Distroless

Distroless images by Google contain only the application and its runtime dependencies, stripping out package managers, shells, and other OS-level utilities to minimize attack surface and image size. The smallest variant (gcr.io/distroless/static-debian12) is roughly 2 MB. Distroless ships base images for static binaries, glibc-based binaries, C/C++, Java (17, 21, 25), Node.js (22, 24), and Python 3, with multi-architecture support including amd64, arm64, arm, s390x, ppc64le, and riscv64. Adopters include Kubernetes, Knative, Tekton, and Teleport.

Distroless is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Cloud-Native, Container Images, Containers, Google, and Security.

📡 Profile data on GitHub

17.5/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

1 API

Cloud-Native Container Images Containers Google Security

Kin Score

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

Composite quality — 17.5/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 3.2 / 15

Access Clarity 1.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.1 / 10

Contract Governance 0.0 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Open Source Surface 6.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 1/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 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

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 could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

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):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
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)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes

12 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

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

Contract Quality scores 0.0 — up to +25.0 composite points
Access Clarity scores 7.9 — up to +18.4 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 21.4 — up to +15.7 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/distroless/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/distroless 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 →

APIs 1

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

Distroless

Distroless images by Google contain only the application and its runtime dependencies, stripping out package managers, shells, and other OS-level utilities to minimize attack su...

Distroless API pricing

Not yet checked against Distroless's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Distroless's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Distroless Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Distroless Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Distroless Finops

FINOPS

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Container Registry

Container Registry

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

ContributionGuide

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

SecurityPolicy

SecurityPolicy

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Issues

Issues

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

Source (apis.yml)

aid: distroless
name: Distroless
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/distroless/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: high
  source:
  - license
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
modified: '2026-04-28'
created: '2026-03-26'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/distroless.png
tags:
- Cloud-Native
- Container Images
- Containers
- Google
- Security
tags_raw:
- Cloud Native
- Container Images
- Containers
- Google
- Security
description: Distroless images by Google contain only the application and its runtime dependencies, stripping out package
  managers, shells, and other OS-level utilities to minimize attack surface and image size. The smallest variant (gcr.io/distroless/static-debian12)
  is roughly 2 MB. Distroless ships base images for static binaries, glibc-based binaries, C/C++, Java (17, 21, 25), Node.js
  (22, 24), and Python 3, with multi-architecture support including amd64, arm64, arm, s390x, ppc64le, and riscv64. Adopters
  include Kubernetes, Knative, Tekton, and Teleport.
apis:
- aid: distroless:distroless
  name: Distroless
  description: Distroless images by Google contain only the application and its runtime dependencies, stripping out package
    managers, shells, and other OS-level utilities to minimize attack surface and image size.
  humanURL: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  tags:
  - Container Images
  - Containers
  - Google
  - Security
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main/README.md
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main/README.md#how-do-i-use-distroless-images
  - type: SourceCode
    url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  - type: Container Registry
    url: https://gcr.io/distroless
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/distroless-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/distroless-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/distroless-finops.yml
- type: SecurityPolicy
  url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main/SECURITY.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: License
  name: Apache-2.0
  url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: Website
  url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools
- type: Container Registry
  url: https://gcr.io/distroless
- type: Issues
  url: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/issues
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Distroless API — frequently asked questions

Does Distroless have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 API from Distroless, including Distroless.

How much does the Distroless API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Distroless, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Distroless API ready for AI agents?

Distroless has a Kin Score of 17.5 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.6 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

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.

All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page

This provider

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/distroless"

All providers

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"

Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/distroless/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/distroless/evidence"

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