Acalvio ShadowPlex vs ADBHoney: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Acalvio ShadowPlex is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. ADBHoney 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:
Mid-market and enterprise security teams with exposed APIs, web applications, or IoT infrastructure should use ShadowPlex to catch reconnaissance and credential attacks before they reach production systems. The platform's external-facing decoys generate high-fidelity threat intelligence in STIX format while monitoring for password spraying and brute-force attempts, directly addressing ID.RA and DE.CM in NIST CSF 2.0. Skip this if your attack surface is entirely internal or if you need deep visibility into post-breach lateral movement; ShadowPlex is optimized for early detection at the perimeter, not incident response.
Teams running Android infrastructure or testing attack surface on ADB endpoints will find ADBHoney valuable because it's free, requires minimal setup, and gives you real visibility into who's probing your devices over the network. With 179 GitHub stars and active community use, it's proven effective at catching reconnaissance and brute-force attempts before they escalate. Skip this if you need a managed honeypot service with alerting integrations or if your threat model centers on physical device compromise rather than remote network attacks.
