gohoney vs Hornet: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
gohoney is a free honeypots & deception tool. Hornet 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 available product data, here is our conclusion:
Security teams building SSH threat intelligence on a shoestring budget should deploy gohoney to establish a low-friction honeypot that captures attacker command patterns and reconnaissance behavior. At 13 GitHub stars with no licensing burden, it's genuinely free to run and maintain across multiple network segments, giving you directional data on what attackers actually attempt once they gain shell access. Skip this if you need centralized management, alerting, or integration with your SIEM; gohoney is a standalone collection tool that demands manual log review.
Small teams running SSH-exposed infrastructure who need fast honeypot deployment without licensing friction should start with Hornet; its multiple virtual hosts and sandboxed filesystems let you simulate realistic attack surfaces that catch reconnaissance patterns agentless tools miss. The free pricing and 24 GitHub stars signal active maintenance from practitioners rather than enterprise-first bloat. Skip this if you need persistent threat intelligence feeds or automated response integration; Hornet excels at tactical deception but treats detection as the end goal, not the start of your incident workflow.
