AD Tripwires vs HoneyPy: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. HoneyPy 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 building threat intelligence pipelines on a tight budget should run HoneyPy; its plugin architecture lets you customize deception across SSH, HTTP, and custom services without licensing friction. The 472 GitHub stars and active maintenance signal reliable community support for a free tool that actually gets deployed, not abandoned after week one. Skip it if you need managed threat hunting or high-interaction simulation of Windows environments; HoneyPy excels at catching reconnaissance and low-sophistication attacks on Linux-based infrastructure, not mimicking complex enterprise systems.
