sshesame vs gohoney: 2026 Comparison
sshesame is a free honeypots & deception tool. gohoney 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 that need to observe SSH attack patterns without investing in expensive infrastructure will get immediate value from sshesame; it's genuinely trivial to deploy and starts capturing brute-force attempts and reconnaissance activity within minutes. The 1,716 GitHub stars reflect active use in real environments, and the zero cost means you can run multiple instances across network segments without budget negotiation. Skip this if your threat model requires honeypots that simulate full application stacks or if you need managed alerting and incident response integration; sshesame logs activity but leaves analysis and response entirely to you.
Security teams building SSH threat intelligence on a shoestring budget should deploy gohoney to establish a low-friction honeypot that captures attacker command patterns and reconnaissance behavior. At 13 GitHub stars with no licensing burden, it's genuinely free to run and maintain across multiple network segments, giving you directional data on what attackers actually attempt once they gain shell access. Skip this if you need centralized management, alerting, or integration with your SIEM; gohoney is a standalone collection tool that demands manual log review.
