CRI-O vs Incus
CRI-O
cri-o.ioIncus
linuxcontainers.orgSide by side
| Figure | CRI-O | Incus |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 7.3 (#21) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Spec score · Container Runtime Software | 7.4 (#21) | 8.7 (#2) |
| Images | CRI-O supports OCI container images and can pull images from any container registry. | Incus provides images for a wide range of Linux distributions, published daily. |
| Installation | The project site provides RPM and DEB installation instructions and notes Fedora packaging is available. | Incus upstream does not directly provide packages; packages are available through Linux distributions or third-party repositories, and it can also be installed from source. |
| License | The project repository identifies its license as Apache-2.0. | Incus is free software developed under the Apache 2 license. |
| Purpose | CRI-O implements the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface so Kubernetes can launch and manage OCI containers. | Incus is a system container, application container, and virtual machine manager. |
| Security | The project describes container security separation using SELinux, capabilities, seccomp, and other policies specified by OCI. | The project highlights unprivileged containers, resource restrictions, and authentication as security measures. |
| Support | The project site directs users to the #crio channel on Kubernetes Slack and the project GitHub repository. | 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
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.