BuildKit vs Incus
BuildKit
github.comIncus
linuxcontainers.orgSide by side
| Figure | BuildKit | Incus |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 8.9 (#2) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Integrations | BuildKit documentation lists integrations or usage with Podman, nerdctl, Kubernetes, Docker buildx, GitHub Actions cache, S3 cache, Azure Blob Storage cache, and OpenTelemetry. | The documentation links to third-party tools and documents storage drivers including Btrfs, LVM, ZFS, Ceph, LINSTOR, and TrueNAS. |
| License | BuildKit is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, which grants perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free copyright rights subject to the license terms. | Incus is free software developed under the Apache 2 license. |
| Purpose | BuildKit is a toolkit for converting source code to build artifacts in an efficient, expressive and repeatable manner. | Incus is a system container, application container, and virtual machine manager. |
| Support | The project directs users to the #buildkit channel on Docker Community Slack and to GitHub issues for reporting problems with release binaries. | Community support is available through the Linux Containers forum, and Zabbly provides commercial support for users of its Debian or Ubuntu packages. |
Plans
In their own words
BuildKit
BuildKit is a free toolkit for turning source code into build artifacts. It consists of the buildkitd daemon and buildctl client, and uses LLB, a binary format for describing process dependency graphs. Builds can use Dockerfiles or other LLB-compatible frontends, resolve dependencies concurrently, cache instructions, import and export caches, run nested jobs, and collect unused data automatically. BuildKit supports execution without root privileges and OCI (runc) or containerd workers. Results can be exported as images, local directories, tarballs, Docker tarballs, or OCI tarballs. Cache options include inline, registry, local-directory, and GitHub Actions backends; the README marks GitHub Actions, S3, and Azure Blob options experimental. The daemon provides a gRPC API over a Unix socket by default, with TCP sockets also supported. Binaries are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. The unofficial Homebrew formula for macOS omits buildkitd; the project gives Lima in a Linux virtual machine as one way to run it. BuildKit is licensed under Apache-2.0.
Incus
Incus is free software for managing system containers, application containers, and virtual machines. Instances can share storage and networking, and administrators can manage them through a command-line tool, REST API, or third-party integrations. The software supports snapshots, backup and recovery, migration, configurable storage pools and networks, and resource controls. The project describes its API as suitable for use from a laptop through clusters of thousands of compute nodes. Documented integrations include Terraform, OpenTofu, Ansible, Packer, Distrobuilder, GARM, Kubernetes Cluster API, and Incant. The daemon runs on Linux; client applications are available for Windows and macOS, with FreeBSD client packages also listed. Upstream does not directly provide packages, so installation is through Linux distributions, third-party repositories, or source. Incus is developed under the Apache 2 license. Containers are unprivileged by default, but access to the Unix socket grants full control, so it should be limited to trusted users. The 6.0 LTS release is supported until June 2029; feature releases are normally supported until the next release.