Alternatives to krunvm

A command-line tool that creates lightweight microVMs from OCI container images using libkrun. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.

Replacements

Listings that take over the same core job as krunvm.

  • Firecracker

    Run isolated workloads inside lightweight Linux microVMs.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxCommand line

    Firecracker runs lightweight Linux microVMs under the Apache-2.0 license, but runs only on Linux hosts and needs low-level configuration instead of building from OCI images.

  • Lima

    Launches Linux virtual machines from the command line on macOS, Linux and Windows, with file sharing and port forwarding set up automatically.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    Lima launches Linux VMs from the command line on macOS, Linux and Windows with automatic file sharing and port forwarding, and is open source under Apache-2.0.

  • Kata Containers

    An open-source container runtime that runs each container inside a lightweight virtual machine for stronger isolation.

    FreeOpen sourceLinux

    Kata Containers runs each container in a lightweight VM through containerd and existing container tooling, is open source, and targets Linux operators rather than individual developers.

  • Cloud Hypervisor

    An open source virtual machine monitor written in Rust for running modern cloud workloads on KVM.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxCommand line

    Cloud Hypervisor is an open source Rust VMM with fast boot and a REST API, but runs only on Linux KVM hosts and does not build VMs from OCI images.

Similar software

Related functionality, not a direct replacement.