DNS Honeypot - UDPot vs Acalvio ShadowPlex: 2026 Comparison
DNS Honeypot - UDPot is a free honeypots & deception tool. Acalvio ShadowPlex is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. 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:
Security teams with limited budgets who need to detect DNS reconnaissance in their network perimeter will find UDPot's simplicity and Docker deployability hard to beat; SQLite logging and straightforward configuration mean you're catching malicious queries within hours, not weeks. The 51 GitHub stars and free pricing reflect a tool that works best as a tactical addition to existing monitoring rather than a replacement for full DNS security infrastructure. Skip this if your organization needs centralized management across multiple honeypots or advanced threat intelligence feeds; UDPot is deliberately lightweight and single-purpose.
Mid-market and enterprise security teams with exposed APIs, web applications, or IoT infrastructure should use ShadowPlex to catch reconnaissance and credential attacks before they reach production systems. The platform's external-facing decoys generate high-fidelity threat intelligence in STIX format while monitoring for password spraying and brute-force attempts, directly addressing ID.RA and DE.CM in NIST CSF 2.0. Skip this if your attack surface is entirely internal or if you need deep visibility into post-breach lateral movement; ShadowPlex is optimized for early detection at the perimeter, not incident response.
