CRI-O

CRI-O is a CNCF graduated, lightweight container runtime built specifically for Kubernetes. It implements the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) gRPC API and uses any Open Container Initiative (OCI) compatible runtime, including runc and crun, as the underlying container executor. CRI-O integrates with the containers/image and containers/storage libraries, the conmon container monitor, and CNI plugins to deliver a minimal kubelet-facing runtime surface, while also exposing an HTTP status API and Prometheus metrics endpoint for operations and observability.

CRI-O publishes 5 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Containers API, Debug API, Information API, and 2 more. Tagged areas include Apache 2.0, CNCF, Cloud Native, conmon, and Container Runtime.

The CRI-O catalog on APIs.io includes 2 Spectral governance rulesets.

CRI-O’s developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, engineering blog, changelog, and 8 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

38.8/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 25/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6

AccessFree

6 APIs

Apache 2.0CNCFCloud NativeconmonContainer RuntimeContainersCRIGoGraduatedKubernetesOCIOpen SourcePrometheusrunc

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6

Composite quality — 38.8/100 · thin

Contract Quality 12.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 5.2 / 20

Commercial Clarity 5.8 / 20

Operational Transparency 6.8 / 13

Governance 2.5 / 12

Discoverability 6.5 / 10

Agent readiness — 25/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 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 0 / 4

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/cri-o: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 6

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

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Cri O Rate Limits

4 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

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 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

ChangeLog

ChangeLog

Community

Community

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

License

License

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CNCF

CNCF

Source (apis.yml)

aid: cri-o
name: CRI-O
kind: opensource
description: CRI-O is a CNCF graduated, lightweight container runtime built specifically for Kubernetes. It implements the
  Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) gRPC API and uses any Open Container Initiative (OCI) compatible runtime, including
  runc and crun, as the underlying container executor. CRI-O integrates with the containers/image and containers/storage libraries,
  the conmon container monitor, and CNI plugins to deliver a minimal kubelet-facing runtime surface, while also exposing an
  HTTP status API and Prometheus metrics endpoint for operations and observability.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/cri-o/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/cri-o.png
tags:
- Apache 2.0
- CNCF
- Cloud Native
- conmon
- Container Runtime
- Containers
- CRI
- Go
- Graduated
- Kubernetes
- OCI
- Open Source
- Prometheus
- runc
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.20'
type: Index
access: Public
position: Provider
apis:
- aid: cri-o:cri-o-cri-grpc-api
  name: CRI-O CRI gRPC API
  description: CRI-O implements the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) gRPC API that the kubelet uses to manage
    pod sandboxes, containers, image lifecycle, and runtime status. The CRI gRPC API is served over a Unix domain socket (default
    /var/run/crio/crio.sock) and includes services for RuntimeService and ImageService as defined by the upstream CRI protobuf
    specification.
  humanURL: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  - type: Specification
    url: https://github.com/kubernetes/cri-api
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
  tags:
  - CRI
  - gRPC
  - Kubelet
  - Kubernetes
- aid: cri-o:cri-o-containers-api
  name: CRI-O Containers API
  description: Endpoints that return information about live containers.
  humanURL: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  baseURL: http://localhost
  tags:
  - Containers
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/cri-o-containers-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-status-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-status-capabilities.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/docs/metrics.md
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-metrics-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-metrics-capabilities.yml
- aid: cri-o:cri-o-debug-api
  name: CRI-O Debug API
  description: Golang debug endpoints for goroutines, heap, and profiling.
  humanURL: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  baseURL: http://localhost
  tags:
  - Debug
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/cri-o-debug-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-status-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-status-capabilities.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/docs/metrics.md
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-metrics-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-metrics-capabilities.yml
- aid: cri-o:cri-o-information-api
  name: CRI-O Information API
  description: Runtime version, configuration, and general info endpoints.
  humanURL: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  baseURL: http://localhost
  tags:
  - Information
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/cri-o-information-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-status-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-status-capabilities.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/docs/metrics.md
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-metrics-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-metrics-capabilities.yml
- aid: cri-o:cri-o-lifecycle-api
  name: CRI-O Lifecycle API
  description: Endpoints to pause and unpause running containers.
  humanURL: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  baseURL: http://localhost
  tags:
  - Lifecycle
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/cri-o-lifecycle-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-status-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-status-capabilities.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/docs/metrics.md
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-metrics-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-metrics-capabilities.yml
- aid: cri-o:cri-o-metrics-api
  name: CRI-O Metrics API
  description: Prometheus metrics scraping endpoint.
  humanURL: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cri/
  baseURL: http://localhost
  tags:
  - Metrics
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/cri-o-metrics-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-status-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-status-capabilities.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/docs/metrics.md
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/cri-o-metrics-rules.yml
  - type: Capabilities
    url: capabilities/cri-o-metrics-capabilities.yml
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/cri-o-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/cri-o-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://cri-o.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/tree/main/docs
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/install.md
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/cri-o
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
- type: Blog
  url: https://cri-o.io/#blog
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/releases
- type: Community
  url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o#getting-started
- type: License
  url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: CNCF
  url: https://www.cncf.io/projects/cri-o/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

CRI-O

Kin Score

APIs 6

CRI-O CRI gRPC API

CRI-O Containers API

CRI-O Debug API

CRI-O Information API

CRI-O Lifecycle API

CRI-O Metrics API

Open Collections 2

CRI-O Metrics API

CRI-O Status API

Pricing Plans 1

Cri O Plans Pricing

Rate Limits 1

Cri O Rate Limits

FinOps 1

Cri O Finops

Spectral Rules 2

CRI-O API Rules

CRI-O API Rules

Security Posture 1

Cri O Domain Security

Agentic Access 1

Cri O Agentic Access

Resources