Acalvio ShadowPlex Advanced Threat Defense vs DemonHunter: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Acalvio ShadowPlex Advanced Threat Defense is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. DemonHunter is a free honeypots & deception tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best honeypots & deception fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Acalvio ShadowPlex Advanced Threat Defense
Mid-market and enterprise security teams with hybrid infrastructure will get the most from ShadowPlex Advanced Threat Defense because it catches lateral movement and reconnaissance that perimeter tools miss, using AI-powered deception assets across on-premises, cloud, and OT environments simultaneously. The platform's 350+ prebuilt deception assets and agentless deployment mean you're detecting APT behavior within days, not months of tuning. Skip this if your team lacks the SOC maturity to act on high-fidelity alerts or if you're looking for a tool that also handles incident response and recovery; ShadowPlex prioritizes early detection over post-breach containment.
Security teams deploying honeypots as early warning for reconnaissance and lateral movement will find DemonHunter's distributed agent architecture useful for scaling deception across multiple network segments without heavy infrastructure. The Agent/Master design lets you run lightweight sensors on constrained systems while centralizing logs, and the free pricing removes budget friction for teams experimenting with deception before committing to commercial platforms. Skip this if you need out-of-the-box dashboards or managed threat hunting; DemonHunter requires hands-on tuning of protocol handlers and assumes comfort with self-hosted infrastructure.
