What is mqttui?

MQTTUI is a self-hosted web application for monitoring and automating MQTT infrastructure. It streams messages in real time via Socket.IO, shows an interactive topic hierarchy graph, stores messages in SQLite with advanced search, and provides a rules engine with 11 condition operators for IF/THEN automation. Alerting works with Telegram, Slack, and HTTP webhooks including retry logic and deduplication. A plugin system lets you add custom handlers that run in isolated subprocesses. The app includes a REST API with OpenAPI documentation, a Prometheus metrics endpoint, and user authentication with API tokens. You can deploy it via Docker Compose (bundled with a Mosquitto broker), Docker, or a manual Python install. It is MIT licensed and actively maintained.

Should you self-host mqttui?

mqttui scores 48/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #8 of 10 in IoT. It has 224 GitHub stars.

It shipped 2 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v2.0.2, came out on 25 March 2026. New versions land roughly every 1 days.

Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. An official Docker image is available. It is MIT-licensed and written mostly in Python.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is Mosquitto (76/100, 11 306 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See mqttui vs Mosquitto side by side.