Malbait vs Telnetlogger: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Malbait is a free honeypots & deception tool. Telnetlogger 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 low-resource infrastructure or lab environments should deploy Malbait to observe attacker behavior without operational overhead; it's a lightweight Perl honeypot that costs nothing and runs anywhere legacy systems already exist. The 9 GitHub stars reflect its niche maturity, and frankly, that's appropriate for a tool designed to waste time rather than stop threats. Skip this if you're hunting for centralized threat intelligence feeds or automated response; Malbait is pure observation and engagement, nothing more.
Security teams operating networks exposed to IoT botnet reconnaissance will find value in Telnetlogger's narrow, focused approach to Mirai tracking; it logs credential attempts that commercial honeypots often ignore because the volume is too low to justify the overhead. The 244 GitHub stars and active deployment history show it works reliably at scale for teams that simply need visibility into which credentials attackers are testing against Telnet ports. Skip this if you need a honeypot that decoys SSH, RDP, or HTTP traffic; Telnetlogger does one thing and doesn't pretend otherwise.
