Drifter vs Hack The Box Hacking Labs: 2026 Comparison
Drifter is a free cyber range training tool. Hack The Box Hacking Labs is a commercial cyber range training tool by Hack The Box. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best cyber range training 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 hiring for red team skills or onboarding analysts who've never run an attack will get immediate value from Drifter's hands-on wargame format, which teaches exploitation through doing rather than slideshows. The free pricing removes friction for pilots and small security operations that can't justify expensive range subscriptions. Skip this if your goal is compliance checkbox training or you need structured curriculum tied to job roles; Drifter is a capability builder for people who already want to break things.
Security teams building a defensible workforce need Hack The Box Hacking Labs to make hands-on training stick at scale; 1,720 labs across difficulty levels mean junior analysts and architects both find relevant practice without the friction of lab sprawl. The platform covers both NIST ID.RA and PR.AT functions, with Sherlocks forensics modules and Guided Mode walkthroughs reducing the setup tax that kills most training programs before they gain momentum. Skip this if your org needs simulation of your actual infrastructure or red-team coordination; Hack The Box is a skills foundry, not an incident response sandbox.
