Here are some things to know about both projects

Both Meshtastic and MeshCore are designed for the same basic purpose: enabling decentralised, off-grid communication via low-power LoRa radio. They allow text messages and GPS data to be sent over long distances without the need for cellular networks, Wi-Fi or an internet connection.

Meshtastic and the relatively new project MeshCore are two separate, different software projects that are not compatible with each other. However, both use inexpensive LoRa hardware.

The Origins of Meshtastic

The initial concept for Meshtastic, created by Kevin Hester (user ‘geeksville’) in the USA, appeared on GitHub in 2019. The project was founded to enable off-grid, long-range, low-power communication using LoRa radios. The project gained traction in early 2020 through public firmware releases and community adoption, particularly via the Meshtastic Forums and GitHub.

The project grew rapidly 2021 onwards with many contributors, new hardware integrations (like T-Beam, T-Echo, and RAK devices), and wide adoption for emergency communication, hiking, and disaster resilience.

The Origins of MeshCore

MeshCore appears to have been launched at the beginning of 2025 in the UK. It was initiated by Andy Kirby (UK), in collaboration with Scott Powell (Australia) a developer at Ripple Radios, who worked on the firmware. Liam Cottle (New Zealand) contributed to the client apps.

The goal from the outset was to provide a lightweight, multi-hop LoRa-based mesh communication system independent of the internet or cellular infrastructure, suggesting a fresh code-base rather than a direct fork of something else.

Your Use Case is missing?

Meshtastic and MeshCore are continuously evolving projects, with new use cases emerging all the time. Please feel free to contribute to this article by leaving a comment below. Alternatively, you can email to mesh@swiss-1.ch.

1. Potential use cases in which Meshtatic appears to be a more suitable option

Meshtastic is currently the better-known and more widely used project, building a ‘flooding mesh’ network. This means that every device on the network acts as both a client and a repeater by default. When you send a message, every node that receives it forwards it until it reaches its destination or the maximum number of ‘hops’ is reached. It appears to perform stateless message passing.

Motto: ‘Keep it simple, transparent and useful for people, especially in ad-hoc situations.’

Outdoor activitiy: Meshtastic is ideal for groups of bikers, hikers, skiers, paragliders or sailors who want to stay in touch in areas without mobile phone reception. The GPS function enables you to view the locations of all group members on a map within the Meshtastic app.

Blackout communication: When normal infrastructure fails during a natural disaster, Meshtastic can be used to quickly set up a self-sufficient communication network. No network planning is necessary, as the mesh text communication network is created ad-hoc simply by switching on several Meshtastic devices. Find an informative blogpost only about this blackout communication use case here: Off-Grid Communication during Blackouts with Meshtastic

Event & festival: For coordinating teams in sprawling or congested areas where cell phone networks often break down like festivals, sport events or exhibitions. Meshtastic also appears to have been successfully used by hundreds of people at several software developer events.

Meshtastic Advantages

• In ad-hoc communication scenarios, for example sports groups in the outback, Meshtastic performs multi-hop routing automatically, without prior planning or configuration. Simply power on three or more client devices in the default client role to enable reaching Person C from Person A via message forwarding by Person B.
• Very large and active community. As of November 2025, the Meshtastic community in Discord had approx. 40,000 members compared to approx. 3.500 members for MeshCore.
• Meshtastic is completely free and open source, including its Android/iOS mobile apps, and is licensed under the GPL license. Because Meshtastic is licensed under the GPL license, any project forks must also remain open source, helping ensure that improvements can benefit related projects.
• Well established and available on many different hardware platforms.

Meshtastic Disadvantages

• Many Meshtastic users have complained that some of their messages do not arrive, citing ‘overwhelming’ telematic traffic, poorly managed flood routing and other reasons. A computer engineer in a German MeshCore WhatsApp group said that he had experienced difficulties with Meshtastic’s shortcomings, such as the lack of transmission confirmation. This reflects my personal experience, too.

Places where Meshtastic is used

In the Meshtastic map (above screenshot from https://meshmap.net is from November 2025) are only nodes which are ‘currently’ connected to the free Meshtastic MQTT server with available GPS data. The numbers gives you an idea about the countries you can expect other devices to be online.

As a rough estimate and some valued community feedback from *Tom, I would expect there in general to be approx. ten times as many active Meshtastic nodes off-grid with LoRa as there are gps-enabled nodes ‘online’ with an MQTT-based internet connection, as shown at https://meshmap.net. I also like to share his ‘not backed up opinion’ that there might be heavy geographic skew in MQTT participation: users in the UK being happy to participate, Germany less so, USA and Canada not so much.

2. Potential use cases in which MeshCore appears to be a more suitable option

MeshCore is a newer, alternative project based on a C++ library that follows a different networking philosophy. It supports autonomous, scalable, mission-critical mesh for complex, adaptive systems (e.g; IoT sensor webs and semi-industrial networks). State-aware, so it maintains awareness of neighboring nodes and network health.

Motto: ‘Make the network itself adaptive and intelligent, a more reliable mesh for systems.’

Building a large community communication network with proper planning of fixed node deployments, roles and configuration with continuous analysis and control of the mesh network to aim efficiency. This use case is best suited to cooperative people or a single organisation in control of the MeshCore nodes.

Smart farming, also known as precision agriculture, data-driven farming or automated farming: Farmers could use a LoRa mesh to connect dozens of sensors across vast fields. This allows them to monitor:

• Soil Moisture: To control irrigation systems and water only where needed.
• Remote Weather: To get hyper-local data on temperature and rainfall.
• Livestock: Track the location of cattle or other animals on large pastures.
• Equipment: Monitor fuel levels or the status of remote water pumps.

In my view, smart farming use cases should be implemented with the professional services of a reliable commercial MeshCore Solutions provider to assist with planning, deployment, configuration, testing, operations and support.

Semi-Industrial IoT use cases like larger remote sensor networks and machinery control. One example with a mainly fixed infrastructure: an industrial storage depot. The area is filled with metal containers, heavy machinery, and has limited or non-existent Wi-Fi. Cellular (LTE-M) is an option, but it requires a monthly SIM card fee for every single asset, which is cost-prohibitive for thousands of sensors. Here MeshCore’s design shines because of its network efficiency, scalability and extreme low power consumption for:

• Asset Tracking: The operations manager needs to know the location of hundreds of shipping containers, chassis, and high-value portable equipment (like generators or welding carts) within the yard.
• Condition Monitoring: They need to monitor the status of critical, hard-to-reach infrastructure, such as:
  • Machinery Switches: Are they in the correct position? Is the heating element working in winter?
  • Refrigerated Containers: What is their current temperature and fuel level
  • Pumps: Are the sump pumps in drainage culverts operational?

In my view, semi-industrial IoT use case have to be implemented with the professional services of a prudent commercial MeshCore Solutions provider to assist with planning, deployment, configuration, testing, operations and support.

For industrial IoT use cases, consider commercial industrial IoT platforms instead of open-source projects that rely on voluntary contributions. Using a professional IoT solutions company that provides Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and reliable services is a better option for industrial IoT projects involving liability and risk. If you are based in the EU, you might be interested in the following information: Europe’s Internet of Things policy.

MeshCore Advantages

• A more efficient mesh network for larger communities can be achieved by planning the deployment of fixed nodes with well-defined roles in strategic locations, such as on roofs or hills and utilizing the advanced networking features of MeshCore. This improves the reliability of text message deliveries and confirmations, as its routing is more efficient for fixed networks.
• Fewer telemetry beacons and reduced ‘network chatter’. Since not every node repeats everything, the network is potentially ‘quieter’ and more efficient.
• The ‘room server’ BBS (bulletin board system) function, nevertheless Meshtastic introduced a ‘store and forward’ feature for Meshtastic devices with pSRAM (pseudo-static random-access memory).
• Due to less LoRa traffic and a quicker Bluetooth disconnection from the MeshCore app, the battery runtime of MeshCore nodes is considerably longer than that of Meshtastic on the same device.

MeshCore Disadvantages

• In ad-hoc communication scenarios, for example sports groups in the outback, MeshCore will not perform any hop routing unless at least one node is explicitly configured with the role “repeater” or as a “room server” with repeat enabled. Therefore, reaching person C from person A via message forwarding by a node B requires an additional repeater node.
• MeshCore is open source based on a MIT license except some parts like the Lilygo T-Deck firmware and Liam’s Android/iOS mobile apps which are proprietary (closed source). The MIT License does not require modified or derivative versions of the code to be published or shared, which can reduce the incentive for project forks to contribute their improvements back to the broader open-source ecosystem.
• A small one-time payment is required in the mobile apps to access the full range of features or to avoid forced waiting times and for the ripple firmware for some stand-alone devices like the Lilygo T-Deck with special management features.
• The community is significantly smaller than that of Meshtastic. As of November 2025, the MeshCore community in Discord community had approx. 3,500 members compared approx. 40,000 members for Meshtastic.
• Dependence on individuals, albeit brilliant developers. May Scott and Liam enjoy a long and productive life!
• Several attempts to contact someone at the main MeshCore project website (https://meshcore.co.uk/contact.html) via the contact email address customer@cloudsto.com were unsuccessful. The same email address is also used by a Mini PC and electronics online store in the UK at https://cloudsto.com, suggesting that the organisational setup of MeshCore could be somewhat “rudimentary” at the time of writing this article, but will hopefully improve over time as the project is still quite young.
• So no wonder, that I did not find commercial MeshCore solution companies with professional solutions offerings yet. In my humble opinion, any non-hobbiist use cases and projects would be very risky at the time of writing this article. Especially as the source code of the MeshCore iOS and Android mobile apps seem to be proprietary and not open source and development and bug fixing is probably dependent on a single private person. In my view, any company who aims to provide professional MeshCore solutions, has to be willing to create own mobile iOS and Android apps from the scratch.

Places where MeshCore is used

In the MeshCore map (above screenshot from https://meshcore.co.uk/map.html is from November 2025) are probably all companion nodes which are connected to the MeshCore Android or iOS app with available GPS data and which were added to the map by the “+ Add me to the Map” option in the mobile app. The numbers gives you an idea about the countries you can expect MeshCore devices to be visible in LoRa. UK and Germany are currently hotspots of MeshCore activities. The total number of MeshCore nodes visible off-grid with LoRa will be much higher.

In some very active MeshCore discussion groups, it is not uncommon to see multiple postings within a single minute. Many Meshtastic users also seem to migrate to MeshCore networks, which are often active on alternative LoRa radio settings other than ‘LongFast’. For example, better use the EU/UK (Narrow) Radio Settings to see other people on MeshCore in the European Union (EU).

Summary

Neither Meshtastic nor MeshCore is fundamentally the better system; it always depends on your use case. And let’s not forget: Competition between Meshtastic and MeshCore encourages continuous improvement and innovation in both systems.

For beginners and mobile ad-hoc groups, Meshtastic is the easiest and most well-established starting point. However, if you are an advanced user looking to build a well-planned, optimised static network with route setting capabilities and higher message transport reliability, MeshCore is a promising alternative.

Unfortunately, there is no sign yet of an attempt to create or support communication gateways between Meshtastic and MeshCore.

At the time of writing this article, I could not find reputable companies offering professional solutions and support for Meshtastic or MeshCore. Therefore, in my opinion, any non-hobbyist use cases or projects involving Meshtastic or MeshCore carry an unacceptably high risk due to the lack of professional services and support. I hope such companies will appear soon. I’ve heard rumors that several solution companies are preparing to launch soon.

MeshCore vs Meshtastic: Key Differences Explained

Other Meshtastic blogposts

Three exceptional Meshtastic devices from Lilygo, Heltec, and Seeed

Off-Grid Communication during Blackouts with Meshtastic

Comments are welcome

Constructive comments (via the comment function at the bottom of this page) are greatly appreciated and suitable changes and additions to this blogpost will be taken into account. All statements in this blog post reflect the personal opinion of the author, which may not always be accurate due to incomplete information and are not factual claims.

Please note that comments are subject to manual review to prevent spam, which may cause a delay in their display. Before purchasing any of these Meshtastic or MeshCore devices, please research the actual features yourself.