate edge/enterprise deployments.
i-flow
Simplifies complex data handling between OT and IT systems via an MQTT-based Industrial Unified Namespace (UNS) — designed for industrial event-based communication.
HiveMQ Swarm
A distributed simulation environment to test millions of MQTT clients, messages, and topic names. Ideal for load testing clustered brokers and large-scale deployments.
MIMIC MQTT Simulator
Simulate thousands of publishers/subscribers for rapid prototyping, performance testing, and tuning.
Bevywise IoT Simulator
Provides functional and performance testing tools specific to MQTT platform, application, and device development.
IA92
IA92 support pack includes useful MQTT Java Swing GUI tools for publishing & subscribing (useful in legacy or specialized environments).
ioctrl – MqttDesk
MqttDesk is a cross-platform MQTT desktop client with an easy & customizable dashboard, connections, and widgets — designed for makers, freelancers, prototypes, and enterprises.
XMeter
Based on Apache JMeter with mqtt-jmeter plugin, XMeter provides SaaS testing for simulating millions of MQTT clients and messages.
Desktop Notification Tools
Useful for desktop environment integrations and quick alerting based on MQTT messages.
- Ubuntu desktop notifications using pynotify
- Zenity notifications for MQTT messages
- Desktop notifications for MQTT messages with DBUS
- Desktop notifications with libnotify
These simple tools allow MQTT messages to trigger local desktop notifications — useful for monitoring dashboards, local alarms, and operator alerts.
Gateways & Bridging Tools
Gateways are critical to integrate MQTT with legacy systems, cloud services, and other protocols (HTTP, Twitter, Modbus, ZigBee, OPC, etc).
Xenqtt
Includes a client library, mock broker for testing, and applications to support enterprise needs like clustering servers as a single client, and HTTP gateway capabilities.
twitter2mqtt / twitter-to-mqtt
Twitter-to-MQTT gateways (Python or mosquitto-based) that republish tweets to MQTT topics — useful for prototyping social-media-to-IoT integrations or building event-driven pipelines.
mqtt_bridge
Retransmit MQTT messages between different brokers — handy for redundancy, migration, or multi-cloud replication.
mqtt-http-bridge
Simple web application providing a REST-like interface to MQTT — useful for HTTP-only integrations and quick webhook-style bridges.
OPC Router – MQTT Gateway
An industrial MQTT gateway with various plug-ins for integrating PLCs, SCADA, and other OT equipment.
zigbee2mqtt
A widely used ZigBee gateway that exposes ZigBee devices (Philips Hue, Xiaomi Aqara, etc.) via MQTT. Very popular in home automation; extensive device compatibility lists available.
MQTT.Cool
A web gateway that optimizes any MQTT broker for real-time web clients with automatic throttling.
Neuron
Open-source lightweight IIoT connectivity server that converts industrial protocols to MQTT, SparkPlug, etc. Useful for industrial protocol normalization.
MQM Gateway
Open-source, lightweight C++ bidirectional Modbus RTU/TCP <=> MQTT gateway with flexible on-the-fly data conversion.
Miscellaneous Utilities & Integrations
Helpful tools that don’t fit neatly into other categories but are practically useful.
Eclipse Paho (tools)
Provides an Eclipse view that can interact with a broker for testing — useful in integrated development environments.
mqtt-watchdir
Watches a directory for modifications and publishes file contents to an MQTT broker automatically — useful for file-driven pipelines and data ingestion.
MQTT File Uploader
A cross-platform .NET Core app that watches local directories for changes and uploads new/modified files to an MQTT broker.
How to Choose the Right Tool: Quick Recommendations
- Rapid prototyping / dashboards (no-code/low-code): FlowFuse, ThingStudio, MQTT Tiles.
- Browser-based diagnostics & quick tests: MQTT Board, HiveMQ Websockets Client, MQTT WebSocket Toolkit.
- Mobile field testing: MyMQTT (Android/iOS).
- Desktop heavy-lifting / debugging: MQTT Explorer, MQTT Studio, MQTT X, MQTT.fx.
- CLI & automation: mosquitto_pub/sub, MQTT CLI, NanoMQ pub/sub.
- Load testing & simulation: HiveMQ Swarm, MIMIC MQTT Simulator, Bevywise IoT Simulator, XMeter.
- Industrial gateways: OPC Router, Neuron, MQM Gateway, zigbee2mqtt.
- Bridging to web/HTTP/social: mqtt-http-bridge, twitter-to-mqtt, MQTT.Cool.
- Embedded & edge: Tools like mosquitto (broker), mosquitto_pub/sub, and device-specific SDKs (Arduino, mbed) pair well with NanoMQ and lightweight dashboards.
Closing Notes
The MQTT tooling ecosystem is expansive and continues to grow as IoT systems expand into industrial, consumer, and cloud-native domains. Use the sections above to quickly choose the right tool for your workflow — from rapid prototyping to enterprise-scale testing and protocol bridging.
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