gohoney vs ssh-auth-logger: 2026 Comparison
gohoney is a free honeypots & deception tool. ssh-auth-logger 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.
Security teams running flat networks or isolated honeypot segments will get real value from ssh-auth-logger for one reason: it logs every SSH authentication attempt in structured JSON, making it trivial to pipe into your existing SIEM without custom parsing. Free pricing and a 26-star GitHub footprint mean minimal friction to deploy a decoy SSH server alongside production infrastructure. Skip this if you need honeypot management at scale or cross-protocol deception; ssh-auth-logger does SSH authentication logging and nothing else.
