Incus vs LXC
Incus
linuxcontainers.orgLXC
linuxcontainers.orgSide by side
| Figure | Incus | LXC |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Runtime Software | 8.7 (#2) | 7.6 (#17) |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 8.7 (#3) | 7.6 (#15) |
| Founded | 2023 | 2008 |
| Installation | 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. | LXC is included in most Linux distributions and is generally installed through the distribution package manager. |
| Purpose | Incus is a system container, application container, and virtual machine manager. | LXC is a userspace interface to Linux kernel containment features for creating and managing system or application containers. |
| Release support | Incus offers LTS and feature releases; its page states that Incus 6.0 LTS is supported until June 2029, while feature releases are normally supported for about a month. | The project lists LXC 7.0 and 6.0 as long term support releases, with support through June 1, 2031 and June 1, 2029 respectively. |
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.
LXC
LXC is free software for creating and managing Linux system or application containers through Linux kernel containment features. It aims to make each container resemble a standard Linux installation without a separate kernel. The project includes the liblxc library, container control tools, distribution templates and API bindings for Python 3, Lua, Go, Ruby and Haskell. Process containment uses kernel namespaces, AppArmor and SELinux profiles, seccomp policies, chroots, kernel capabilities and cgroups. Unprivileged containers map container root to an unprivileged host user. LXC is included in most Linux distributions and is generally installed through the distribution package manager. Listed requirements include a supported C library and Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later. LXC 7.0 and 6.0 are listed as long-term support releases through June 1, 2031 and June 1, 2029. Most code uses GNU LGPLv2.1+, with some BSD 2-clause or GNU GPLv2 components.