Diffy (DEPRECATED) vs SIFT: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Diffy (DEPRECATED) is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. SIFT is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics and incident response fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
AWS incident responders investigating active compromises across multiple EC2 instances should know about Diffy; it surfaces behavioral anomalies and file differences that manual comparison misses, collapsing hours of forensic work into minutes. Netflix open-sourced the tool with 631 GitHub stars and zero licensing friction, meaning you can deploy it immediately without vendor negotiations. Stop here if your incidents span on-premises systems or non-AWS cloud providers, since Diffy was purpose-built for AWS instance forensics and lacks the portability you'd need.
Forensic investigators and incident responders who need to build repeatable Ubuntu-based investigation environments should choose SIFT for its task automation and image building capabilities, which eliminate manual toolkit setup between cases. The 516 GitHub stars and active maintenance reflect trusted adoption by practitioners doing high-stakes evidence collection where reproducibility matters. Skip SIFT if your team works primarily on Windows systems or needs GUI-driven case management; this is a command-line toolkit for analysts comfortable building their own workflows.
