HVAC Traces vs ICS-pcap: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
HVAC Traces is a free industrial control system security tool. ICS-pcap is a free industrial control system security tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best industrial control system security fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
ICS security teams building or tuning network detection for critical infrastructure will find value in HVAC Traces because it offers actual packet captures from real HVAC environments rather than synthetic data. The repository includes five full pcap files that let you test your IDS signatures against genuine control system traffic, catching false positives before deployment. Skip this if you need a managed service or vendor-backed threat intelligence; this is a free GitHub project maintained by practitioners, not a commercial product, so you're responsible for integrating and updating the data yourself.
ICS security teams building detection labs or training incident responders should use ICS-pcap as a reference library for actual industrial protocol traffic; the 542 GitHub stars and active contributor model means you're working with real packet captures instead of synthetic data. The tool's value sits entirely in NIST Identify and Detect functions, giving you baseline signatures and anomaly patterns for MODBUS, Profinet, and DNP3, but it won't help you with response automation or recovery orchestration. Skip this if you need a commercial PCAP repository with vendor support or a turnkey IDS; ICS-pcap is a free practitioner resource that only pays off if your team has the bandwidth to ingest and operationalize the captures themselves.
