AD Tripwires vs Arctic Swallow: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. Arctic Swallow 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 that treat Active Directory as a detection problem, not just a hardening problem, should evaluate AD Tripwires. It deploys honeypot objects directly into AD to catch reconnaissance and lateral movement before it reaches production assets, and the integration with Horizon3.ai's NodeZero platform means you validate that your tripwires actually work against your real attack surface. Skip this if your team lacks the AD expertise to maintain decoy objects or if you're looking for a tool that also handles response automation; AD Tripwires is detection and alerting only.
Security teams experimenting with threat intelligence pipelines on constrained budgets will get real value from Arctic Swallow; it's free, requires minimal infrastructure to deploy, and generates actual attack data without the overhead of production honeypots. The low-interaction design means faster setup and lower false positive noise compared to full-stack deceptions, though that same simplicity means you'll miss the behavioral depth that catches sophisticated attackers. Skip this if your organization needs production-grade threat collection; Arctic Swallow is a learning tool and research project, not a replacement for commercial honeypot platforms.
