The best LXC alternatives
The rest of Best Container Engines, in this site's order: each with what it costs, where it runs and its record score.
LXD suits teams and individuals managing containers or virtual machines on Linux, from laptop workloads to clustered data-center deployments.
Apptainer suits users running complex applications on shared systems or high-performance computing clusters.
BuildKit suits developers and teams who need a build toolkit with cache controls, multiple output formats, and rootless execution.
Incus suits users managing containers and virtual machines across Linux infrastructure, including development and production workloads.
Podman suits developers and teams working with containers across Linux, macOS, and Windows.
It suits teams embedding a container runtime in a larger system or using a Kubernetes cluster.
Buildah suits Linux users who want a command-line tool to build and manage container images, including rootless builds.
crun suits Linux users and teams managing OCI containers in self-hosted environments, including those who need rootless operation or documented…
gVisor suits teams running containers that include untrusted code on Linux hosts.
It suits Linux users and teams looking for an OCI runtime that can run containers rootlessly and integrate with Docker or Podman.
It suits developers using Apple-silicon Macs for backend work, reproducible builds, or local Kubernetes testing.
It suits HPC teams needing rootless, Linux-based containers with image registries and accelerator access.
Enroot suits Linux users in high-performance computing or virtualized environments who need portable, reproducible sandboxes and do not require extra…
Kata Containers suits users seeking container ecosystem integration with stronger isolation from lightweight virtual machines.
It suits Linux and Kubernetes operators who need protected containers and remote attestation.