ssh-auth-logger vs sshd-honeypot: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
ssh-auth-logger is a free honeypots & deception tool. sshd-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 running flat networks or isolated honeypot segments will get real value from ssh-auth-logger for one reason: it logs every SSH authentication attempt in structured JSON, making it trivial to pipe into your existing SIEM without custom parsing. Free pricing and a 26-star GitHub footprint mean minimal friction to deploy a decoy SSH server alongside production infrastructure. Skip this if you need honeypot management at scale or cross-protocol deception; ssh-auth-logger does SSH authentication logging and nothing else.
Security teams running Linux infrastructure who want to observe actual attacker behavior on exposed SSH ports should deploy sshd-honeypot; it intercepts brute force attempts and shell commands in real time without the overhead of full Cowrie instances. The setup is straightforward,a modified OpenSSH daemon that logs to Cowrie,and costs nothing, making it practical for teams that need threat intelligence on SSH reconnaissance patterns. Skip this if you need centralized log aggregation, alerting, or forensics across multiple honeypots; sshd-honeypot is a thin instrumentation layer, not a management platform.
