# containers/crun

A fast and lightweight fully featured OCI runtime and C library for running containers

Repository: https://github.com/containers/crun
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/crun
Language: C
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: containers, oci, runtime, linux, runc, oci-runtime, iot-cloud, iot, wasm-oci
Last push: 2026-08-25T06:40:56+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 94/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 85, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3276, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 20, "gap_med": 35, "n_releases_24m": 20}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4082, forks 437 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:34.436295+00:00)

## What it is
crun is a fast, lightweight OCI container runtime written entirely in C, conforming to the Open Container Initiative runtime specification. It can be used as a standalone CLI (e.g., with Podman) or embedded as a C library, offering significantly lower memory footprint and faster startup than runc.

## Use cases
- run OCI containers with lower memory overhead than runc
- embed a container runtime as a C library in another program
- run containers on resource-constrained IoT or edge devices
- speed up mass container startup in CI or testing
- run WebAssembly workloads via OCI (wasm-oci)
- replace runc as the runtime backend for Podman

## When to choose
- you need a faster, lower-memory OCI runtime than runc
- you want to link container runtime functionality directly into a C program
- you run containers on memory-constrained or embedded Linux systems
- you use Podman or another tool that supports pluggable OCI runtimes

## When to avoid
- you need a runtime on non-Linux platforms such as Windows or macOS
- your tooling requires a Go-based runtime ecosystem or runc-specific features
- you prefer a runtime with the largest community and most third-party documentation

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: container-runtime, developer-tools
- domain: cloud-computing, iot
- platform: c, cli
- tags: oci-runtime, runc-alternative, low-memory-footprint, podman, wasm-oci, containers, devops, linux

## Member repositories
- containers/crun (main) score 94

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:34.436295+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:23:25.135740+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/containers/crun (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:34.436295+00:00, sha 7f2faedfa40d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.