Acalvio ShadowPlex vs HoneyHTTPD: 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. HoneyHTTPD 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 building deception layers for incident response and threat research will get the most from HoneyHTTPD because its Python framework lets you spin up convincing fake web services in minutes without wrestling with configuration files or vendor lock-in. The 54 GitHub stars and active maintenance suggest real adoption among practitioners who value speed over GUI hand-holding. Skip this if you need centralized management across dozens of honeypots or compliance-ready logging; HoneyHTTPD is a tactical tool for engineers who know what they're deploying and why.
