AD Tripwires vs Kippo: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. Kippo 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 deception infrastructure on a shoestring budget should deploy Kippo for SSH threat research and attacker behavior logging; its 1,712 GitHub stars reflect stable, field-tested code that runs on minimal hardware. The fake filesystem and session capture give you genuine attack telemetry without the operational overhead of commercial honeypots. Skip this if you need multi-protocol coverage or automated threat intelligence feeds; Kippo is SSH-only and requires you to roll your own alerting and response workflows.
