What is Particle used for?

Particle is an IoT platform-as-a-service combining devices, cloud tools, connectivity and fleet management for connected products. It is a good fit for building and managing a connected product line, and updating fielded devices over the air.

Yes. Particle has a free plan. Free for up to 100 devices. Basic is $299 per month and Plus $599 per month for each block of 100 devices; Professional and Enterprise are custom-priced through sales.

Is Particle open source?

No. Particle is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Particle include DGIoT.

What are some alternatives to Particle?

Particle competes with AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub and Blynk. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Particle alternatives.

Particle: features, pricing and alternatives

About Particle

Particle is an integrated IoT platform for companies building connected machines, vehicles and products. It combines device hardware, a cloud backend, wireless connectivity and fleet tools so teams do not have to assemble each layer separately. The company has been acquired by Digi.

The development side includes a Workbench IDE, a web IDE, a command line interface and over-the-air software updates, along with libraries for common sensors and an Edge ML feature for deploying models. In the cloud, Particle offers an event bus for streaming data, a key/value store for digital twins, a serverless Logic engine, location services combining Wi-Fi, GPS and cell data, a REST API and many integrations.

Particle is a hosted commercial platform with pricing on its pricing page, and there is no self-hosted edition described.

Key features

Over-the-air firmware and software updates
Workbench IDE, web IDE and CLI
Event bus for real-time device data
Serverless Logic engine for event processing
Location services using Wi-Fi, GPS and cell data
REST API and data integrations
Pre-provisioned connectivity for devices

Good fit for

→Building and managing a connected product line
→Updating fielded devices over the air

Tags: iot-platform; device-management; ota-updates; cloud; connectivity; embedded; fleet-management

Particle: questions and answers

What is Particle used for?: Particle is an IoT platform-as-a-service combining devices, cloud tools, connectivity and fleet management for connected products. It is a good fit for building and managing a connected product line, and updating fielded devices over the air.
Is Particle free?: Yes. Particle has a free plan. Free for up to 100 devices. Basic is $299 per month and Plus $599 per month for each block of 100 devices; Professional and Enterprise are custom-priced through sales.
Is Particle open source?: No. Particle is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Particle include DGIoT.
What are some alternatives to Particle?: Particle competes with AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub and Blynk. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Particle alternatives.