Containerd

An industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability.

Containerd publishes 4 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Metrics API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Cloud-Native, Container Runtime, CRI, Docker, and gRPC.

The Containerd catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.

Containerd’s developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, changelog, and 18 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

30.0/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 24/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent Heartbeat 100/100 alive self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFree

1 published contract

Cloud-Native Container Runtime CRI Docker gRPC Kubernetes OCI

What this lets a business do 1

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

SaaS Platform Operations Management

BC-4220

Metrics

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 30.0/100 · thin

Contract Quality 10.1 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 4.7 / 15

Access Clarity 0.8 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.6 / 10

Contract Governance 1.2 / 9

Discoverability 4.2 / 8

Regulatory Posture 1.6 / 15

Open Source Surface 2.5 / 10

Agent readiness — 24/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Open Source Surface applies to this provider. This product is open source and we read its repository directly, so Open Source Surface carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from what the repository actually publishes — a security policy, a contribution guide, a release history, a code of conduct — read live from the provider rather than inferred from our own catalog pointers. This facet adds; nothing was taken away to make room for it. An open-source project is not excused from the commercial facets, because exemption would strip it of the points it does earn. If we have the wrong repository, or this product is not open source, say so on your provider repo and we will drop the facet rather than have you publish against it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because both conditional facets apply and carry 25 points together. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)

6 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 5.3 — up to +18.9 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 31.0 — up to +13.8 composite points
Contract Quality scores 53.8 — up to +11.6 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/containerd/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/containerd to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Official CLIs on Package Managers	standard	43.8	-	-
OpenSSF Best Practices Badge Holders	standard	43.8	-	-
Buf Schema Registry (public Protocol Buffers modules, gRPC / ConnectRPC schema publishers)	standard	43.8	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

gRPC

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Containerd gRPC API

Core gRPC API for managing the full container lifecycle including containers, images, content, snapshots, namespaces, tasks, leases, events, and plugins. Provides low-level acce...

Containerd CRI API

Container Runtime Interface (CRI) implementation that enables Kubernetes to use containerd as its container runtime. Supports pod sandbox management, container lifecycle operati...

Containerd NRI API

The Node Resource Interface (NRI) is a framework for plugging extensions into OCI-compatible container runtimes. NRI plugins receive lifecycle event notifications and can make c...

Containerd Metrics API

Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoints exposing containerd runtime statistics including gRPC request rates, snapshot usage, and task lifecycle counts.

Open Collections 2

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Containerd Metrics API

OPEN COLLECTION

Containerd Metrics API

OPEN COLLECTION

Containerd API pricing

Not yet checked against Containerd's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-05 from containerd.io; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Containerd OSS free	Free

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

gRPC Concurrency Bound: configured via containerd config grpc.max_recv_message_size / max_send_message_size and host resource ceilings concurren
CRI Image-Pull Concurrency: configured via plugins."io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri".registry and max_concurrent_downloads concurrent image pulls
Registry-Side Limits: inherits from each container registry (Docker Hub / GHCR / ECR) varies

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Containerd's documentation. Rate-limit details →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Containerd Plans Pricing

1 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Containerd Rate Limits

3 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Containerd

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Containerd Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Containerd Context

0 classes · 12 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 2

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Containerd — jsonschema rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

Containerd API Rules

7 rules · 4 errors 2 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Containerd Configuration

16 properties

JSON SCHEMA

OCI Runtime Specification

9 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Containerd Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Containerd Agentic Access

1 operation

1 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 2

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

Spectral

Spectral

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 5

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

IssueTracker

Releases

ChangeLog

Community

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

License

License

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

CNCF Project

CNCF Project

Source (apis.yml)

aid: containerd
name: Containerd
description: An industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability.
url: https://containerd.io/
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  license_evidence:
    repo: containerd/containerd
    spdx: Apache-2.0
    stars: 21335
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - openapi
  - repository-license
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/containerd.png
tags:
- Cloud-Native
- Container Runtime
- CRI
- Docker
- gRPC
- Kubernetes
- OCI
tags_raw:
- Cloud Native
- Container Runtime
- CRI
- Docker
- gRPC
- Kubernetes
- OCI
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
apis:
- aid: containerd:containerd-grpc-api
  name: Containerd gRPC API
  description: Core gRPC API for managing the full container lifecycle including containers, images, content, snapshots, namespaces,
    tasks, leases, events, and plugins. Provides low-level access to all containerd functionality through Protocol Buffers
    service definitions.
  humanURL: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/tree/main/api
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://containerd.io/docs/
  - type: Reference
    url: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/tree/main/api
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/containerd-config-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/containerd-oci-runtime-spec-schema.json
  tags:
  - Container Runtime
  - gRPC
  - Lifecycle Management
- aid: containerd:containerd-cri-api
  name: Containerd CRI API
  description: Container Runtime Interface (CRI) implementation that enables Kubernetes to use containerd as its container
    runtime. Supports pod sandbox management, container lifecycle operations, image pulling, and streaming APIs for exec,
    attach, and port-forward.
  humanURL: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/tree/main/pkg/cri
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://containerd.io/docs/
  - type: Reference
    url: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/tree/main/pkg/cri
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/containerd-config-schema.json
  tags:
  - Container Runtime
  - CRI
  - Kubernetes
- aid: containerd:containerd-nri-api
  name: Containerd NRI API
  description: The Node Resource Interface (NRI) is a framework for plugging extensions into OCI-compatible container runtimes.
    NRI plugins receive lifecycle event notifications and can make controlled modifications to container configurations before
    creation, enabling domain-specific resource management without modifying the runtime itself.
  humanURL: https://github.com/containerd/nri
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/blob/main/docs/NRI.md
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/containerd/nri
  tags:
  - Extensibility
  - Kubernetes
  - NRI
  - Plugins
- aid: containerd:containerd-metrics-api
  name: Containerd Metrics API
  description: Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoints exposing containerd runtime statistics including gRPC request rates,
    snapshot usage, and task lifecycle counts.
  humanURL: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/tree/main/api
  tags:
  - Metrics
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/containerd-metrics-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://containerd.io/docs/
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/containerd-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/containerd-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/containerd-finops.yml
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/containerd-capability-edges.yml
  name: Containerd Business Capability Map
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/containerd/nri/issues
- type: Releases
  url: https://github.com/containerd/nri/releases
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/containerd-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/containerd-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://containerd.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://containerd.io/docs/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://containerd.io/docs/getting-started/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/containerd
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/containerd/containerd
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases
- type: Community
  url: https://cloud-native.slack.com/
- type: CNCF Project
  url: https://www.cncf.io/projects/containerd/
- type: License
  url: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/containerd-context.jsonld
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/containerd-config-schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/containerd-oci-runtime-spec-schema.json
- type: Spectral
  url: rules/containerd-rules.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
kind: opensource

Containerd API — frequently asked questions

Does Containerd have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 4 APIs from Containerd, including Containerd gRPC API, Containerd CRI API and Containerd NRI API, and 1 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Containerd API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 1 OpenAPI specification for Containerd, each linked for download from this page.

How much does the Containerd API cost?

APIs.io lists 1 pricing plan for Containerd, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Containerd API ready for AI agents?

Containerd has a Kin Score of 30.0 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 23.6 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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