Incus vs Sysbox
Incus
linuxcontainers.orgSysbox
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Incus | Sysbox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Runtime Software | 8.7 (#2) | 7.1 (#25) |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 8.7 (#3) | 7.1 (#25) |
| License | Incus is free software developed under the Apache 2 license. | The project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. |
| Security limitation | Local access to the Incus Unix socket grants full control of Incus, so the guide recommends giving it only to trusted users. | Sysbox strengthens isolation over regular Docker containers but provides weaker isolation than VM-based runtimes because containers share the Linux kernel. |
| Support | Community support is available through the Linux Containers forum, and Zabbly provides commercial support for users of its Debian or Ubuntu packages. | Sysbox support is best-effort through the GitHub repository or Sysbox Slack, and Docker subscriptions do not include Sysbox support. |
| What it does | Incus is a system container, application container, and virtual machine manager. | Sysbox is a free, open-source container runtime that lets rootless containers run system workloads such as systemd, Docker, and Kubernetes in VM-like environments. |
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.