MQTee vs Sidecar ML
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
MQTee
A native MQTT 5 client for iOS devices that offers a visual topic tree browser, full MQTT 5.0 support, and iCloud sync for seamless connection management. It allows for multi-tab publishing with syntax highlighting and provides a real-time event log for debugging.
- Native MQTT 5 client
- Visual topic tree browser
- Full MQTT 5.0 support
- iCloud sync for connections
- Multi-tab publishing with syntax highlighting
- Real-time event log
- Apple Shortcuts & Siri integration
Read full descriptionHide full description
MQTee is the only native MQTT 5 client for iPhone and iPad. Built in SwiftUI + Rust. No Electron, no lag, no web views. Topic Tree Browser Explore your MQTT topic hierarchy in a visual tree. Search, filter, view payloads inline, and unsubscribe directly from the tree. Color-coded subscriptions make it easy to track multiple data streams at a glance. Full MQTT 5.0 Support Connect with MQTT 3.1.1 or MQTT 5.0. Full support for shared subscriptions, user properties, no-local, retain handling, session expiry, content type, response topics, correlation data, and message expiry intervals. iCloud Sync Your connections sync seamlessly across your iPhone and iPad via iCloud. Credentials are stored securely in iCloud Keychain. Multi-Tab Publishing Open multiple publish tabs per connection. JSON syntax highlighting and payload auto-detection (JSON, XML, hex, plaintext). Real-Time Event Log Structured event log with filtering by level, category, and direction. Debug MQTT workflows in real time. Apple Shortcuts & Siri Automate your MQTT workflows with Apple Shortcuts. Publish messages and read retained values from any app, Siri, or automation. Session Persistence Save subscriptions and message history per connection. Auto-resubscribe when reconnecting. Configurable message limits for memory and disk. Every feature is free. No limits. No paywalls. No feature gating. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Sidecar ML
Read full descriptionHide full description
Turn your iPhone into a private, on-device AI server for your whole network. Sidecar ML runs a lightweight HTTP server on your iPhone that exposes Apple's built-in machine-learning models to any device on your local network. Tap Start Server, scan the QR code, and your Mac, PC, Raspberry Pi, or browser can call powerful on-device AI over plain REST — no cloud, no accounts, no API keys, no usage fees, and no data leaving your network. Everything runs on the phone. Nothing is uploaded to a server and there's nothing to pay for. (The one exception, music recognition, matches against Apple's catalog and tells you so up front.) ONE IPHONE, A DOZEN AI CAPABILITIES • Chat with the on-device large language model through a chat-completions endpoint that's compatible with the popular OpenAI API format — streaming, JSON mode, and structured output included. Point existing tools and SDKs at your phone and they just work. • Generate images from a text prompt in a choice of art styles. • OCR — pull text out of photos, receipts, and screenshots with per-line boxes and multi-language support. • Read barcodes and QR codes (EAN, Code128, and more). • Classify images across roughly a thousand categories, or produce image embeddings for similarity search. • Remove backgrounds and isolate subjects or people as clean PNG cut-outs. • Detect faces and facial landmarks, body pose, and hand pose. • Scan documents with automatic edge detection and perspective correction. • Convert speech to text and text to speech, with a wide range of voices (including Personal Voice). • Translate text between languages completely offline. • Analyse text: language, sentiment, named entities, tokens, and embeddings. • Classify sounds across hundreds of categories, or identify the music that's playing. BUILT FOR DEVELOPERS AND MAKERS • Clean REST + Server-Sent Events API — call it from curl, Python, JavaScript, or any HTTP client. • Chat endpoint compatible with the OpenAI format, so many existing tools and SDKs work unchanged. • Automatic discovery on your network via Bonjour. • Honest capability reporting: ask the server what it can do and it tells you exactly what's available on your device, and why. • Optional bearer-token authentication to lock the server down on shared networks. FREE WEB CONSOLE AND CODE EXAMPLES A ready-to-use web console — plus Python examples, a command-line client, and full API documentation — is free and open-source. Download the single-file console and browse the source here: https://github.com/AndersFB/Sidecar-ML-Console/ Open the console in any browser, enter your phone's address, and try every capability with a friendly UI — nothing to install. GOOD TO KNOW • The on-device large language model and image generation require an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone. The other capabilities run on a much wider range of devices. • The server runs while the app is in the foreground; a keep-awake option helps during longer sessions. • Some features (offline translation language pairs and certain speech models) download their models on first use. Turn the iPhone in your pocket into a private AI endpoint for your projects, your home lab, and your prototypes — Sidecar ML.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: MQTee at 3 against Sidecar ML's 1. On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | MQTee | Sidecar ML |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | — | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 11 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Felipe Lima | Anders Fog Bunzel |
In-app purchases
MQTee
No in-app purchases
Sidecar ML
No in-app purchases









