# Youki

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/youki/  
**APIs profiled:** 2

youki is an open source container runtime written in Rust that implements the OCI runtime specification as a memory-safe alternative to runc, with rootless container support, cgroups v1 and v2, seccomp filtering, and systemd integration. Maintained as a CNCF sandbox project under the youki-dev organization, youki is adopted by container engines such as containerd, Podman, and Docker for executing OCI-compliant workloads.

## Kin Score — 25.8 / 100 (emerging)

Scored 2026-08-24 under rubric 0.12.1. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 25.8).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 59.3 |
| Contract Quality | 29.6 |
| Governance | 25.0 |
| Contract Governance | 25.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 26.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 14.3 |
| Commercial Clarity | 15.8 |
| Access Clarity | 15.8 |

## Agent readiness — 3.0 (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 | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Freemium — onboarding: unknown, pricing: freemium, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (2)

- **Youki Container Runtime** — youki is a container runtime written in Rust that implements the OCI runtime specification, providing a memory-safe and high-performance alternative to runc. It supports rootles...
- **OCI Spec for Rust** — oci-spec-rs is a Rust implementation of the OCI Runtime, Image, and Distribution Specifications, providing the data structures and types consumed by youki and other Rust-based c...

## Plans (1)

- **Youki Plans Pricing**

## Use cases (5)

- **Drop-In runc Replacement** — Use youki as a drop-in replacement for runc in container engines to gain memory safety and performance benefits with no workload changes.
- **Rootless Container Workflows** — Run containers as a non-root user for development, CI, or multi-tenant environments where elevated privileges are not desirable.
- **Kubernetes Workloads via containerd** — Use youki under containerd to execute Kubernetes pods and workloads in production clusters.
- **Podman and Docker Container Execution** — Configure Podman or Docker to invoke youki as the low-level OCI runtime for image execution.
- **Container Runtime Research and Education** — Explore and prototype container runtime features in a memory-safe codebase suitable for systems research, security analysis, and teaching.

## Tags

Containers, Container Runtime, OCI, Rust, CNCF, Cloud-Native, Kubernetes

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