Runc

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI (Open Container Initiative) specification. It is the reference implementation of the OCI runtime specification and is used as the default low-level container runtime by Docker, containerd, Podman, and other container platforms. runc manages container lifecycle operations including creating, starting, pausing, resuming, killing, and deleting containers. It implements the OCI Runtime Specification and exposes a command-line interface that higher-level runtimes use to manage individual container instances. runc also supports checkpoint/restore via CRIU, rootless containers (no root privileges needed via user namespaces), cgroup v2, seccomp syscall filtering, AppArmor, SELinux, and Intel Memory Protection Extensions. The current stable release line is 1.3.x (runc 1.5.0 expected late April 2026).

Runc is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Container Runtime, Containers, Linux, OCI, and Open Source.

The Runc catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Runc’s developer surface includes engineering blog, documentation, and 12 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

32.5/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 2/100 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

Container Runtime Containers Linux OCI Open Source CNCFOpen Container InitiativeCloud-Native

Kin Score

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

Composite quality — 32.5/100 · thin

Contract Quality 4.6 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 3.6 / 15

Access Clarity 1.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 3.6 / 10

Contract Governance 2.1 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 1.6 / 15

Open Source Surface 10.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 2/100 · 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 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

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

11 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

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

Contract Quality scores 24.4 — up to +18.9 composite points
Access Clarity scores 7.9 — up to +18.4 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 23.8 — up to +15.2 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/runc/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/runc 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.

Runc

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI (Open Container Initiative) specification. It is the reference implementation of the OCI run...

Runc API pricing

Not yet checked against Runc'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 Runc's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Runc Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Runc Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Runc Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

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

Runc Context

43 classes · 5 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Runc — jsonschema rules

5 rules · 3 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

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

OCI Runtime Container Configuration

8 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Runc Container Config Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 1

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Runc Container Config Example

7 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 1

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

Runc Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

ContributionGuide

Documentation

Documentation

Specification

Specification

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

CodeOfConduct

CodeOfConduct

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Security

Security

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

aid: runc
name: Runc
description: runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI (Open Container Initiative)
  specification. It is the reference implementation of the OCI runtime specification and is used as the default low-level
  container runtime by Docker, containerd, Podman, and other container platforms. runc manages container lifecycle operations
  including creating, starting, pausing, resuming, killing, and deleting containers. It implements the OCI Runtime Specification
  and exposes a command-line interface that higher-level runtimes use to manage individual container instances. runc also
  supports checkpoint/restore via CRIU, rootless containers (no root privileges needed via user namespaces), cgroup v2, seccomp
  syscall filtering, AppArmor, SELinux, and Intel Memory Protection Extensions. The current stable release line is 1.3.x (runc
  1.5.0 expected late April 2026).
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  license_evidence:
    repo: opencontainers/runc
    spdx: Apache-2.0
    stars: 13460
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - repository-license
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/runc.png
tags:
- Container Runtime
- Containers
- Linux
- OCI
- Open Source
- CNCF
- Open Container Initiative
- Cloud-Native
tags_raw:
- Container Runtime
- Containers
- Linux
- OCI
- Open Source
- CNCF
- Open Container Initiative
- Cloud Native
- Open-Source
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/runc/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-26'
modified: '2026-05-02'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: runc:runc
  name: Runc
  description: 'runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI (Open Container Initiative)
    specification. It is the reference implementation of the OCI runtime specification, providing a lightweight and portable
    container runtime that can be used independently or embedded into higher-level container systems like Docker and containerd.
    runc implements the full OCI Runtime Spec lifecycle: create, start, state, kill, delete. It also supports checkpoint/restore
    via CRIU, rootless containers, and cgroup v2. The container configuration is defined in a config.json file following the
    OCI Runtime Specification schema.'
  humanURL: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc
  tags:
  - Container Runtime
  - Containers
  - Linux
  - OCI
  - Open Source
  - CNCF
  - Open Container Initiative
  - Cloud-Native
  tags_raw:
  - Container Runtime
  - Containers
  - Linux
  - OCI
  - Open Source
  - CNCF
  - Open Container Initiative
  - Cloud Native
  - Open-Source
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/README.md
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc#creating-an-oci-bundle
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc
  - type: Specification
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec
  - type: ReleaseNotes
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/releases
  - type: License
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/LICENSE
  - type: Security
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/SECURITY.md
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/runc-container-config-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/runc-container-config-structure.json
  - type: JSONLD
    url: json-ld/runc-context.jsonld
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/runc-container-config-example.json
  - type: Vocabulary
    url: vocabulary/runc-vocabulary.yml
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/runc-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/runc-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/runc-finops.yml
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/issues
- type: CodeOfConduct
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/.github/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/runc-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://opencontainers.org/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc
- type: Blog
  url: https://opencontainers.org/posts/blog/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/README.md
- type: Specification
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec
- type: Security
  url: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/main/SECURITY.md
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Runc API — frequently asked questions

Does Runc have an API?

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

How much does the Runc API cost?

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

Is the Runc API ready for AI agents?

Runc has a Kin Score of 32.5 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 1.9 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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