Overview and Benefits
We ship more than a million wireless devices every day that are used in thousands of different products out in the market. Many of these devices need a cloud service to operate. It could be a service that monitors the condition of the device, its location or for firmware updates. With Nordic, you have the option of using our out-of-the-box supported cloud. We offer free evaluation and testing of nRF Cloud with Nordic Semiconductor hardware. Your other option is using another cloud provider and figuring out how to pair your wireless hardware to that cloud yourself. Trust us, the first option is easier.
nRF Cloud is a platform for cloud services optimized for our wireless devices. It offers out-of-the-box support for our devices, whether you have one device or thousands of devices. nRF Cloud is hosted by Nordic with 24/7 availability, maintenance and support. This is a huge advantage to have one provider for both hardware and cloud and one support portal. Operation and cost efficiency are key aspects for customers, which is why we have placed a heightened focus on this.
We provide a pay-as-you-go pro plan, where you pay a fixed price per device and only pay for the number of location service requests you use. For those that have more than 2000 devices, our enterprise level is configurable based on the customer's needs. The developer tier is still free and allows up to 10 connected devices with 500 location service requests per month.
Nordic has out-of-the-box support for nRF Cloud on the nRF9160 DK and Nordic Thingy:91, letting you easily test out asset tracking with GPS positioning and cloud functionality in a matter of minutes! That is cellular IoT made easy. Automatic secure on-boarding and easy integration to a customer's own app or 3rd party apps via the Device API simplify the development cycle.
Multi-image firmware over the air update (FOTA) bundles can easily be pushed to a group of devices or all devices, enabling simple device management.
Cloud Transports
Device-to-Cloud and Cloud-to-Cloud
There are two main ways of using nRF Cloud Services: Device-to-nRF Cloud and Cloud-to-nRF Cloud.
Device-to-nRF Cloud: The device connects directly to nRF Cloud with a bi-directional MQTT over TLS connection.
Cloud-to-nRF Cloud: The device is provisioned to the customer's cloud and that cloud communicates to the nRF Cloud REST API. This is ideal for customers that already use their own cloud and provides greater flexibility and control over the device communication workflow.

Nordic Tech Webinar
How cloud helps your IoT devices get location data
Watch the recording of our webinar hosted on July 2nd, 2021, where Ville-Veikko Helppi (Product Manager Cloud Solution) shows cellular and GPS technologies and walks through how IoT devices can quickly and power efficiently get precise location data.