Evaluating Open Source IoT Platforms: A GitHub Analysis

Internet of Things (IoT) platforms have emerged as key enablers for connected device deployment, providing core infrastructure capabilities that can be customized and extended. As IoT adoption continues accelerating across domains, understanding the landscape of mature open source platforms is important for guiding technology selection and evolution. Several studies have compared open source and proprietary IoT platforms in terms of different capabilities. However, there has been limited research specifically targeting leading open source IoT platforms that are hosted on developer communities like GitHub. In this paper, we compare the most popular open source IoT platforms on GitHub in terms of activity metrics and popularity indicators. We also identify the main features and technical capabilities implemented across the top five starred open source IoT platforms on GitHub based on a systematic review of their documentation. Our results show that: 1) Open source IoT platforms on GitHub exhibit diverse technical capabilities, yet share core features focused on device management and data visualization, 2) ThingBoard platform emerges as a leader of the open-source IoT platforms not only in terms of popularity metrics and popularity indicators, but also in terms of a broad range of features and technical capabilities, 3) Platforms specialised in industrial IoT, such as Industial-IoT and United manufacturing hub, display the best health scores and ratios of open and closed issues, and 4) OpenRemote platform capabilities are rich but focused on the support and management of smart environments.