Voltrus is a single-binary industrial dashboard — Modbus, MQTT, OPC-UA, S7, DNP3, BACnet — that replaces $6K+ SCADA stacks. No Java. No SQL server. No Docker. Perpetual lifetime license from $249 per deployment. Passive by default. Use forever. 2-hour free engineering runtime included.
Featured Tools
Lightweight utilities built alongside Voltrus. Single binary, no dependencies, no subscriptions. Free and paid.
Native macOS PLC IDE with IEC 61131-3 Structured Text, built-in softPLC runtime, multi-driver I/O, and AI-assisted programming. $149 lifetime.
Download for Mac → HMI DesignerDrag-and-drop HMI designer with 38 SCADA symbols, responsive canvases, theme editor, and live data binding. Design operator panels, export and deploy. $149 lifetime.
Learn More → Protocol ToolNative macOS Modbus TCP + RTU master & slave simulator. PM5560, SMA, ABB device templates. $9.99 one-time.
Try Now → Database BrowsersTerminal database browsers for PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server. Free. TUI + Web UI included.
View Tools → Paste SharingSimple, private paste sharing for engineers. No accounts, no ads, no tracking. Share debug output instantly.
Try Now → Open SourceRust-powered, Node-RED compatible flow automation runtime. 10x less memory, WASM plugin security, single binary deployment. Free & open-source (AGPL-3.0).
View on GitHub →Next Steps
01 — The Problem
Real pain points from real integrators on Reddit. We read the threads so you don't have to relive them.
SCADA pricing is broken. Ignition starts at $6K minimum. AVEVA wants $100K+ in "flex credits." Your client's small site — a few pumps, a dozen valves, some instruments — doesn't justify enterprise pricing. But you pay it anyway.
— u/ascandalia, r/SCADA: "It seems silly to pay a $20K license fee for something like Ignition for such a lite application."
AVEVA requires registry edits, DLL overrides, and ritual dances. Even Ignition needs Java runtimes, SQL Server, and gateway configuration before your first tag. You spend more time installing than engineering.
— u/EmperorOfCanada, r/SCADA (score:7, SCADA veteran): "The moment you tightly tie into some crap like Kepware, you will regret ever being born."
Need OPC-UA? Install a module. Need a historian? Extra license. Need MQTT? Another module. What starts as $6K becomes $15K before your first tag reads a single register. The Ignition "unlimited" tag license doesn't include unlimited features.
— u/JockeyOverHorse, r/PLC: "Budget is 25–30K for licenses and initial setup... all we want is to pull some signals into dashboards."
Ignition's Store-and-Forward chokes at scale. IT runs updates on weekends. SCADA is down Monday morning. You get the call. The recommended fix? A $25K Windows Server Failover Cluster — for a monitoring dashboard.
— u/Nearby_Raspberry_831, r/SCADA: "Backend logic usually falls apart at 1,000+ tags... frequent writes without killing the SD card."
Build a beautiful detailed screen. An operator hits the physical override instead because he can't figure it out at 2am during an alarm flood. If operators don't trust it, they route around it within a month.
— u/Lav_Dave, r/SCADA (score:43): "If the operators don't trust it, they'll route around it. Get them in the room early."
Modbus has zero authentication. Anyone on the network can read registers, write setpoints, stop pumps. Shodan finds thousands of exposed PLCs and HMIs daily. OT security researchers use Modbus insecurity as their go-to demo of how easy industrial attacks are. Your client's next audit will flag this.
— Mike Holcomb, OT/ICS security educator: "Modbus has no security built in. Attackers can read/write registers without a username or password."
Real Reddit post: "Should I just give up and start making the project for Ignition and delay the whole thing for like a year?" $249 doesn't need board approval. It needs a credit card. Deploy today, bill your client tomorrow.
— u/Ben-Ko90, on N3uron: "Recurring costs per year…"
$249 is what you can spend without writing a procurement proposal.
No board meeting. No vendor evaluation committee. No year-long wait. Someone on Reddit asked: "Is there any SCADA under $250?" — This is the answer. Buy it, deploy it, bill your client tomorrow.
02 — Deploy in 5 Minutes
No installer. No runtime. No configuration wizard. Download, edit a YAML file, run.
Single file for Linux or Windows. No installer. No Java. No Node.js. Copy it to your server or VPS. chmod +x and you're done.
Add device IPs, register addresses, polling intervals, and alarm thresholds in one YAML file. Auto-discovery scans your subnet for Modbus devices automatically.
./voltrus — the embedded database is created, the poller starts, and your dashboard is live on port 8080. Under 1 second cold start.
03 — Why Integrators Choose It
Everything you need for industrial monitoring. Nothing you don't. Single binary, single config file.
No heavy runtimes. No dependency bloat. One compiled binary plus one config file. Linux x86_64 and Windows x86_64. Copy, run, done.
The entire backend plus embedded database plus live data stream uses less RAM than a single browser tab. Deploy on the cheapest VPS without worry.
Native Rust drivers — Modbus TCP, MQTT, OPC-UA, Siemens S7, Allen-Bradley EtherNet/IP, DNP3, and BACnet/IP. No Kepware. No middleware. No translation layers.
SSO with Active Directory, Azure AD, Okta, SAML 2.0, and LDAP. Local auth with Argon2 hashing included. Role-based access control with full audit trail.
Rule-based automation with 8 node types and 2 trigger types. Build logic like "when tank exceeds 80%, stop pump and send alarm" — without touching PLC code.
Test your entire config with simulated device data. Verify dashboards, alarms, and flows before switching to production with one click. Instant rollback on failure.
Delta-of-delta encoding for analog, RLE for digitals, deadband filtering. Store 1 year of 10,000-tag data in ~15GB. No external historian needed.
Auto-populated device inventory with firmware tracking, IP conflict detection, SNMP scanning, maintenance logs, and NIS2 compliance export. Kill the spreadsheet.
Non-repeating alarms, shelving with auto-restore, priority tiers, deadband on alarm points, and alarm analytics. Built to fight alarm fatigue — the #2 complaint in SCADA.
Custom title, subtitle, and logo configurable through the UI. Your clients see your brand, not ours. Present Voltrus as your own solution and keep the relationship.
Official Python and TypeScript SDKs auto-generated from OpenAPI 3.1 spec. WebSocket streaming with MessagePack. Interactive Swagger UI. Read tags, write setpoints, subscribe to alarms.
AI helps you configure faster — auto-map Modbus registers from datasheets, generate dashboard layouts, suggest alarm thresholds. Engineer reviews everything before deploy. BYOK or $19/month.
2-hour free engineering runtime included. No credit card required.
04 — Proof
Not marketing claims. Measurable, verifiable performance.
05 — Comparison
Free SCADA costs your time. Voltrus costs $249 once.
FUXA, Node-RED + Grafana stacks, and freemium SCADA all sound great until your client calls at midnight. Free tools become your maintenance burden. It never becomes SaaS. It never phones home.
06 — Pricing
Stop reselling someone else's recurring SaaS. Own the stack. Keep the margin. Perpetual license — no expiry, no renewal, no cloud dependency.
“The issue is not high. The issue is entry.” — Entry pricing from $249, no recurring fees.
"The issue is not high, the issue is entry."— Walker Reynolds, 4.0 Solutions — on AVEVA's $50K/year pricing and why mid-market SCADA is vastly underserved
Deploy for $253 total year-one cost (Starter + $4/month VPS). Charge what the market bears — $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 or more. You keep the difference. Never becomes SaaS. All tiers are lifetime — no recurring fees, no per-tag charges, no module unlock costs.
07 — FAQ
Starter ($249) supports up to 50 devices with Modbus TCP + MQTT, alarms, REST API, OEE tracking, and white-label. Professional ($499) adds unlimited devices, OPC-UA, multi-site hub, SMS alarms, PDF reporting, theme editor, and RBAC. Enterprise ($999) adds SSO (Active Directory, Azure AD, Okta), Siemens S7 + Allen-Bradley protocols, FDA CFR Part 11 compliance, RTSP video, and priority support with SLA.
Each Modbus TCP device you configure (by IP address and unit ID) counts as one device. A single power meter is one device. A PLC with 200 registers is still one device. If you are monitoring a small site with 20 to 30 devices, Starter is likely enough.
Yes. Contact us with your license key and pay the difference. Your existing deployment keeps running — no reinstallation needed. Upgrade from Starter to Professional or Enterprise at any time.
A perpetual license to deploy Voltrus for one client site. You receive the compiled binary, documentation, and lifetime access to updates. Deploy on as many machines as that client needs within their organization.
Yes. The dashboard supports custom branding. Title, subtitle, and logo are all configurable through the UI. Your clients see your brand, not ours.
Any x86_64 machine running Linux or Windows. No dedicated server needed — works on existing hardware.
No. Voltrus is completely self-contained. It runs on your client's local network with no cloud dependency, no phone-home, and no external API calls required.
Modbus TCP and MQTT out of the box (all tiers). OPC-UA on Professional and Enterprise. Siemens S7 and Allen-Bradley EtherNet/IP, DNP3, and BACnet/IP on Enterprise. Power meters, solar inverters, PLCs, industrial sensors — full register flexibility with configurable polling intervals.
Built-in local auth with modern Argon2 password hashing works out of the box. Enterprise tier adds SSO with Active Directory, Azure AD, Okta, and any SAML 2.0 / OIDC / LDAP provider — no separate license server needed.
All tiers include lifetime updates — no annual renewal required. Professional tier includes standard support. Enterprise tier adds priority support with SLA (response within 24 hours), phone support, and access to training materials.
Yes, that is the point. Buy a license per client deployment, bundle it with your services, and charge what the market bears. You own the customer relationship.
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Stop paying SaaS margins to someone else. Deploy Voltrus for your clients and keep the profit.
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Built by JoyoDigitama · Malang, Indonesia
08 — See It In Action
What you see is what you deploy. Recorded on a $4 VPS with live Modbus hardware.
Watch the full walkthrough above (already playing in the hero). Real Modbus devices, live dashboard, zero post-production.
09 — Architecture
The entire stack in a single compiled executable. Your clients' data never leaves their network.
SQLite embedded directly in the binary. No SQL Server to install, no Postgres to tune, no connection strings to debug. Gorilla compression stores 1 year of 10K-tag data in ~15GB.
Protocol drivers, web server, database, WebSocket engine, alarm engine — all compiled into one Rust binary. No Kepware, no MQTT broker, no Node-RED, no Grafana. One process replaces them all.
Read-only monitoring out of the box. Write commands, setpoints, and control actions are explicit opt-in per device — not a permission you grant by accident. Modbus has no built-in security. Our posture does. No unauthenticated writes. No Shodan surprises.
Ignition's historian requires multiple engines, splitters, and bindings. Ours is Gorilla delta-of-delta compression baked directly into SQLite. 1 year of 10K-tag data in ~15GB. No historian module. No separate license. No setup.
Resources
Ignition, Node-RED, Voltrus, and more — honest comparison with pricing and when to choose each.
DeploymentStep-by-step guide for deploying production-grade Modbus monitoring on the cheapest VPS available.
BusinessThe SaaS reseller trap and how to price monitoring projects so you keep the margin.
ComparisonArchitecture, pricing, deployment, and maintenance compared. Which one fits your next project?
Edge ComputingWhy edge computing beats cloud-dependent architectures for industrial monitoring — and how to do it.
Buying GuideOpen source options, freemium traps, and hidden costs — so integrators can make informed decisions.
EnterpriseWhy "Does it integrate with our AD?" kills deals — and how SSO support for AD, Azure AD, and Okta opens enterprise doors.
PricingThe gap between free and $2,000 — pricing tiers that fit every project size without Ignition's $6K+ buy-in.
Data StrategyMost predictive maintenance projects die at Phase 1. Voltrus is the data plumbing that makes analytics possible.
SecurityActionable security checklist based on real OT breach analysis and IEC 62443 best practices. Print it. Use it.
PricingAVEVA charges $50K/year. The real barrier is entry, not price. Why $249 changes everything for mid-market SCADA.