AD Tripwires vs SSH Honeypot: 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. SSH Honeypot 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.
Teams running internet-facing SSH services who need to understand attacker behavior and credential patterns should deploy SSH Honeypot; it's free and will immediately show you which usernames and passwords attackers are actually trying, giving you ground truth instead of speculation. The 671 GitHub stars and active maintenance reflect that this tool does one thing well: capturing and logging SSH reconnaissance without the operational overhead of a full interaction honeypot. Skip this if you need deception at scale across multiple protocols or if your threat model requires actually engaging attackers to observe post-compromise behavior.
