Telnet IoT Honeypot vs HonTel: 2026 Comparison
Telnet IoT Honeypot is a free honeypots & deception tool. HonTel 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 hunting IoT botnets and malware variants will get the most from Telnet IoT Honeypot because it captures actual binaries through live telnet emulation rather than static signatures alone. The 313 GitHub stars and active community contributions signal real-world adoption among researchers and threat intel groups who need to isolate and reverse-engineer IoT malware families. Skip this if you need production-grade threat intelligence feeds or automated incident response; Telnet IoT Honeypot is a collection and analysis tool for specialists, not a turnkey detection layer.
Security teams running legacy infrastructure with exposed Telnet ports should deploy HonTel to catch reconnaissance activity that IP reputation lists miss; it's free and requires minimal setup, making it practical for resource-constrained ops teams managing aging systems. With 162 GitHub stars and active maintenance, the tool delivers reliable signal for a narrowly focused attack surface. Skip this if your environment has already eliminated Telnet entirely or if you need honeypots covering SSH, HTTP, or databases; HonTel does one thing well and stops there.
