AD Tripwires vs Twisted Honeypots: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. Twisted Honeypots 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 SSH/FTP/Telnet honeypots for internal network monitoring should start with Twisted Honeypots; it's a working Python implementation that costs nothing and deploys in minutes rather than weeks. The 87 GitHub stars and active codebase signal genuine adoption among practitioners, not just research projects. Skip this if you need honeypots for web applications, DNS, or custom protocols, or if your team lacks Python fluency to maintain and customize the deployment.
