The Things Stack, from The Things Industries, is the best-known LoRaWAN network server there is. Full spec coverage from LoRaWAN 1.0 through 1.1, a Join Server, an open-source core, the community network behind The Things Network, and the industry’s most-used device repository. Teams looking for the best industrial IoT platform alternatives to The Things Stack are almost never unhappy with any of that.
They’re looking because a LoRaWAN deployment needs a second layer on top of the network server. Dashboards, automations, alarms that reach a person at 2am — The Things Stack deliberately hands that work to other IoT platforms. So you end up buying, integrating, and paying for two products.
The short version of this comparison: choose The Things Stack when the LoRaWAN network itself is the product. Choose Kilo IoT Server when you want the LoRaWAN network server and the IoT application platform to be one product, on one bill.
Why look for a The Things Stack alternative?
Credit first, because it’s earned. The Things Stack is standards-compliant to a degree few competitors match: Network Server, Application Server, Join Server, Gateway Server and Console, with an Apache-2.0 open-source core you can read and self-host. The Things Network community network behind it spans 21.2K gateways across 153 countries with 287.5K members. Its device repository and payload codecs are the de-facto reference. Packet Broker lets networks route each other’s packets. If your job is to run a LoRaWAN network well, that is the deepest toolkit available.
The friction shows up somewhere else. A network server’s job ends when the decoded payload leaves the building — and your job doesn’t. So you wire a webhook into a second platform for dashboards and alerting, and now you have two vendors, two logins, two support paths, and a boundary in the middle that is your problem when it breaks.
Cost and limits push in the same direction. The Sandbox is free but explicitly non-commercial and small-scale, with no SLA and a fair-use policy of 30 seconds of uplink airtime and 10 downlinks per device per day — fine for a hobby node, not for a commercial pilot. The Discovery tier is free and commercial-friendly but stops at 10 devices and 10 gateways. Past that you’re on Standard or Plus (1,000 end devices licensed, unlimited gateways, 99.9% uptime), and you’re still paying a second vendor for the application layer.
Kilo IoT vs The Things Stack: LoRaWAN platform comparison
| Capability | Kilo IoT Server | The Things Stack | Winner |
| ———————————————— | —————————————————————- | ————————————————– | ——————– |
| LoRaWAN spec depth, Join Server, network peering | Built-in LNS: joins, dedup, downlink scheduling | Full 1.0–1.1 coverage, Join Server, Packet Broker | The Things Stack |
| Open-source core | — (mioty service center only) | Apache-2.0 | The Things Stack |
| Public community network | — | The Things Network: 21.2K gateways, 153 countries | The Things Stack |
| Device repository / payload codecs | Template catalog + upload your own | The industry reference repository | The Things Stack |
| LoRaWAN network server in the product | Add the LNS connector — it’s there | The product itself | Tie |
| On-premise / self-hosted | Available | Docker and AWS ECS distributions | Tie |
| Free tier | 5 devices, 1 gateway — with the whole application layer | Discovery: 10 devices, 10 gateways — network layer | Tie |
| Dashboards, rules, alarms | Included in the same product | Delegated to integrated platforms | Kilo |
| Automations you can test, version, roll back | BPMN engine, step debugger, build validation, one-click rollback | — | Kilo |
| AI that builds and deploys automations | Yes, with confirmation gates | — | Kilo |
| Bring your own AI client (MCP) | Yes — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor | — | Kilo |
| 3D digital building twin | Yes — DXF import, live sensor binding | — | Kilo |
| Second LPWAN protocol | Native mioty alongside LoRaWAN | LoRaWAN | Kilo |
| Vehicle and fleet tracking | 2,000+ tracker templates (OBD2/CAN/GPS) | — | Kilo |
| Access control, key vault, escalation chains | ABAC, encrypted key store, 5 severity tiers | Identity Server with ACLs | Kilo |
The pattern is clean, and it’s not really a fight: The Things Stack wins the network layer, Kilo wins everything that happens after the payload is decoded. Whether that matters depends entirely on which layer your project actually lives in.
The Things Stack vs IoT Application Platform: What’s the Real Difference in 2026?
This is the whole comparison, so it’s worth being precise about where a LoRaWAN network server ends and an IoT application platform begins.
The Things Stack has an Application Server in the LoRaWAN sense — payload formatting, MQTT and HTTP APIs, storage integration, webhooks. That’s a data-delivery layer. Its own integrations documentation describes integrations as the way to “store, process and/or transfer application data to external end points,” with cloud integrations pointing at popular IoT platforms. Dashboards, automation logic and alarm escalation are not what it’s trying to be, and that focus is a large part of why it’s good at the network.
The cost lands on you. Two products to procure, secure, renew and support. A webhook boundary where retries, auth and payload shape quietly become your responsibility. And every new capability you need — a rule, a report, a mobile alert — is another integration to evaluate.
Kilo collapses the two layers. You add the LNS connector and the network server is simply there: register a gateway, add devices, and data lands directly in dashboards, rules, alarm evaluation and history with no integration step in between. Joins and over-the-air activation, uplink deduplication when several gateways hear the same transmission, downlink scheduling — all handled transparently. There’s nothing to deploy, no separate service to keep patched, and no second bill. From registering a gateway to live data is minutes.
One practical note if you’re planning a move: Kilo connects to gateways over LoRa Basics Station on an encrypted TLS/WSS channel, and the server issues the certificates you load into the gateway. The legacy Semtech UDP packet forwarder isn’t supported. Most modern gateways run Basics Station — but check your fleet’s firmware before you plan a cutover, not after.
An IoT rules engine you can test, version, and roll back
Every IoT platform claims an IoT rules engine. Once those rules run a building or a production line, the claim stops being a useful sentence — what matters is what happens when the logic is wrong.
Kilo’s rules engine is a visual BPMN builder with a CEL expression layer, and it treats automations the way you’d treat production software:
- You watch a rule run before it goes live. Debug mode is a real interactive debugger inside the editor: feed it a test payload, step over or step into each node, set breakpoints by clicking a node, and watch variables change with the deltas highlighted. Conditional breakpoints take a CEL expression, so you can let a rule run and stop it only on the exact reading that misbehaves. Side-effect handlers can be set to Skip or Mock while you iterate — which is how you test an alerting rule without paging an on-call engineer at midnight.
- Broken rules can’t reach production. Building validates the entire diagram — structure, connections, node configuration, every CEL expression — and produces a deployable artifact. If something’s wrong, there’s nothing to deploy.
- Every save is a version. Named, searchable by author, restorable, with a full record of who changed what and when.
- Rollback is one action. Only one build per rule runs at a time, and deploying a different build automatically stops the running one and starts the new one in a single operation. Going back to a known-good build is a click, with no gap in between.
- A failing rule stops itself. If a live rule hits sustained errors — a referenced sensor was deleted, an expression keeps failing on real data — the platform force-stops it to prevent cascading failures and makes you fix the cause before redeploying.
Rules also act, not just watch. The Execute Command node dispatches a command straight to a device — over MQTT, or to a Class C LoRaWAN device — the moment a condition is met, using commands you’ve already defined on that device, with typed parameters and a full execution record. A leak trips, the rule closes the valve, then raises the alarm so the team knows it happened.
With a network server, all of this lives in whatever platform or Node-RED instance you bolted on — and usually without any of these controls.
An AI-first IoT platform, not an AI add-on
An AI-first IoT platform is one where the assistant does the setup work instead of describing it. Kilo’s works inside your live deployment, scoped to your exact permissions.
Give it a DevEUI and AppKey and it provisions the LoRaWAN device, then runs diagnostics to confirm the device is actually reporting — not merely created. Describe an automation and it authors the complete rule including the CEL expressions, builds it, and simulates it against both a matching and a non-matching value to prove it fires correctly before deploying. Refine it in plain language (“make it fifteen minutes”, “also notify the facility manager”) and it redeploys. Before anything destructive — deleting a device, resolving an alarm — it stops and asks for confirmation.
There’s also an MCP server, which is rarer still. Point an AI client you already use — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor — at your Kilo organization over the open Model Context Protocol. You authorize in the browser with your normal account: no API key to mint, no token to paste or leak. From there the client can work with devices, connectors, rules, alarms and dashboards, with your own permissions as the hard ceiling.
Worth stating plainly, because vendors are loose about this: the assistant builds monitoring and automation — it does not send commands to your hardware. Actuation stays in the rules engine, where it’s explicit and recorded.
mioty and LoRaWAN on One IoT Platform (Plus MQTT and Fleet Tracking)
Kilo runs a second LPWAN protocol natively, so LoRaWAN and mioty run on one IoT platform. mioty, developed at Fraunhofer and stewarded by the mioty alliance, is built for brutal industrial RF and massive scale — roughly a million endpoints and 3.5 million messages a day on a single base station. The detail integrators appreciate: mioty decoders are copied onto each device as an independent snapshot, so editing or deleting a catalog blueprint can never silently change how thousands of already-commissioned devices read their payloads.
The same platform takes MQTT devices and vehicle trackers — over 2,000 preconfigured tracker models across OBD2, CAN bus and standalone GPS. Trucks, trailers and equipment land on the same map, the same rules and the same alarms as the fixed sensors in your building.
A 3D digital building twin, not just a network map
A LoRaWAN network server shows you the network. A 3D digital building twin shows you the site. Build a 3D model of the facility, import an architectural DXF plan — read entirely in your browser — and bind any sensor reading to any object in the model, with color rules that decide what it shows at a given value. A probe reports 14 °C and the cold store it’s bound to turns amber. A floor of green boxes with one red one tells you where to go before you’ve read a number.
IoT access control, key vault, and alarm escalation for teams
Multi-person deployments live or die on the unglamorous parts. Kilo’s IoT access control is per-surface rather than one blunt role. Key Vault is an encrypted store for LoRaWAN DevEUI/AppKey and mioty EP EUI/Network Key pairs, governed by its own page-level permission — because once a unit is mounted and sealed, a key nobody wrote down is gone. Alarms carry five severity levels (Critical, High, Medium, Low, Info) and route through an ordered escalation chain: if the first responder doesn’t act, it moves to the next tier, and resolution halts the chain. Critical alarms can break through silent mode on a responder’s phone through the alerts app.
The verdict: which LoRaWAN platform should you choose?
Choose The Things Stack if the network is your product. Nothing here beats it for spec depth, Join Server custody, packet peering, an open-source core you can self-host and audit, the community network, or the size of its device repository.
Choose Kilo IoT Server if the deployment is your product — if what you’re really building is monitoring, automation and response, and the network server is plumbing you’d rather not run. You get the LoRaWAN and mioty network server plus dashboards, testable automations, escalating alarms, a 3D twin and AI in one product, on one bill and one login.
Plenty of teams pair The Things Stack with a separate application platform and are perfectly happy. Kilo is the version where you don’t have to run two.
Try it: start free at kiloiot.io — 5 devices with the full application layer, paid plans from €25/mo.
The Things Stack alternatives: FAQ
Is Kilo an alternative to The Things Stack?
As a complete deployment, yes. If your plan was The Things Stack plus a separate dashboard and alerting platform, Kilo replaces both layers with one product. As a pure LoRaWAN network server with a Join Server and packet peering, The Things Stack remains the deeper specialist — that’s its genuine strength.
Does Kilo have its own LoRaWAN network server?
Yes, built in. You add the LNS connector, register your gateways, and the network server activates for your organization — joins, deduplication and downlink scheduling handled automatically. There’s no separate network server to deploy or maintain.
Can I move my gateways from The Things Stack to Kilo?
Usually, yes. Gateways running LoRa Basics Station can be re-pointed at Kilo’s built-in network server using the certificates and LNS address it issues. Gateways limited to the legacy UDP packet forwarder can’t connect, so check firmware first. Most teams run both stacks in parallel, join a few devices to Kilo, confirm the data lands, then migrate at their own pace.
Is The Things Stack free?
Partly. The Sandbox is free for non-commercial, small-scale use with no SLA, under a fair-use policy of 30 seconds of uplink airtime and 10 downlinks per device per day. The Discovery tier is free for up to 10 devices and 10 gateways and allows commercial use, and the open-source core is free to self-host. Commercial scale runs on their paid plans — check their site for current pricing.
Does Kilo have a free plan?
Yes — free for 5 devices, and that includes the full application layer, not just connectivity. Paid plans start at €25/mo.