Golioth

Golioth exists to remove cloud infrastructure work from hardware teams, and its pitch is aimed squarely at that frustration: stop wrestling with cloud infrastructure and launch connected hardware while competitors are still building backends. The company is now part of Canonical, which is worth noting for a long-term evaluation.

Its pricing model is the clearest differentiator in this category. Devices are managed free and unlimited, with charges applying only to data stored and streamed. That inverts the usual per-device model and matters enormously for anyone deploying many cheap sensors, where per-device pricing makes the economics impossible regardless of how little data each one sends. Connect, covering secure device connectivity and identity, is 25 cents per active device per month, while Fleet Control for software updates and device management and Pipelines for routing and transforming data are listed at no charge, with OTA bandwidth charged per megabyte.

Connectivity is deliberately broad. A flexible firmware SDK connects microcontrollers, and the platform works across Wi-Fi, cellular, Ethernet, Thread and Bluetooth. Bluetooth cloud connectivity runs through intelligent gateways with no custom bridge development required, which removes a genuinely awkward piece of engineering. The stated principle is writing firmware once and connecting everywhere, from constrained sensors to powerful gateways, with all device types managed through one console, one API and one billing system.

AI orchestration is built in, running inference on device, in the cloud or across systems as needed, and the vendor states the same pricing applies to any workload. Compatible hardware is listed publicly, and docs, training, reference designs, a forum and support are available.