Alternatives to Snort
Open-source intrusion detection and prevention system. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Snort
Open-source intrusion detection and prevention system.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Snort.
Suricata
Inspect network traffic with an intrusion-detection engine.
Suricata is a GPL-2.0 intrusion detection engine for Linux that also supports inline prevention, while Snort additionally runs on Windows and offers a paid subscriber rule set.
Zeek
Network analysis framework that turns traffic into high-level activity logs.
Zeek turns traffic into high-level activity logs with its own scripting language instead of signature alerts, running on Linux and macOS under a BSD licence.
Security Onion
A free Linux distribution for network security monitoring, packet capture, detection and threat hunting.
Security Onion is a full Linux monitoring distribution installed from one ISO, bundling detection, packet capture and threat hunting, but it needs dedicated hardware and setup time.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
CrowdSec
Detect suspicious behavior in server logs and web traffic.
Fail2ban
Log-watching daemon that bans addresses after repeated authentication failures.
Wazuh Agent
Endpoint agent that feeds a Wazuh server with security and compliance data.
Falco
Detect unusual runtime behavior on Linux systems.
OPNsense
An open-source firewall and routing platform based on FreeBSD that you install on your own hardware.
IPFire
A hardened Linux-based firewall distribution with VPN support, network segmentation and a web management console.
