MQTT Commander vs PassPony
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
MQTT Commander
Monitor MQTT brokers live, view topic values, and publish messages. Offers detailed connection diagnostics and secure SSH tunneling for remote access. Includes a free tier with core features and an optional one-time Pro unlock for advanced functionality.
- Live topic tree with values
- Detailed connection diagnostics
- Secure SSH tunneling
- Message publishing with QoS
- JSON payload inspection
- Home Screen widgets
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Connect to your broker and the topic tree fills in within seconds, with the latest value next to each topic. Tap one to see the value in large type, a sparkline of how it moved, and the JSON split field by field. FOUR SCREENS, ONE JOB EACH • Topics: the tree of what your broker publishes, with filters for what changes, what is retained, what you pinned • Board: pinned topics as live tiles, so one look tells you the greenhouse sits at 21.4 °C and the pump went quiet 6 minutes ago • Log: messages in order, with presets for errors, your own publishes and retained values • Publish: a topic, a payload, Send. QoS, retain, content type and expiry sit one tap away USE IT TO • Watch Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, Mosquitto and ESPHome without opening a laptop • Find the topic a new device announced itself on • Read a JSON payload by field and compare it with the message before • Send a test message and see what the broker answers, including a refusal • Clear a retained payload that keeps coming back WHEN IT WON'T CONNECT Connection Doctor walks the connection in 14 stages and names the one that failed: DNS, TCP, TLS handshake, certificate chain, expiry, hostname, ALPN and SNI, CONNACK, authentication, protocol version, and a write test against the broker ACL. You get the stage, the reason and what to change, instead of a red banner. BROKER BEHIND AN SSH SERVER Reach a broker that only listens on localhost or a private network: turn on SSH in the broker profile and the app opens a tunnel through your server first. Sign in with a password, an OpenSSH key, or a key created on this device in the Secure Enclave, with server 2FA codes when the server asks. The first connection shows the host key fingerprint in full, and a changed key stops the app before it sends your password or key. Connection Doctor checks the SSH server, host key, sign-in and tunnel before TLS and MQTT. PRIVACY Values that look like tokens, passwords or keys stay behind a tap. Exported logs carry hashed topics and metadata, no payloads. Anonymous crash and usage diagnostics are on by default and switch off in Settings. No ad tracking, no data sold. PRO The app is free: watch topics, read payloads, publish with QoS and retain, run the Connection Doctor, including a full check through SSH, pin five topics to the Board and keep the first one on your Home Screen as a widget. Pro is a one-time unlock with no subscription, and it covers the part that runs while you look elsewhere: sessions through an SSH server, Lock Screen widgets and the other Home Screen widgets, pins without a limit, history that survives a restart, whole-broker discovery, more broker profiles, one certificate reused across every broker, saved commands with Siri and Shortcuts, log export as CSV or JSON, and the full Doctor report to share. Bought the paid app before it went free? You keep Pro at no cost. WORKS WITH Home Assistant, Mosquitto, Zigbee2MQTT, ESPHome, Node-RED, ESP32 and ESP8266, and any broker speaking MQTT 3.1.1 or 5.0 over TCP, TLS, mTLS or WebSocket, directly or through an SSH tunnel. REQUIREMENTS • iOS 17 or later, iPhone and iPad • Local Network access for brokers on your LAN Demo mode lets you look around before you connect anything.
PassPony
This app is an open-source password manager that allows you to own your encrypted password files. It syncs with Git and is interoperable with command-line tools, offering features like QuickType autofill and live one-time codes.
- File-based encrypted password storage
- Git synchronization
- Interoperable with pass/passage CLI
- QuickType autofill
- Live one-time codes (TOTP)
- Face ID/Touch ID unlock
- Ephemeral clipboard
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PassPony is a password manager for people who want to own their passwords. Every entry is one encrypted file in a store you control, in the same format as the pass and passage command line tools. Your Mac, your server, and your phone can all work on the same store. WHY A FILE-BASED STORE One entry, one file: the password on the first line, anything else after it. Encrypted with your keys: age identities for passage stores, OpenPGP keys for pass stores. Synced with git over HTTPS or SSH: clone your existing store, publish a new one, and resolve conflicts per entry, never with a silent merge. Interoperable: commits match the pass CLI format, so the store stays fully usable from the desktop tools. EVERYDAY USE AutoFill: your passwords appear above the keyboard when you sign in. Only entry names are indexed; nothing decrypts until you fill. Passkeys: save a passkey for a site and sign in with it. It lives in that site's entry, encrypted with your keys, and syncs like everything else. One-time codes: TOTP with a countdown ring, HOTP counters, and import from an authenticator app's export QR codes. Face ID or Touch ID unlock, with a five-minute grace window shared with AutoFill. Ephemeral clipboard: copies are local only and clear after 45 seconds. Field-level editing that preserves the exact bytes of lines it does not touch. YOUR KEYS STAY YOURS Back up every key on your phone to one file locked with a recovery code, and restore it on a new phone. SSH sync uses a key made on your phone or imported; hosts are trusted on first use and a changed host key is refused. Phones that share a store each add their own public key to it when they sync, and you approve every new key before your entries are re-encrypted for it. Secret keys never leave a device. PRIVATE BY ARCHITECTURE No account, no signup, no PassPony server. The only network connection is the git remote you configure. No analytics, no ads, no tracking. Open source, Apache-2.0. The full app and its Rust core are published in a public git repository for anyone to audit. FORMATS passage stores encrypt with modern age identities. pass stores encrypt with OpenPGP keys (Cv25519 and X25519/Ed25519 in software). RSA-keyed stores need a smartcard, which is not supported yet. Each format keeps its own store; switching never touches the other. Localized in English, Spanish, French, German, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. If you already run pass or passage, PassPony is the missing phone half of your setup. If you have never used them, the first-run tour will have you adding your first pass in about a minute.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: PassPony at 100% against MQTT Commander's 0%. PassPony also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1). MQTT Commander's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs every 10 days). On price, ads, device support 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. MQTT Commander sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. PassPony asks for nothing beyond the download.
MQTT Commander ships an update every 5 days, PassPony every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on November 12, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | MQTT Commander | PassPony |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 0.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days — better | Every 10 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 31 MB | 23 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Vladimir Chemeris | Kevin Stewart |
Customer experience
MQTT Commander
PassPony
In-app purchases
MQTT Commander
- MQTT Commander Pro$4.99
PassPony
No in-app purchases









