HonTel vs Project Artillery: 2026 Comparison
HonTel is a free honeypots & deception tool. Project Artillery 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 running legacy infrastructure with exposed Telnet ports should deploy HonTel to catch reconnaissance activity that IP reputation lists miss; it's free and requires minimal setup, making it practical for resource-constrained ops teams managing aging systems. With 162 GitHub stars and active maintenance, the tool delivers reliable signal for a narrowly focused attack surface. Skip this if your environment has already eliminated Telnet entirely or if you need honeypots covering SSH, HTTP, or databases; HonTel does one thing well and stops there.
Teams with limited security budgets who need to catch misconfigurations before attackers do will find Project Artillery's honeypot-plus-alerting approach genuinely useful for detection work. At zero cost with 1,045 GitHub stars, it's proven enough for small-to-medium shops to deploy without procurement friction. Skip this if you need managed threat hunting or want someone else owning the infrastructure; Project Artillery requires you to run and maintain the honeypots yourself.
