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

📡 Source on GitHub

20.5/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

AccessFreemium

1 APIs

Cloud-Native Container Images Containers Google Security

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 20.5/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 23

Developer Ergonomics 3.9 / 18

Access Clarity 2.8 / 18

Operational Transparency 2.5 / 12

Contract Governance 0.0 / 11

Discoverability 5.3 / 9

Open Source Surface 6.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 3/100 · 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

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 90 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 10. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 90% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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 github.com/api-evangelist/distroless: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. 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...

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 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Issues

Issues

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

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: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  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: 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

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