Kippo vs SSH Honeypot: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Kippo is a free honeypots & deception tool. SSH Honeypot 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 deception infrastructure on a shoestring budget should deploy Kippo for SSH threat research and attacker behavior logging; its 1,712 GitHub stars reflect stable, field-tested code that runs on minimal hardware. The fake filesystem and session capture give you genuine attack telemetry without the operational overhead of commercial honeypots. Skip this if you need multi-protocol coverage or automated threat intelligence feeds; Kippo is SSH-only and requires you to roll your own alerting and response workflows.
Teams running internet-facing SSH services who need to understand attacker behavior and credential patterns should deploy SSH Honeypot; it's free and will immediately show you which usernames and passwords attackers are actually trying, giving you ground truth instead of speculation. The 671 GitHub stars and active maintenance reflect that this tool does one thing well: capturing and logging SSH reconnaissance without the operational overhead of a full interaction honeypot. Skip this if you need deception at scale across multiple protocols or if your threat model requires actually engaging attackers to observe post-compromise behavior.
