CRI-O vs gVisor
CRI-O
cri-o.iogVisor
gvisor.devSide by side
| Figure | CRI-O | gVisor |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 7.3 (#21) | 8.3 (#6) |
| Spec score · Container Runtime Software | 7.4 (#21) | 8.3 (#7) |
| Purpose | CRI-O implements the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface so Kubernetes can launch and manage OCI containers. | gVisor is an open-source Linux-compatible sandbox and application kernel that isolates containers from the host operating system. |
| Support | The project site directs users to the #crio channel on Kubernetes Slack and the project GitHub repository. | The project directs users to GitHub issues, documentation, and mailing lists for support and community discussion. |
Plans
In their own words
gVisor
gVisor is a free, open-source Linux-compatible sandbox and application kernel for running containers while isolating the host from untrusted code. It is intended for workloads such as user-uploaded, LLM-generated, and third-party code. Instead of passing sandboxed applications’ system calls directly to the host, its Sentry handles them; a Gofer process mediates filesystem access. The project describes a least-privilege design with a restrictive system call filter. It documents use with Docker, Kubernetes, containerd, and OCI runtimes, including Kubernetes configurations using GKE Sandbox, Minikube, or containerd with the gVisor shim. gVisor can stream application trace points to an external threat detection engine such as Falco, and can checkpoint and restore containers. Most CUDA applications can run unmodified in the sandbox with selected NVIDIA driver versions, but GPU support is restricted to certain models, drivers, capabilities, device files, ioctl calls, and platforms. Installation requires Linux 5.6 or later on x86_64 or ARM64. Compatibility is best-effort, and some applications may not work because not every system call, /proc file, or /sys file is implemented. Hardware side-channel protection is generally not provided.