Apptainer vs youki
Apptainer
apptainer.orgyouki
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Apptainer | youki |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 8.9 (#1) | 7.5 (#19) |
| Spec score · Container Runtime Software | 8.9 (#1) | 7.5 (#20) |
| Purpose | Apptainer creates and runs containers that package software for portability and reproducibility. | youki is an implementation of the OCI runtime specification written in Rust, similar to runc. |
| Security reporting | The Technical Steering Committee manages project security, and the policy directs vulnerability reports through private contact with the project. | Security issues can be reported through GitHub Security Advisories or by emailing the project’s committers. |
| Security response | The Apptainer Technical Steering Committee accepts vulnerability reports at [email protected] and documents vulnerabilities through CVEs. | The security policy says committers will try to triage a report and send a first response within seven days. |
Plans
In their own words
Apptainer
Apptainer is a free container platform for creating and running portable, reproducible workloads, with a focus on shared systems and high-performance computing. It packages containers as immutable, single-file Singularity Image Format (SIF) images designed for transport and sharing. By default, users retain the same privileges inside and outside containers. Images can be signed and verified with PGP keys, PEM keys or X.509 certificates, and encrypted containers can run without writing decrypted contents to disk. Apptainer imports containers from OCI registries and aims to support most Docker Hub containers without changes. It can expose host resources such as GPUs, high-speed networks and parallel filesystems, and supports NVIDIA CUDA, AMD ROCm, Intel Gaudi and OCI Container Device Interface accelerators. Running Apptainer requires Linux; Windows and macOS need a Linux virtual machine, with Windows also listed via WSL2. Root access is unnecessary when user namespaces are available. Full functionality requires kernel support for FUSE and unprivileged user namespaces. Community support includes Slack, Google Groups and GitHub, with commercial services through CIQ.
youki
youki is a Linux container runtime written in Rust that implements the OCI runtime specification. It provides commands to create, start, list, inspect, and delete containers, and can run containers without root privileges. The project documents using it as a runtime with Docker and Podman, and reports passing containerd’s end-to-end test and adoption in several production environments. Building locally requires Rust edition 2024 and Linux kernel 5.3 or later; local builds are supported on Linux, with Vagrant environments and GitHub Codespaces available for trying it elsewhere. The project is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation sandbox project. youki is free under the Apache License, Version 2.0, which grants no-charge, royalty-free copyright and patent licenses subject to its terms. Security reports can be sent through GitHub Security Advisories or to the committers by email. The committers aim to triage reports and respond within seven days, though a fix may take longer.