AD Tripwires vs OpenCanary: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. OpenCanary 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 with limited budgets who need early warning of active compromise should deploy OpenCanary; its multi-protocol honeypot catches lateral movement and reconnaissance that perimeter tools miss, and it runs on commodity hardware or even a Raspberry Pi without straining resources. The 2,583 GitHub stars reflect a mature, community-maintained codebase with years of production deployments. Skip this if you need centralized management across hundreds of sensors or native integration with your SIEM; OpenCanary shines as a focused, hands-on detection layer for smaller teams willing to do their own alerting plumbing.
