Acalvio ShadowPlex vs Bifrozt-ansible: 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. Bifrozt-ansible 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.
Security teams deploying honeypots on existing Ansible infrastructure will appreciate Bifrozt-ansible because it eliminates manual Bifrozt configuration; spinning up deception nodes becomes a standard infrastructure task rather than a separate security project. The tool is free and open-source with straightforward role-based deployment, making it practical for teams already using Ansible for infrastructure automation. Skip this if your honeypots need to run disconnected from your IaC pipeline or if you require vendor support; a six-star GitHub project means you're relying on community maintenance and your own troubleshooting.
