Application Kernel for Containers
OCI runtime that runs containers on a user-space kernel for isolation, at some cost in syscall speed.
- Language
- Go
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
- Stars
- 20k
- Latest
- release-20260928.0
- Last push
- 2026-10-06
alternatives to
runc
CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification
Side by side
| Tool | Fit | Stars | Licence | Terms | Self-hosted | Language | Latest | Last push |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gVisor | Drop-in | 20k | Apache-2.0 | Open source | No | Go | release-20260928.0 | 2026-10-06 |
| Kata Containers | Drop-in | 8.9k | Apache-2.0 | Open source | No | Rust | 4.2.0 | 2026-10-06 |
| youki | Drop-in | 7.6k | Apache-2.0 | Open source | No | Rust | v0.7.0 | 2026-10-06 |
| crun | Drop-in | 4.1k | GPL-2.0 | Open source | No | C | 1.30.1 | 2026-10-06 |
Every alternative
4 alternatives
Kata Containers is an open source project and community working to build a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that feel and perform like containers, but provide the workload isolation and security advantages of VMs. https://katacontainers.io/
OCI runtime that runs each container or pod in a lightweight virtual machine.
- Language
- Rust
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
- Stars
- 8.9k
- Latest
- 4.2.0
- Last push
- 2026-10-06
A container runtime written in Rust
OCI runtime written in Rust.
- Language
- Rust
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
- Stars
- 7.6k
- Latest
- v0.7.0
- Last push
- 2026-10-06
A fast and lightweight fully featured OCI runtime and C library for running containers
OCI runtime written in C, used by Podman by default.
Head to head
About runc
- Language
- Go
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
- Stars
- 13k
- Last push
- 2026-10-05