YARA-Signatures vs Stairwell: 2026 Comparison
YARA-Signatures is a free threat hunting tool. Stairwell is a commercial threat hunting tool by Stairwell. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best threat hunting fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Threat hunters and SOC analysts with moderate malware analysis skills should use YARA-Signatures to validate detections and reverse-engineer suspicious binaries without licensing costs; the 30 GitHub stars underscore it's a working community resource, not a research project. The signatures cover major families like Emotet and Cobalt Strike, giving you pattern-matching that works offline and integrates into your existing YARA scanning pipeline. Skip this if you need actively maintained, zero-day coverage or vendor-backed signature updates; community-driven means gaps exist and signatures age fast without active contributors.
Mid-market and enterprise SOC teams who need to move fast on file-based indicators will find Stairwell's hash and IOC lookup engine faster than bouncing between five different threat intelligence feeds. The tool's integration with Cortex, Chronicle, and CrowdStrike means your analysts can pivot from detection to malware variant discovery without leaving their existing workflows, and the private YARA vault lets you test and store detection logic without exposing your methodology to external platforms. Skip this if your primary pain is endpoint visibility or compliance reporting; Stairwell is built for teams that hunt actively and need to confirm whether a file hash actually matters before escalating.
