A no-fluff breakdown of the four most-used platforms — what they actually do well, where they fall short, and which one fits your event.

If you've been tasked with organizing a CTF event — whether it's an internal red team exercise, a university competition, or a company-wide security awareness challenge — you've probably run into the same problem: there are several platforms out there, they all claim to do the same thing, and none of them are completely honest about their limitations.

This article is our attempt to fix that. We've looked at CTFd, Hack The Box, TryHackMe, and Simulations Labs not from a marketing angle, but from a practical one. What does setup actually look like? What breaks under pressure? And who is each platform genuinely built for?

First, a quick word on what we're comparing

These four platforms sit in a similar category but serve meaningfully different audiences. Before we get into specs and feature lists, it's worth stating that clearly:

• CTFd is an open-source self-hosted framework. You bring the challenges, you manage the infrastructure.
• Hack The Box is a skill-development platform that also supports competitive CTF events, mostly targeted at individual practitioners and professional teams.
• TryHackMe is learning-first, gamified, and aimed at beginners-to-intermediate learners more than pure competitive play.
• Simulations Labs is built around hosted, scenario-driven cyber range events — less about traditional flag hunting, more about realistic operational exercises.

Knowing that going in matters. Picking the wrong tool for the job doesn't mean the platform is bad — it usually means the use case was mismatched from the start.

CTFd

CTFd has been around since 2015, and it remains the most widely deployed CTF framework in the world. If you've competed in a mid-sized university CTF or attended DEF CON's beginner track, there's a good chance you've used it without knowing it.

Pros

• Open source could be downloaded from the official Github repository and also provide a managed hosting service available at ​https://ctfd.io
• Easy, customizable administration panel.

Cons

• Supports only Jeopardy-style competitions.
• Not suitable for large-scale competition.
• Requires knowledge of web hosting implementation.
• Challenges are not provided; you have to develop your own challenges.

Hack The Box

Hack The Box started as a recruitment challenge — you had to hack your way in just to create an account. That ethos has never fully disappeared. The platform is built by practitioners for practitioners, and the quality of the content reflects that.

Pros

• Hack the Box has a huge community to help with developing the challenges and knowledge sharing.
• Hack the Box competitions are hosted on their cloud, available 24/7.
• Awesome dashboard.
• Variety of challenge types including web, forensics, coding, stego, machineAD Lab, and others.

Cons

• Not friendly for beginners or players without prior experience of infosec. However, you will find the community started to include some content about the different types of challenges.
• Hack the Box is hosted on company servers and can’t be hosted on your own infrastructure in case you want to do any customization.

Try Hack Me

TryHackMe's bet was simple: make cybersecurity accessible to absolute beginners. Guided learning paths, browser-based VMs, structured rooms with hints and walkthroughs. It worked — the platform grew from a niche tool to one of the largest cybersecurity learning communities in the world.

Pros

• Beginner-friendly platform with structured learning paths (Pre Security, Jr Penetration Tester, Cyber Defense, etc.).
• Hands-on rooms with clear instructions make it easier to learn concepts while practicing.
• Built-in virtual machines (AttackBox) — no complex setup required.
• Wide variety of topics: web, networking, Linux, Windows, privilege escalation, SOC, and more.
• Gamified experience with points, badges, and streaks that keep users engaged.
• Strong community support and active Discord channels for help and discussions.

Cons

• Some advanced users may find certain rooms too guided or less challenging compared to platforms like Hack The Box.
• Full access to many learning paths and rooms requires a paid subscription.
• Less “real-world difficulty” in some beginner/intermediate labs compared to more hardcore platforms.

Simulations Labs

Simulations Labs approaches the problem differently. Rather than a flag-hunt framework, the platform is built around hosted cyber range events — simulated environments where teams work through realistic attack or defense scenarios together, often with live inject-based scoring and event management tools built in.

What Simulations Labs does well

• Managed and hosted events. You don't run the infrastructure — Simulations Labs does. That's a significant operational lift removed from the organizer.
• Scenario-based design. Rather than discrete flag challenges, exercises are built around realistic incident response, threat hunting, and red vs. blue scenarios.
• Better suited for training. The focus is on team behavior, decision-making under pressure, and operational readiness — not individual scoring.
• Scalable for enterprise events. Running a multi-team event with hundreds of participants across an organization is where this platform is designed to live.

Where it differs

• Not open source. This is a commercial, hosted product — which means less control but dramatically less operational overhead.

Best for: Enterprises and government teams running internal cyber exercises, incident response drills, and cross-team competitions that reflect real operational scenarios.

So which one should you choose?

The honest answer is that there is no universally correct answer — but there are wrong ones for specific situations. Here's a rough guide:

• Running a university or community CTF with an experienced team? CTFd, no question.
• Want to run a skills competition for your security team using proven content? Hack The Box.
• Onboarding new hires into security or building a learning culture? TryHackMe.
• Running an organization-wide cyber exercise or wanting a fully managed event experience? Simulations Labs.

The biggest mistake organizations make is treating CTF platforms as interchangeable. They're not. Know what you're actually trying to accomplish — individual skill development, team competition, operational readiness, or all three — and pick the tool that was actually built for that.

The platforms above all do their thing well. It's just not always the same thing.