Cybersecurity · head to head
Semperis vs Teleport
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
- Rated
- -
Teleport
Cybersecurity
Certificate-based access to servers, Kubernetes, databases and apps, replacing shared credentials and VPNs
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Each has a real cost: 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.; Teleport pricing is not published and is described as active users plus protected resources, so an autoscaling estate cannot forecast the bill and finance teams discover the true cost only after the first true-up.
- They diverge on capability: Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Teleport covers Short-lived certificates.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Semperis and Teleport actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cybersecurity).
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 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
Only in Teleport
- Short-lived certificates
- Protocol coverage
- Session recording and replay
- Access Requests
- Device Trust
- Identity provider integration
- Machine identity
- FIPS and FedRAMP builds
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Semperis
- An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot Teleport
- Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot Teleport
- Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot Teleport
- Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot Teleport
Teleport
- Removing long-lived SSH keys and shared database passwords so that offboarding an engineer takes one action in the identity providernot Semperis
- Producing session recordings and per-user database audit trails as direct evidence for SOC 2 or FedRAMPnot Semperis
- Giving contractors or on-call engineers time-boxed, approved access to production instead of standing admin rightsnot Semperis
- Replacing a flat VPN with per-resource authorisation across servers, Kubernetes and internal web appsnot Semperis
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
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.
Teleport
- Pricing is not published and is described as active users plus protected resources, so an autoscaling estate cannot forecast the bill and finance teams discover the true cost only after the first true-up.
- The proxy is a hard dependency on reaching production, so it needs its own high availability deployment and a tested break-glass path or an outage in Teleport becomes an outage in your ability to respond to outages.
- The open source Community Edition omits Access Requests, Device Trust and the FIPS builds, which are exactly the controls an auditor asks about, so the free tier rarely survives a compliance review.
- Self-hosting means running and upgrading a certificate authority and its backing store, and Teleport releases frequently enough that upgrade work becomes a standing operational commitment.
- Coverage across protocols is uneven in depth, so teams with legacy systems, unusual databases or bespoke network appliances find gaps that still require the old VPN to remain in place alongside it.
Pricing, plan by plan
Semperis
On requestNo published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.
Teleport
On request- Teleport Community Edition$undefined/year
- Open source, self-hosted
- SSH, Kubernetes, database and app access
- Session recording
- Teleport Enterprise$undefined/year
- Cloud-hosted or self-hosted
- Access Requests and approval workflow
- Device Trust and hardware key enforcement
Which should you pick?
Choose Semperis if
- You need active directory forest recovery.
- You also want malware-free restore.
Choose Teleport if
- You need short-lived certificates.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- You also want protocol coverage.
Questions people ask
- Is Semperis or Teleport better?
- Neither clearly leads. Semperis starts at On request and Teleport at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Semperis or Teleport?
- Semperis starts at On request and Teleport at On request.
- Does Semperis or Teleport run on more platforms?
- Semperis runs on Web. Teleport runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- What is Semperis best used for?
- Semperis is most often used for an organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild active directory after a destructive attack, post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's foothold, continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs miss, hybrid estates where ad, entra id and okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the three. Of those, an organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild active directory after a destructive attack and post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's foothold are not what Teleport is typically brought in for.
- What can Semperis do that Teleport cannot?
- Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback. Teleport covers Short-lived certificates, Protocol coverage, Session recording and replay, Access Requests.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
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.
Teleport: Is the open source edition usable in production?
Yes, but it lacks Access Requests, Device Trust and FIPS builds, which most compliance programmes end up requiring.
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.
Teleport: How is it priced?
Not publicly. The vendor prices on active users and protected resources and provides a quote after a sales conversation.
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.
Teleport: What happens if Teleport goes down?
Nobody reaches the resources behind it, so you need a highly available deployment and a documented break-glass procedure.
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.
Teleport: Does it replace our VPN?
For anything you put behind it, yes. Legacy systems and appliances it does not support will keep the VPN alive.
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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