artifactcollector vs timeliner: 2026 Comparison
artifactcollector is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. timeliner 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:
Incident response teams doing manual forensics on Windows systems will find artifactcollector valuable for its speed at pulling artifacts that take hours to gather manually; the 306 GitHub stars and free pricing mean adoption friction is near zero for squads already comfortable with command-line tools. The real strength is in NIST Respond workflows, where fast artifact collection cuts investigation time and supports faster containment decisions. Skip this if your team relies on commercial DFIR platforms with GUI wizards and vendor support; artifactcollector assumes competency and offers none of the hand-holding those tools provide.
Forensic investigators and incident responders who need to process massive timelines without writing custom parsing code should reach for Timeliner. It replaces mactime's rigid filtering with a BPF expression engine, letting you isolate relevant events in seconds instead of hours on datasets with millions of entries. Skip this if your team rarely handles raw filesystem artifacts or prefers point-and-click timeline analysis; Timeliner assumes command-line fluency and rewards it.
