ThingsBoard Pricing Changes: What It Means for IoT Companies

When you choose an IoT platform, the monthly subscription often looks like one of the easier costs to predict.

You pick a plan, connect your devices, build dashboards and alerts, and start getting the product into customers’ hands.

Then the product grows.

More devices come online. Data volumes increase. New integrations get added. More business logic starts living inside the platform.

At that point, a change in platform cost starts to matter much more.

We recently came across an IoT company whose ThingsBoard cost moved from around $150 per month to around $400.

The company was in a better position than most. It already had another system running in parallel, so moving away from ThingsBoard was a realistic option.

Many IoT companies do not have that flexibility.

If most of your connected product depends on one platform, a higher monthly bill is only part of the problem.

The harder question is simple:

What would it cost you to leave?

What Changed with ThingsBoard Pricing?

ThingsBoard introduced a new pricing structure for its cloud plans in January 2026.

The update introduced a new plan lineup, smaller steps between plans, modular add-ons, and top-ups that let customers increase selected limits without always moving to another plan. ThingsBoard says the changes were designed around the different stages of an IoT product, from proof of concept through production scale.

Current ThingsBoard Cloud Pricing

For North America, the current public cloud pricing is:

The plans also have different limits for data usage, assets, support, and other platform resources. Top-ups are available from the Pilot plan and above, while features such as Edge Computing and Trendz Analytics are offered as add-ons. White-labeling is included from Pilot upward.

ThingsBoard also continues to support legacy plans. Customers already using a legacy subscription can keep using it, while the newer top-up and add-on options are tied to the new plans.

Does This Mean ThingsBoard Raised $150 Plans to $400?

Not necessarily.

The numbers in our example closely match the current pilot plan at $149 and the startup plan at $399.

But without the exact account details, it would be wrong to say the same plan simply increased from $150 to $400.

The higher cost might have come from a plan to change, increased capacity requirements, different features, or another commercial reason.

The more important issue is what happens when your cost changes, and your product is already deeply dependent on the platform.

Your Subscription Is Only One Part of the Cost

At first glance, comparing $149 with $399 looks like a simple financial decision.

But an IoT platform is rarely a tool you replace in a few clicks.

Once your product has been running for some time, the platform might be handling:

• Device connectivity and provisioning
• Telemetry and historical data
• Dashboards and alerts
• Rules and automation
• Customer and user accounts
• APIs and integrations
• Device management
• Product workflows

Your customer portal or mobile app may also depend heavily on the platform’s APIs.

Over time, the platform becomes part of how your product works.

That means the real cost of an IoT platform comes down to two questions.

What does it cost to stay?

And what would it cost to leave?

Most teams know the first number.

Far fewer know the second.
What Happens When You Decide to Move?

Suppose your current IoT platform no longer makes financial or technical sense.

You decide to replace it.

That decision is only the beginning.

Device Connectivity Has to Keep Working

Devices already installed in the field still need to send data and receive commands.

If your firmware, authentication, provisioning, or communication flow depends heavily on platform-specific services, changing the backend becomes harder.

In some cases, field devices may also need firmware or configuration updates.

Data and Business Logic Need a New Home

Telemetry needs a new destination.

Historical data may need to be exported and migrated.

Rules and automation need to be recreated.

Dashboards may need rebuilding.

Existing integrations need updating.

Your web and mobile applications may also require API changes.

Customers Still Expect the Product to Work

Migration usually happens while the product is still live.

Customers do not stop using their devices while your engineering team changes the backend.

That is why many IoT migrations run the old and new systems together for a period of time.

This creates additional infrastructure, testing, support, and monitoring work.

So migration cost is not only development time.

It is the cost of keeping the product running safely while you change what is underneath it.

Why Having an Exit Path Matters

The company in our example already had another system running.

That changed the situation completely.

When the ThingsBoard cost no longer made sense for them, they were not starting from zero.

They already had another path available.

This does not mean every IoT company should run two complete platforms forever.

For most businesses, that would add unnecessary cost and complexity.

The better lesson is to avoid designing your product in a way that makes one platform almost impossible to replace.

Your device communication, APIs, data model, and core business logic should remain as portable as practical.

Because pricing is only one thing that changes.

Platform limits change.

Licensing changes.

Product roadmaps change.

Support models change.

Your own requirements change, too.

Platform Lock-In Usually Happens Slowly

Most teams do not intentionally create platform lock-in.

It happens one feature at a time.

The built-in dashboard saves development effort, so you use it.

Then you add alerts.

Then automation rules.

Then device provisioning.

Then customer management.

Then integration.

Eventually, more business logic moves into the platform.

Every decision makes sense at the time.

The problem appears later, when you look at the complete product and realize how much would need to be rebuilt if you wanted to move.

This does not mean that built-in platform features are a bad choice.

They are one of the main reasons teams use platforms such as ThingsBoard. They help products reach production faster without requiring every part of the IoT stack to be built from scratch.

But as your product grows, you should keep track of where the platform ends and where your own product begins.

Do You Know What Your Platform Will Cost as You Scale?

Another common mistake is evaluating an IoT platform only at today’s device count.

You might have 100 devices now.

What happens at 500?

What happens at 1,000?

Or 5,000?

ThingsBoard’s current startup plan includes 500 devices, while business includes 1,000. Top-ups are available on eligible plans when more capacity is needed.

But the device count alone does not tell you the full story.

Consider two companies with 500 connected devices.

One sends a few measurements every hour.

The other sends multiple telemetry values every few seconds, runs continuous rules, generates alarms, and stores large amounts of historical data.

Both have 500 devices.

Their platform requirements are completely different.

Look Beyond Device Count

When estimating future cost, review:

• Device growth
• Telemetry frequency
• Data retention
• Rule Engine usage
• Integrations
• Customer and user growth
• Alerts and notifications
• Analytics requirements
• API traffic

As IoT deployments scale, telemetry volume also becomes an important part of infrastructure planning. This is another reason to estimate future usage instead of looking only at device count.

Moving Away Is Not Always the Right Decision

A higher bill does not automatically mean migration is the right answer.

Sometimes staying with the current platform still makes more financial sense.

If the platform handles everything your product needs and replacing it requires months of engineering work, migration may cost far more than the increase in subscription fees.

ThingsBoard also offers several deployment approaches, including public cloud, private cloud, community edition, and self-managed professional edition. Its self-managed pricing uses a separate subscription model, so there are options between staying on the same cloud setup and leaving the ThingsBoard ecosystem completely.

Depending on your situation, you might:

• Stay with the current plan
• Move to another plan
• Add capacity through top-ups
• Reduce unnecessary data or platform usage
• Move to a self-managed deployment
• Migrate selected parts of the system
• Evaluate another IoT platform
• Build a custom platform around your own requirements

The right choice depends on your architecture, expected growth, engineering capacity, and long-term cost.

When Does a Custom IoT Platform Start Making Sense?

Third-party IoT platforms make a lot of sense in the early stages of a product.

They give you device management, telemetry handling, dashboards, alerts, rules, and other features without requiring your team to build every layer itself.

That saves time when you are still validating the product.

But the calculation changes as the product matures.

A custom IoT platform becomes worth evaluating when:

• Platform costs keep increasing as your fleet grows
• Important product features are becoming difficult to build
• Customers need deeper customization
• Too much business logic depends on one provider
• Platform limits are slowing down development
• Your team spends more time working around the platform than building customer features

This does not mean rebuilding everything at once.

Migration Can Happen Gradually

For many products, gradual migration is safer.

You might start with the customer-facing application.

Then move part of the device data pipeline.

Then analytics.

Then selected business logic.

The existing platform continues to handle the remaining workloads until each replacement is tested and ready.

The goal is not to replace technology for the sake of it.

The goal is to gain control over the parts of your platform that matter most to your product.

The Bigger Lesson from the ThingsBoard Pricing Changes

ThingsBoard’s 2026 pricing changes are worth reviewing if your product runs on the platform.

But the broader lesson goes beyond ThingsBoard.

Every third-party IoT platform introduces some level of dependency.

Your platform will change over time.

Your product will change, too.

The risk becomes serious when your architecture leaves you with only one realistic option.

You do not need another complete platform to run every day.

But you should know where your data lives, how your devices communicate, which parts of your product rely on platform-specific features, and what moving those parts would involve.

Know what it costs to stay.

Know what it would cost to leave.

The best time to understand your migration options is before you urgently need them.

Planning Your Next IoT Platform Move

If your IoT platform is becoming expensive or difficult to scale, replacing everything at once is rarely the best starting point.

Start by understanding what you already have.

Map your devices, data flows, dashboards, rules, APIs, integrations, and customer-facing applications.

Then look at what your product will need over the next few years.

From there, compare the real cost of staying, optimizing the current setup, migrating gradually, or building an IoT platform around your own product requirements.

Promeraki helps IoT product companies assess existing platforms, plan migrations, and build custom IoT systems while keeping active devices and customers running.

If your IoT platform costs are changing and you are unsure whether to stay or move, talk to our IoT team.