Incus vs Rancher Desktop
Incus
linuxcontainers.orgRancher Desktop
rancherdesktop.ioSide by side
| Figure | Incus | Rancher Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Runtime Software | 8.7 (#2) | 8.2 (#9) |
| Integrations | The documentation links to third-party tools and documents storage drivers including Btrfs, LVM, ZFS, Ceph, LINSTOR, and TrueNAS. | The product page says it integrates with popular IDEs and other tools in the cloud native ecosystem. |
| Purpose | Incus is a system container, application container, and virtual machine manager. | Rancher Desktop is an open-source desktop application for container management and Kubernetes. |
| Support | Community support is available through the Linux Containers forum, and Zabbly provides commercial support for users of its Debian or Ubuntu packages. | Community support is available through the Rancher Desktop Slack channel and GitHub Issues. |
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.
Rancher Desktop
Rancher Desktop is a free, open-source desktop application for managing local containers and Kubernetes on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Users choose Moby/dockerd with the Docker CLI or containerd with nerdctl to build, push, pull, and run containers. Its built-in Kubernetes uses k3s, and Preferences let users select a Kubernetes version or reset Kubernetes and the container runtime. The graphical interface manages images, containers, settings, and local Kubernetes resources, with controls for networking, virtual-machine resources, and registry access. Installation includes Helm, kubectl, nerdctl, Moby, and Docker Compose. Trivy-based image scanning reports vulnerabilities and configuration issues, and Docker Desktop Extensions can be installed through the UI catalog or rdctl. The application uses a virtual machine on macOS and Linux and WSL 2 on Windows. Windows requires WSL and virtualization capabilities; without the privileged service, exposed container applications are limited to 127.0.0.1. The project is intended for local container and Kubernetes work, rather than managing Kubernetes clusters.