Silverfort vs Semperis

The honest comparison

Silverfort and Semperis both score in the top tier at 4.4 and 4.3, both defend Active Directory, and they do different jobs.

Silverfort sits inline with authentication and enforces policy on traffic that agent-based tools never reached: legacy applications, command-line administration, service accounts, and file shares. That matters because the exemption list is where attackers operate. Extending MFA and risk-based policy to protocols that could never take it changes what an attacker can do with a stolen credential, which is the actual failure mode in most intrusions.

Semperis treats the directory as tier zero. It monitors Active Directory and Entra ID for dangerous changes, detects the attack patterns that precede a forest compromise, and provides tested recovery that does not restore the attacker's persistence with the backup. Ransomware crews target AD precisely because most organizations discover during the incident that they cannot rebuild it.

Preventive control and resilience are not substitutes. Mature programs run both.

When Silverfort wins

• Legacy and hybrid estates where MFA coverage has permanent exemptions
• Service account authentication needs policy and visibility it has never had
• Protecting authentication paths agents cannot reach, including command-line administration and file shares
• Credential-based lateral movement is the risk you are trying to close
• You want enforcement rather than alerts

When Semperis wins

• Active Directory and Entra ID are tier zero and a forest compromise is an existential event
• You have never rehearsed a full directory recovery and cannot say how long it would take
• Detecting dangerous directory changes and attack paths before an incident is the priority
• Hybrid AD and Entra ID monitoring in one place
• Ransomware resilience is a board-level requirement with a stated recovery objective

Pricing

Both are quote-based with nothing published. Silverfort generally scales with protected users and service accounts, which makes counting your service accounts the first useful exercise. Semperis typically scales with the number of objects or users in the protected directories.

Expect enterprise sales engagement and annual contracts in both cases. Model against the cost of the incident you are preventing rather than against each other, and use the TCO calculator to size the identity counts each vendor will price on.

Verdict

If unprotected authentication paths and service accounts are your exposure, Silverfort. If directory resilience and a rehearsed recovery are what you lack, Semperis. These are complements, and if the budget allows only one, pick the one that matches the incident you would struggle most to survive. See best ITDR for Active Directory, what is ITDR, and how to choose an ITDR solution.