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Developer Tools · head to head

Hookdeck vs Semperis

Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Semperis logo

Semperis

Cybersecurity

Identity threat detection and Active Directory forest recovery for AD, Entra ID and Okta, from a privately held US vendor.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Hookdeck has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.; Semperis scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • They diverge on capability: Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Hookdeck and Semperis actually diverge.

Attributes where Hookdeck and Semperis differ
AttributeHookdeckSemperis
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelPer month by delivered event countquote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsWeb
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

Only in Semperis

  • Active Directory Forest Recovery
  • Malware-free restore
  • Replication-stream monitoring
  • Automated rollback
  • Attack indicator scoring
  • Entra ID and Okta coverage
  • Purple Knight
  • Forest Druid

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Semperis
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Semperis
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Semperis
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Semperis

Semperis

  • An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot Hookdeck
  • Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot Hookdeck
  • Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot Hookdeck
  • Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot Hookdeck

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

Semperis

  • Scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • The licence buys tooling, not a proven runbook: forest recovery is only worth what your last rehearsal demonstrated, and a plan that has never been executed end to end in a lab is an untested assumption regardless of what was purchased.
  • It overlaps with backup and directory management products from Quest, Veeam, Commvault and others, so the buyer must argue internally why a dedicated product is needed alongside a backup contract that already claims to protect Active Directory.
  • Running Directory Services Protector well requires someone who understands AD internals, replication metadata and Tier 0 attack paths, and without that person the alerts on privileged changes are either ignored or auto-reverted in ways that break legitimate administration.
  • Licensing is driven by identity object counts, so directories carrying years of stale user accounts and service principals pay for objects that should have been deleted, and the cleanup project that would reduce the bill is the one nobody has time for.

Pricing, plan by plan

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

Semperis

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck review

Choose Semperis if

  • You need active directory forest recovery.
  • You also want malware-free restore.
Semperis review

Questions people ask

Is Hookdeck or Semperis better?
Neither clearly leads. Hookdeck starts at Free and Semperis at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Hookdeck or Semperis?
Hookdeck has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Hookdeck and On request for Semperis.
Does Hookdeck or Semperis run on more platforms?
Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. Semperis runs on Web.
Can I use Hookdeck for free?
Yes. Hookdeck has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Semperis starts at On request.
What is Hookdeck best used for?
Hookdeck is most often used for a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled, fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately, debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fix, receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnel. Of those, a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled and fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately are not what Semperis is typically brought in for.
What can Hookdeck do that Semperis cannot?
Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations. Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Semperis: Does this replace my backups?

No. It replaces the Active Directory recovery procedure specifically. You still need backups for everything else, and the point of Semperis is that a generic system-state backup of a domain controller is a poor way to recover a forest because it restores the operating system along with whatever compromised it.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Semperis: Is it useful if we are cloud-only on Entra ID?

Partly. Directory Services Protector covers Entra ID and Okta for change tracking and posture, but the forest recovery product, which is the strongest reason to buy, applies to on-premises Active Directory. A genuinely cloud-only organisation should weigh it against Microsoft's own tooling.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Semperis: Are Purple Knight and Forest Druid really free?

Yes, both are free downloads with no licence requirement, and they are widely used by organisations that are not Semperis customers. They are also, transparently, the top of the sales funnel.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

Semperis: How long does forest recovery actually take?

The honest answer is whatever your rehearsal took. The vendor's case is hours instead of days, and automation genuinely removes most manual steps, but the number that matters for your board is the one from a test in your own environment.

Semperis: Does it require agents on domain controllers?

It collects directory changes from the AD replication stream, which is what lets it see changes that bypass the security log. Deployment details vary by product and version, so confirm the exact architecture against your domain controller change-control rules.

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