Pricing
Free while we're in beta. Here's what we plan to charge after.
We're pre-revenue and won't pretend otherwise — nothing below is billing today. One ladder, no editions, no feature paywall: device count is the only number you'd have to forecast.
Perch
not billing yetA real pilot, not a teaser.
free in beta, and after · no card
- 10 devices
- 300K pooled messages/mo
- 7 days in our history store
- 1 seat · 1 alert
Builder
plannedFirst hardware out the door.
$0.55 per extra device · not billing yet
- 50 devices
- 1.5M pooled messages/mo
- 30 days in our history store
- 3 seats · 10 alerts · 1 org
Growth
plannedA fleet with customers on it.
$0.35 per extra device · not billing yet
- 250 devices
- 7.5M pooled messages/mo
- 90 days in our history store
- Unlimited seats, orgs and alerts
- Priority email support
Scale
plannedThousands in the field.
$0.20 per extra device · not billing yet
- 1,500 devices
- 45M pooled messages/mo
- 13 months in our history store
- Unlimited seats, orgs and alerts
- SSO · priority support with SLA
Fleet
planned · talk to us first10,000 devices, 300M pooled messages, $0.12 per device beyond. We'd rather scope a fleet this size with you than sell it from a page — MQTT and custom dashboards aren't here yet, and you should hear that from us before you sign.
Prices in USD, exclusive of any applicable sales tax or VAT.
Not billing yet
A billable message is a device→platform report: telemetry, shadow report-back, or a log upload. Pooled across the whole account.
Never metered
OTA is free at any image size on every tier, including free. So are shadow polls, dashboard API calls and provisioning.
Never billed
A device counts toward billing in a month it sends at least one billable message. The 400 units sitting in a warehouse are free.
No limit
Retention applies to history we keep for you. Point a pigeon's telemetry endpoint at your own database and it goes straight there instead — for as long as you keep it, at whatever resolution you like.
1,000 devices, reporting every five minutes
Published list prices, cheapest tier that legitimately fits the fleet. Each figure carries the date we last checked it.
| Platform | 1,000 devices per device / month | Monthly total USD/month at 1,000 devices |
|---|---|---|
PidgeIoT Perch is free to ten devices, Scale covers a thousand, Fleet ten thousand. our own published pricechecked 23 Aug 2026 | 1,000 devices per device / month $0.349 | Monthly total USD/month at 1,000 devices $349 |
Golioth · Pay as you go Cheaper than us below roughly 1,225 devices, and without a multi-tenant dashboard, organizations and access control, or alerting. | 1,000 devices per device / month $0.285 | Monthly total USD/month at 1,000 devices $285 |
ThingsBoard Cloud Meters datapoints rather than messages, so several readings per report hit the cap early. thingsboard.iochecked 23 Aug 2026 | 1,000 devices per device / month $0.749 | Monthly total USD/month at 1,000 devices $749 |
Particle Sold in whole $299 blocks of 100 devices; there is no per-operation overage at all. | 1,000 devices per device / month $3.887 | Monthly total USD/month at 1,000 devices $3,887 |
Blues · Essentials A flat charge per event whatever its size, so small frequent reports are its worst case. | 1,000 devices per device / month $6.604 | Monthly total USD/month at 1,000 devices $6,604 |
Golioth is cheaper than us up to about 1,225 devices and we are cheaper above it: 18% at 1,500, 21% at 2,000, 47% at ten thousand. Our per-device price falls as each tier fills; a flat rate per device never does.
The same device, every ten seconds
Nothing changes but the cadence. This is where a meter denominated in datapoints, events or blocks stops agreeing with one denominated in devices.
Figures are per device / month.
| Platform | 1 device per device / month | 1,000 devices per device / month |
|---|---|---|
PidgeIoT Buying Fleet for its message pool costs $1.50 a device, not the $6.80 a smaller tier plus overage would. our own published pricechecked 23 Aug 2026 | 1 device $0 inside the free pool | 1,000 devices $1.50 Fleet, pool covers it |
Golioth · Pay as you go Their rate is flat at any fleet size and stays below ours at this reporting rate, and it does not include a multi-tenant dashboard, organizations and access control, or alerting. | 1 device $0.665 | 1,000 devices $0.665 |
ThingsBoard Cloud At five readings per report one device emits 1.3 million data points a month against the free tier's one million ceiling, and a thousand devices force Private Cloud at $1,499 a month even though the device count fits Business exactly. Ten thousand of them break the throughput cap on the tier they land on, and the next tier up publishes no message ceiling we could price against. thingsboard.iochecked 23 Aug 2026 | 1 device $49.00 | 1,000 devices $1.499 $1,499/mo across the fleet |
Particle One chatty device eats an entire $299 block by itself. We could not reduce their block arithmetic to a figure we would stand behind at ten thousand, so we are not printing one. | 1 device $299.00 | 1,000 devices $31.15 |
Blues · Essentials 259,200 tiny events a month, each charged the same as a large one. | 1 device $190.65 | 1,000 devices $194.40 |
Blues at $194 a device is why a flat charge per event is the wrong model for small frequent reports.
Full comparison: nine platforms, three fleet sizes, and what AWS and Azure cost →
Weighing your own server instead? What self-hosting actually costs →
Straight answers
What counts as a message?
A report from a device to us. Shadow polls, firmware chunks, dashboard calls and WebSocket keep-alives don't count — they'd punish exactly the behaviour we want to encourage.
What happens if I go over?
Nothing is billed in beta, and nothing is metered yet either. When paid tiers start, overage will run at $0.30 per 10,000 and service will keep going; free accounts will pause ingestion instead, warned well before the cap — no surprise invoice, ever.
How long do you keep my data?
As long as your tier's retention says — 7 days on the free tier, up to 13 months on Scale. Thirteen rather than twelve on purpose: comparing this month to the same month last year needs both of them, and a twelve-month window is one month short of that. Those limits are on the history we store for you. Telemetry forwarded to your own store has no limit from us at all, because we never hold a copy of it.
Is anything locked behind a tier?
No feature that costs us nothing to serve. Every transport, OTA, remote logs, the firmware catalog and per-device crypto are in the free tier. Tiers differ by devices, messages, retention, SSO and support.
Can I self-host it?
Honestly: not usefully. The backend is built on Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects, so "self-hosting" means running your own Cloudflare account. The source is public and always will be — but we're not going to sell you a self-host SKU we can't support well. If what you're weighing is self-hosting a stack of your own instead, here is what that actually costs.
Then what stops lock-in?
The exit, not the licence. The device library, the wire protocol and the API spec are open and documented forever, telemetry forwards to any line-protocol store you own, and every device's history is readable straight from the documented API.
Will these prices hold?
These are planned prices, published early so you can budget — deliberately introductory while MQTT and custom dashboards are still missing. They can still move before billing starts, and we'll tell you well ahead of any change that affects you.
Everything's free while we're in beta.
Ten devices stay free after that. Start now and help shape what the rest costs.