# Nixpacks

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/nixpacks/  
**Website:** https://nixpacks.com  
**APIs profiled:** 5

Nixpacks is an open-source build tool that converts application source code into OCI-compliant Docker images by combining language-specific providers, Nix packages, and Buildkit. Originally created by Railway as the build system powering the Railway platform, Nixpacks inspects a project's source, selects one or more providers (Node, Python, Ruby, Go, Java, Rust, PHP, Elixir, Deno, Crystal, .NET, Swift, Scala, Dart, Haskell, Gleam, Zig, Clojure, Lunatic, Cobol, Scheme, F#, Staticfile, and more), and produces a reproducible build plan composed of setup, install, build, and start phases. The plan declares Nix packages, apt packages, environment variables, commands, and cache directories, and can be customized via a `nixpacks.toml` file, CLI flags, or environment variables. Compared with Cloud Native Buildpacks, Nixpacks uses Nix as its package layer, ships as a single Rust CLI, and outputs a plain Dockerfile/OCI image without requiring a buildpack lifecycle. The project is MIT licensed and currently in maintenance mode; Railway recommends Railpack as the actively developed successor.

## Kin Score — 13.5 / 100 (emerging)

Scored 2026-08-25 under rubric 0.14.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 13.5).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 64.8 |
| Contract Quality | 0.0 |
| Governance | 0.0 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 21.1 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 21.4 |
| Commercial Clarity | 0.0 |
| Access Clarity | 0.0 |

## Agent readiness — 0.0 (human-only)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | no |
| Agentic Access | no |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | no |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |
| Delegated Identity | no |
| Protected Resource Metadata | no |
| Dynamic Client Registration | no |
| Agentic Commerce | no |

## Access

Unknown — onboarding: unknown, pricing: unknown, trial: no (confidence: low).

## APIs (5)

- **Nixpacks CLI** — The Nixpacks command-line interface is the primary interface for generating build plans and producing Docker images from application source. Core commands include `nixpacks plan...
- **Nixpacks Build Plan** — The Nixpacks build plan is the JSON representation of how a source directory will be turned into a container image. A plan declares the list of providers used, top-level `variab...
- **Nixpacks Configuration File (nixpacks.toml)** — Projects can override or extend the auto-detected build plan by committing a `nixpacks.toml` (or `nixpacks.json`) file at the root of the repository. The configuration file mirr...
- **Nixpacks Language Providers** — Providers are the pluggable modules that detect a language or framework in the source directory and contribute their portion of the build plan. Nixpacks ships with providers for...
- **Nixpacks GitHub Action** — The official `iloveitaly/github-action-nixpacks` GitHub Action wraps the Nixpacks CLI so that CI pipelines can build and optionally push OCI images directly from a workflow with...

## Security (1)

- **Nixpacks Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · DMARC

## Tags

Build Tools, Buildpacks, Docker, OCI, Nix, Nixpkgs, Container Image, Application Packaging, Railway, Open-Source, Rust, DevOps, Platform Engineering, Platform-as-a-Service

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/nixpacks/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.