InfluxDB and TDengine are both open-source time-series databases used for plant and sensor data, but the open-source deal and the pricing unit differ. InfluxDB 3 Core is permissively licensed (MIT or Apache-2.0) and single-node, with HA and clustering in the CPU-priced Enterprise edition. TDengine's open-source core is AGPL-3.0 and includes clustering; its commercial All-in-One adds industrial connectors and a data platform, priced by tag count and free up to 5,000 tags.

Every row below is taken from the vendors' own public pages.

Open-source license

  • InfluxDB 3 Core: MIT or Apache-2.0, at the user's choice. Core is a single node with no high availability; HA, read replicas, historical query capability and single-series indexing are Enterprise additions.
  • TDengine OSS: AGPL-3.0 (copyleft). The open-source edition is a full-featured database including clustering; Enterprise and Cloud are built on the same code base.

Commercial pricing (public pages, checked Oct/Nov 2026)

  • InfluxDB: Enterprise is custom-priced by CPU configuration (30-day trial). Cloud Dedicated is also custom-priced; Cloud Serverless is usage-based. There is also Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB.
  • TDengine All-in-One is priced by tag count: free to 5,000 tags (including small production use); 10,000 tags cost US$15,500/year or US$38,750 perpetual; high availability adds +30%. Cloud starts from US$970/month for 5,000 tags.

Plant-floor collection

  • InfluxDB collects via InfluxData's Telegraf agent (400+ plugins), including OPC UA and MQTT input plugins.
  • TDengine commercial plans include zero-code connectors for MQTT, Kafka, OPC and PI System, plus edge-to-cloud replication.

Querying and built-in processing

  • InfluxDB is built for fast recent-data queries (vendor docs cite under 10 ms for last-value queries) and ships an SQL editor in InfluxDB 3 Explorer, plus an embedded Python VM for plugins and triggers.
  • TDengine extends SQL for time series (interpolation, downsampling, time-weighted averages) and includes caching, stream processing, Kafka-like data subscription and the TDgpt AI agent.

Managed cloud and platforms

  • InfluxDB: Cloud Serverless, Cloud Dedicated, or Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB. Core runs on Linux, macOS and Docker.
  • TDengine Cloud runs on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. Self-hosted packages cover Linux and Windows, plus Docker and Kubernetes.

Quick fit check

Pick InfluxDB if you want a permissive MIT/Apache license and a large Telegraf ecosystem, and you can live with a single node or pay for Enterprise HA — or you prefer usage-based cloud pricing or AWS-managed Timestream for InfluxDB.

Pick TDengine if you want clustering in the open-source edition and are comfortable with AGPL-3.0 obligations, or you want historian-style tag-count pricing with OPC, MQTT and PI System connectors in the box (free under 5,000 tags).

The full side-by-side table with every source link is on PlantWired: InfluxDB vs TDengine. Related: Canary Historian vs TDengine, Factry Historian vs InfluxDB, the TDengine profile, the InfluxDB profile, and Choosing a process historian.

Prices and licensing terms change, and our data comes from public vendor pages, so it surely has gaps. If you run either in production and something's wrong, tell us in the comments and we'll fix it.

PlantWired is a free, vendor-neutral map of factory software. A short weekly brief on new integrations is at plantwired.vercel.app/newsletter.