Topics / #containers

Containers projects on GitHub

OS-level virtualization for packaging and running isolated applications.

As of , the most-starred Containers projects on GitHub are kubernetes (128.3K stars), devops-exercises (84.9K stars) and moby (72.2K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 121 Containers repositories with 2.5M stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 16 was OpenShell, with +108 stars in a day.

121Projects
2.5MStars in total
+772Stars in a day
Browse in the catalog →github.com/topics/containers ↗

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 16

+108

OpenShell

NVIDIA/OpenShell · ★ 16.5K

OpenShell is an open-source runtime for running autonomous AI agents inside isolated sandboxes. Declarative YAML policies protect your files, credentials, and infrastructure from unauthorized access and data exfiltration.

+60

vaultwarden

dani-garcia/vaultwarden · ★ 69.2K

Vaultwarden is an unofficial, Rust-written server that implements the Bitwarden Client API, so you can run your own password-manager backend instead of using Bitwarden's official hosted service.

+34

floci

floci-io/floci · ★ 26.9K

Floci is a free, open-source local AWS emulator: it serves AWS-compatible APIs — S3, SQS, DynamoDB, Lambda, ECS and many more — from your own machine for development, testing, and CI, with no cloud account, auth token, or paid feature gates.

+24

mxc

microsoft/mxc · ★ 2.9K

MXC (Microsoft eXecution Container) is a sandboxed code execution system for running untrusted code - model output, plugins, and tools - on Windows, Linux, and macOS, using containment backends ranging from OS-native process sandboxes to full VMs.

The all-time top

Top 100 of 121 · by stars

  1. #1 · kubernetes/kubernetes

    kubernetes

    Kubernetes (K8s) is an open source system for managing containerized applications across multiple hosts, handling the deployment, maintenance, and scaling of those applications.

    128.3K
  2. #2 · bregman-arie/devops-exercises

    devops-exercises

    A massive collection of over 2600 DevOps and SRE interview questions and exercises covering Linux, networking, Kubernetes, AWS, Python, Ansible, Terraform, and many other technical topics.

    84.9K
  3. #3 · moby/moby

    moby

    Moby is Docker's open-source upstream project: a 'Lego set' of toolkit components (build tools, registry, orchestration, runtime) plus a framework for assembling them into custom container-based systems.

    72.2K
  1. 4

    vaultwarden

    69.2Kdani-garcia/vaultwarden · Rust

    Vaultwarden is an unofficial, Rust-written server that implements the Bitwarden Client API, so you can run your own password-manager backend instead of using Bitwarden's official hosted service.

  2. 5

    dive

    54.6Kwagoodman/dive · Go

    dive is a CLI tool that breaks a Docker or OCI image into its layers, shows what each layer contains, and points out where the image wastes space so you can shrink it.

  3. 6

    lazydocker

    53.2Kjesseduffield/lazydocker · Go

    Lazydocker is a simple terminal UI for both docker and docker-compose, written in Go with the gocui library - 'the lazier way to manage everything docker', as its tagline goes.

  4. 7

    container

    50.7Kapple/container · Swift

    A tool for creating and running Linux containers as lightweight virtual machines on a Mac, optimized for Apple silicon.

  5. 8

    kubernetes-the-hard-way

    50.4Kkelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way

    A step-by-step tutorial that walks you through bootstrapping a Kubernetes cluster manually, without any automation scripts, so you learn how every component actually works.

  6. 9

    awesome-compose

    46.5Kdocker/awesome-compose · HTML

    Awesome Compose is a curated list of Docker Compose samples: ready-made project setups showing how to integrate different services via a Compose file and manage their deployment with Docker Compose.

  7. 10

    portainer

    38.7Kportainer/portainer · TypeScript

    Portainer is a lightweight management platform for Docker, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes and ACI environments, letting you manage containers, images, volumes and networks through a web GUI or API.

  8. 11

    trivy

    38.5Kaquasecurity/trivy · Go

    Trivy is an all-in-one security scanner that finds vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, secrets, and software licenses across container images, filesystems, git repositories, VM images, and Kubernetes clusters.

  9. 12

    compose

    38.4Kdocker/compose · Go

    Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications, configured through a single Compose file (compose.yaml).

  10. 13

    firecracker

    37.4Kfirecracker-microvm/firecracker · Rust

    Firecracker is an open-source virtualization technology for creating and managing secure, multi-tenant microVMs for container and function-based serverless workloads.

  11. 14

    1Panel

    37.2K1Panel-dev/1Panel · Go

    1Panel is an open-source Linux server management panel and lightweight AI management platform: a web GUI that gives you one-stop control over servers, websites, apps and AI agents.

  12. 15

    awesome-docker

    37.1Kveggiemonk/awesome-docker

    A curated ('awesome list') index of Docker-related projects and resources: engines, image builders, registries, orchestration tools, networking/security tooling, desktop/terminal UIs and learning materials.

  13. 16

    k9s

    34.8Kderailed/k9s · Go

    K9s is a terminal UI that lets you navigate, observe and manage Kubernetes clusters in real time instead of typing raw kubectl commands.

  14. 17

    k3s

    34.2Kk3s-io/k3s · Go

    K3s is a lightweight, fully conformant, production-ready Kubernetes distribution packed into a single binary under 100 MB that runs with roughly half the memory of standard Kubernetes.

  15. 18

    glances

    33.8Knicolargo/glances · Python

    Glances is an open-source cross-platform system monitoring tool, a top/htop alternative that shows CPU, memory, disk, network, containers, sensors, and running processes in one dashboard, reachable via terminal, web UI, API, or an MCP server for AI assistants.

  16. 19

    Proton

    33.1KValveSoftware/Proton · C++

    Proton is a compatibility tool for the Steam client that lets games exclusive to Windows run on Linux. It is based on Wine plus additional components.

  17. 20

    podman

    33.1Kpodman-container-tools/podman · Go

    Podman (the POD MANager) is a tool for managing OCI containers and images, volumes, and pods — groups of containers managed together. It is built on libpod, a container lifecycle management library included in the same repo.

  18. 21

    minikube

    32.2Kkubernetes/minikube · Go

    Minikube runs a local Kubernetes cluster on macOS, Linux, or Windows so developers can build and test Kubernetes applications on their own machine.

  19. 22

    dokku

    32.2Kdokku/dokku · Go

    Dokku is a Docker-powered PaaS (Platform as a Service) - a self-hosted, minimal Heroku alternative that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications on your own server.

  20. 23

    colima

    31.2Kabiosoft/colima · Go

    Colima provides container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup: it starts a Linux VM running Docker, Containerd or Incus, all managed through one simple command.

  21. 24

    nanoclaw

    31Knanocoai/nanoclaw · TypeScript

    A self-hosted AI assistant that runs Claude-powered agents in their own Docker containers and connects them to chat apps — WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord and more. Each agent has its own memory, workspace and scheduled jobs; you just message it.

  22. 25

    90DaysOfDevOps

    29.8KMichaelCade/90DaysOfDevOps · Shell

    A structured learning curriculum for DevOps that grew out of a personal 90-day public learning challenge, now covering principles, processes, tooling, and real-world use cases like Kubernetes, Terraform, and Ansible.

  23. 26

    ProxmoxVE

    29.8Kcommunity-scripts/ProxmoxVE · Shell

    A community-maintained set of one-command install scripts for Proxmox VE: paste a single line into your Proxmox shell and it sets up a popular self-hosted service as a ready container or VM.

  24. 27

    harbor

    29.6Kgoharbor/harbor · Go

    Harbor is an open source trusted cloud native registry that stores, signs, and scans content — mainly container images and Helm charts. It is a CNCF-hosted project.

  25. 28

    floci

    26.9Kfloci-io/floci · Java

    Floci is a free, open-source local AWS emulator: it serves AWS-compatible APIs — S3, SQS, DynamoDB, Lambda, ECS and many more — from your own machine for development, testing, and CI, with no cloud account, auth token, or paid feature gates.

  26. 29

    docker_practice

    26.3Kyeasy/docker_practice · Go

    An open-source Chinese book that takes you from zero to real DevOps practice with Docker: core concepts, internals and hands-on skills for developers, ops engineers and architects.

  27. 30

    dapr

    26.2Kdapr/dapr · Go

    Dapr is an open-source, CNCF-graduated runtime for building distributed applications, workflows, and AI agents. It packages durable execution, secure service-to-service communication, state management, and event-driven messaging behind one consistent set of APIs.

  28. 31

    rancher

    26Krancher/rancher · Go

    Rancher is an open-source container management platform for organizations that run containers in production — it makes it easy to run Kubernetes anywhere and manage it from a web UI.

  29. 32

    pulumi

    25.8Kpulumi/pulumi · Go

    Pulumi is open source Infrastructure as Code: you write ordinary programming code, and the Pulumi CLI automatically provisions and manages your resources across clouds.

  30. 33

    cilium

    25.7Kcilium/cilium · Go

    Cilium is open-source networking, security, and observability software built on an eBPF dataplane, used mainly as the networking layer of Kubernetes clusters.

  31. 34

    dockge

    24.6Klouislam/dockge · TypeScript

    Dockge is a self-hosted, reactive web manager for Docker Compose stacks: from a browser you create, edit, start, stop, restart and delete compose.yaml stacks, update images and watch progress in real time.

  32. 35

    watchtower

    24.6Kcontainrrr/watchtower · Go

    Watchtower automates Docker container updates: push a new image to your registry and it pulls it, stops the old container and starts the new version in its place.

  33. 36

    slim

    23.4Kslimtoolkit/slim · Go

    SlimToolkit (formerly DockerSlim) is a free, open-source CLI toolkit that inspects, optimizes and debugs container images. It can shrink an image by up to 30x without you changing anything in your Dockerfile — and makes the result more secure too.

  34. 37

    lens

    23.2Klensapp/lens

    Lens is a desktop IDE for Kubernetes — one context-aware UI for managing and troubleshooting clusters and workloads, and the most popular one out there, with over 1 million users.

  35. 38

    distroless

    23.1KGoogleContainerTools/distroless · Starlark

    A set of minimal container base images that contain only your application and its runtime dependencies — no package managers, shells or other programs you would expect in a normal Linux distribution.

  36. 39

    NemoClaw

    22.8KNVIDIA/NemoClaw · TypeScript

    An open source reference stack from NVIDIA for running AI agents like OpenClaw, Hermes and LangChain Deep Agents more safely inside NVIDIA OpenShell sandboxes, with managed inference, network policy and lifecycle operations via its CLI.

  37. 40

    witr

    22.7Kpranshuparmar/witr · Go

    witr answers one question: 'why is this running?' Point it at a process, port, container, or file, and it traces the exact chain of supervisors, services, and shells that started it.

  38. 41

    docker-cheat-sheet

    22.6Kwsargent/docker-cheat-sheet

    A community-maintained Docker cheat sheet that walks through installation, containers, images, networks, volumes, links, Dockerfile syntax, and best practices in one long reference document.

  39. 42

    lima

    22.1Klima-vm/lima · Go

    Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding, similar to WSL2. It was originally created to bring containerd and nerdctl to Mac users but is not limited to containers.

  40. 43

    containerd

    21.4Kcontainerd/containerd · Go

    containerd is an industry-standard container runtime — a daemon for Linux and Windows that manages the complete container lifecycle of its host: image transfer and storage, container execution and supervision, and low-level storage and network attachments. It's a CNCF graduated project.

  41. 44

    cosmopolitan

    21.4Kjart/cosmopolitan · C

    Cosmopolitan Libc makes C/C++ a build-once run-anywhere language: you compile once and the same native binary runs on Linux, Mac, Windows, the BSDs and even BIOS - like Java, but with no interpreter or virtual machine.

  42. 45

    vulhub

    21.4Kvulhub/vulhub · Dockerfile

    Vulhub is an open-source collection of pre-built, ready-to-use vulnerable Docker environments: with one command you get a working lab for security research, learning, or demos.

  43. 46

    wasmer

    21.2Kwasmerio/wasmer · Rust

    Wasmer is a blazing fast and secure WebAssembly runtime: it runs apps as incredibly lightweight containers anywhere — desktop, cloud, edge, or browser — at near-native speeds.

  44. 47

    nginx-proxy

    19.9Knginx-proxy/nginx-proxy · Python

    A Docker image that runs nginx plus docker-gen: when containers start or stop, docker-gen regenerates the reverse proxy config and reloads nginx, so routing updates itself.

  45. 48

    gvisor

    19.7Kgoogle/gvisor · Go

    An application kernel for containers: it wraps running applications in a strong isolation layer from the host OS, implementing a Linux-like interface in memory-safe Go, entirely in userspace.

  46. 49

    cadvisor

    19.5Kgoogle/cadvisor · Go

    cAdvisor (Container Advisor) is a daemon that collects, aggregates and exports resource usage and performance data for running containers, such as CPU, memory, network and historical usage statistics.

  47. 50

    ingress-nginx

    19.5Kkubernetes/ingress-nginx · Go

    ingress-nginx was an Ingress controller for Kubernetes that used NGINX as a reverse proxy and load balancer to route traffic into clusters. The project is now retired.

  48. 51

    telegraf

    17.9Kinfluxdata/telegraf · Go

    Telegraf is an open-source agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data. It ships with 300+ plugins covering system monitoring, cloud services, and messaging.

  49. 52

    ctop

    17.8Kbcicen/ctop · Go

    ctop is a terminal tool that shows a top-like, real-time overview of metrics for all your running containers, plus a detailed single-container view.

  50. 53

    nvidia-docker

    17.6KNVIDIA/nvidia-docker

    nvidia-docker was a tool that let Docker containers access NVIDIA GPUs. It has been deprecated and the repository archived, replaced by the NVIDIA Container Toolkit.

  51. 54

    questdb

    17.4Kquestdb/questdb · Java

    QuestDB is an open-source, low-latency time-series database on open formats: it ingests millions of events per second, computes on live data in milliseconds, and keeps years of history queryable through one SQL engine.

  52. 55

    nomad

    17Khashicorp/nomad · Go

    Nomad is a workload orchestrator from HashiCorp that deploys and manages containers, non-containerized apps, and virtual machines across on-prem and cloud infrastructure at scale.

  53. 56

    kops

    16.7Kkubernetes/kops · Go

    kOps (Kubernetes Operations) is a tool that creates, upgrades, and manages production-grade, highly available Kubernetes clusters, and also provisions the underlying cloud infrastructure for them.

  54. 57

    OpenShell

    16.5KNVIDIA/OpenShell · Rust

    OpenShell is an open-source runtime for running autonomous AI agents inside isolated sandboxes. Declarative YAML policies protect your files, credentials, and infrastructure from unauthorized access and data exfiltration.

  55. 58

    dagger

    16.3Kdagger/dagger · Go

    Dagger is an open-source engine for automating software delivery: it builds, tests and ships any codebase, reliably and at scale.

  56. 59

    quarkus

    15.9Kquarkusio/quarkus · Java

    Quarkus is an open-source Java framework for writing cloud-native applications, built from the start with Linux containers in mind.

  57. 60

    skaffold

    15.9KGoogleContainerTools/skaffold · Go

    A command line tool that facilitates continuous development for Kubernetes applications: you iterate on your source code locally and it handles the workflow for building, pushing and deploying to local or remote clusters.

  58. 61

    gluetun

    15.8Kpassteque/gluetun · Go

    Gluetun is a lightweight, swiss-army-knife-like VPN client packaged as a single small Docker container. It tunnels through 20+ commercial VPN providers via OpenVPN or Wireguard and lets other containers or LAN devices share that connection.

  59. 62

    kaniko

    15.8KGoogleContainerTools/kaniko · Go

    It builds container images from a Dockerfile inside a container or Kubernetes cluster, without needing a Docker daemon — handy in places where a daemon can't run securely, like a standard Kubernetes cluster.

  60. 63

    kind

    15.6Kkubernetes-sigs/kind · Go

    kind (Kubernetes IN Docker) runs local Kubernetes clusters using Docker containers as 'nodes'. It was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but also works for local development or CI.

  61. 64

    dashboard

    15.4Kkubernetes-retired/dashboard · Go

    Kubernetes Dashboard is a general-purpose, web-based UI for Kubernetes clusters. From a browser you can manage the applications running in the cluster, troubleshoot them, and manage the cluster itself.

  62. 65

    devpod

    15.3Kloft-sh/devpod · Go

    DevPod is an open-source, client-only tool that builds reproducible developer environments from a devcontainer.json file and runs them on whatever backend you pick, from local Docker to Kubernetes or a cloud VM.

  63. 66

    cockpit

    15.2Kcockpit-project/cockpit · Python

    Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for administering Linux servers: an interactive dashboard in your browser that talks directly to the operating system.

  64. 67

    caprover

    15.2Kcaprover/caprover · TypeScript

    CapRover is a self-hosted platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that lets you deploy and manage web apps, APIs, and databases on your own server without manually configuring Docker or nginx.

  65. 68

    Proxmox

    15.2Ktteck/Proxmox · Shell

    A collection of shell scripts for Proxmox VE that let you interactively create and configure LXC containers and virtual machines, offering both quick default setups and advanced customizable ones.

  66. 69

    clashctl

    15Knelvko/clashctl · Shell

    A Shell toolkit that one-click deploys and manages mihomo/clash proxy environments on Linux, handling the core, Web dashboard, and all runtime dependencies.

  67. 70

    kamal

    14.6Kbasecamp/kamal · Ruby

    Kamal is a deployment tool that lets you ship web apps packaged as Docker containers to any server, from bare metal machines to cloud VMs, with zero downtime.

  68. 71

    jib

    14.5KGoogleContainerTools/jib · Java

    Jib builds optimized Docker and OCI container images for Java applications without needing a Docker daemon or deep Docker expertise.

  69. 72

    QloApps

    14.4KQloapps/QloApps · PHP

    QloApps is a free, open-source hotel management and reservation system: a booking engine plus a Property Management System (PMS) that powers your own hotel booking website.

  70. 73

    dockerfiles

    13.9Kjessfraz/dockerfiles · Dockerfile

    A collection of Dockerfiles for Docker images Jess Frazelle builds and uses on her own desktop and servers; almost all images are published on Docker Hub under the 'jess' namespace.

  71. 74

    gitpod

    13.8Kgitpod-io/gitpod · TypeScript

    Gitpod Classic was a developer platform for spinning up on-demand, pre-configured cloud development environments, but it has been renamed and succeeded by a new product called Ona, so this version is no longer recommended for new use.

  72. 75

    rook

    13.7Krook/rook · Go

    Rook is an open-source storage orchestrator for Kubernetes: it deploys and manages Ceph inside your cluster, turning Kubernetes itself into your storage platform.

  73. 76

    runc

    13.5Kopencontainers/runc · Go

    runc is a command-line tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI (Open Container Initiative) specification.

  74. 77

    distrobox

    13.1K89luca89/distrobox · Go

    Distrobox lets you run any Linux distribution inside your terminal using containers, giving you backward and forward software compatibility while keeping the environment tightly integrated with your host system.

  75. 78

    grype

    13Kanchore/grype · Go

    Grype is a command-line vulnerability scanner that checks container images, filesystems, and SBOMs for known security vulnerabilities.

  76. 79

    bocker

    12.7Kp8952/bocker · Shell

    Bocker is a minimal reimplementation of Docker written in roughly 100 lines of bash, built to demonstrate how core container functionality works under the hood.

  77. 80

    redpanda

    12.6Kredpanda-data/redpanda · C++

    Redpanda is a streaming data platform that is wire-compatible with the Apache Kafka API but is built from the ground up in C++ to be lighter, faster, and simpler to operate.

  78. 81

    hadolint

    12.5Khadolint/hadolint · Haskell

    Hadolint is a smarter Dockerfile linter written in Haskell that helps you build best-practice Docker images. It flags mistakes and bad patterns in your Dockerfile before you build the image.

  79. 82

    devbox

    12.4Kjetify-com/devbox · Go

    Devbox is a command-line tool that creates isolated, reproducible development shells by declaring packages in a devbox.json file, using Nix under the hood instead of Docker or a VM.

  80. 83

    waydroid

    12.4Kwaydroid/waydroid · Python

    Waydroid runs a full Android system in a container on top of a regular GNU/Linux system, letting you use Android apps alongside your Linux desktop.

  81. 84

    crossplane

    12.2Kcrossplane/crossplane · Go

    Crossplane is a framework for building cloud native control planes without writing code. It orchestrates applications and infrastructure across any environment through a declarative, Kubernetes-style API.

  82. 85

    docker.kitematic

    12.1Kdocker-archive-public/docker.kitematic · JavaScript

    Kitematic is a desktop GUI application for visually managing Docker containers on Mac, Linux and Windows.

  83. 86

    earthly

    12.1Kearthly/earthly · Go

    Earthly is a build automation framework that runs every build step inside containers, giving reproducible builds with a syntax that blends Dockerfile and Makefile conventions.

  84. 87

    docker.labs

    11.9Kdocker-archive-public/docker.labs · PHP

    A collection of hands-on labs and tutorials for learning how to use Docker with various tools, authored both by Docker and by community members.

  85. 88

    kubeasz

    11.4Keaszlab/kubeasz · Jinja

    kubeasz is a set of Ansible playbooks that install a full Kubernetes cluster on your own Linux servers, with docs explaining how the components interact. It is packaged to install cleanly from inside mainland China's network.

  86. 89

    skopeo

    11.3Kpodman-container-tools/skopeo · Go

    Skopeo is a command-line tool for working with remote container image registries: inspecting, copying, deleting, and syncing images without needing to pull them to the host.

  87. 90

    tini

    11.3Kkrallin/tini · C

    Tini is a tiny init process designed to run as PID 1 inside containers. It spawns your program as a child, reaps zombie processes, and forwards signals to the child so things like SIGTERM work correctly.

  88. 91

    osv-scanner

    11.2Kgoogle/osv-scanner · Go

    OSV-Scanner is Google's open-source command-line vulnerability scanner: it checks your project's dependencies against OSV.dev, an open vulnerability database, and reports which known vulnerabilities affect you.

  89. 92

    clair

    11.1Kquay/clair · Go

    Clair is an open source tool for static analysis of vulnerabilities in application container images, covering both OCI and Docker image formats.

  90. 93

    netshoot

    11Knicolaka/netshoot · Shell

    netshoot is a Docker and Kubernetes network troubleshooting container, a 'swiss-army' image packed with networking, DNS, performance, and security tools for debugging container and host network issues.

  91. 94

    eShop

    11Kdotnet/eShop · C#

    A reference .NET application implementing an e-commerce website ('AdventureWorks') using a services-based microservices architecture built on .NET Aspire.

  92. 95

    certified-kubernetes-administrator-course

    10.9Kkodekloudhub/certified-kubernetes-administrator-course · Shell

    This is a collection of notes and resources from the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) course hosted on KodeKloud, covering every exam topic from core concepts to networking and troubleshooting.

  93. 96

    distribution

    10.7Kdistribution/distribution · Go

    The open source registry implementation for storing and distributing container images and other content — the toolkit to pack, ship, store, and deliver container content, built on the OCI Distribution Specification.

  94. 97

    kompose

    10.6Kkubernetes/kompose · Go

    kompose is a command-line tool from the Kubernetes project that converts Docker Compose files into Kubernetes resources, built for developers moving from docker-compose to Kubernetes.

  95. 98

    Reloader

    10.5Kstakater/Reloader · Go

    Reloader is a Kubernetes controller that watches ConfigMaps and Secrets and automatically triggers rolling restarts of the workloads that reference them — Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets and more.

  96. 99

    nerdctl

    10.4Kcontainerd/nerdctl · Go

    nerdctl is a Docker-compatible command-line client for containerd, giving you the same docker-style UI/UX while exposing containerd-specific features that Docker does not have.

  97. 100

    charts

    10.4Kbitnami/charts · Go Template

    Bitnami's library of Helm charts: ready-made packages that launch popular applications on a Kubernetes cluster with a few helm commands instead of hand-written YAML.

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