Actifile Digital Forensics vs BruteShark: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Actifile Digital Forensics is a commercial digital forensics and incident response tool by Actifile. BruteShark is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics and incident response 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:
SMB and mid-market teams without dedicated forensics staff will get immediate value from Actifile Digital Forensics because real-time anomaly detection catches insider threats and data exfiltration before they scale. The tool's zero-maintenance cloud deployment and 24/7 automated monitoring mean you get continuous visibility without hiring forensics analysts. Skip this if you need post-incident recovery and reconstruction as your primary function; Actifile prioritizes detection over deep forensic analysis, so enterprises building IR capabilities around evidence preservation and timeline reconstruction should look elsewhere.
Incident responders and forensic analysts who need to reconstruct network events from PCAP files will find BruteShark valuable for its speed at parsing encrypted and unencrypted traffic without requiring live network access or agent deployment. With 3,338 GitHub stars and active development, it's proven in labs and smaller IR teams handling post-incident analysis. Skip this if your org needs real-time alerting or integration with a SOC platform; BruteShark is fundamentally a forensic inspection tool, not a continuous monitoring system.
