PcapPlusPlus vs fatt: 2026 Comparison
PcapPlusPlus is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. fatt is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics and incident response fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Network security teams building custom detection pipelines or forensic tooling will get the most from PcapPlusPlus; it's a library, not an appliance, so you control exactly how packets flow through your analysis logic instead of fighting vendor constraints. With 2,987 GitHub stars and active protocol support across Linux, Windows, and macOS, you're working with code that's been stress-tested by incident responders and threat hunters. Skip this if your team lacks C++ engineering resources or expects a packaged UI; PcapPlusPlus demands integration work and won't replace commercial PCAP analysis platforms.
Incident response teams who need to pivot quickly from packet captures to threat hunting will find fatt indispensable; it extracts JA3 and HASSH fingerprints that let you correlate C2 signatures across your full traffic history in minutes instead of hours. Free and 679 GitHub stars means it's already baked into most mature IR playbooks, lowering your team's time-to-triage on network-based indicators. Skip this if you're looking for packet analysis beyond metadata extraction or need a GUI; fatt is CLI-only and does one job well, which is exactly why it works.
