# Best Runtime Software *By [Adam Crivello](https://research.g2.com/insights/author/adam-crivello)* Container runtime solutions enable container usage by providing APIs and abstracting technical components. They facilitate the execution of container lifecycle commands against each container instance. Runtime environments couple the configuration files with the actual files that are necessary to execute the application. Companies use these tools to launch applications and manage the container application lifecycles. With container runtimes specifications, companies can specify how file systems are unpacked, built, and configured. They allow developers to reduce system overhead, share resources, and enforce access capabilities. To qualify for inclusion in the Container Runtime category, a product must: - Define execution specifications - Allow users to set access policies - Allow users to adjust and control isolation layers - Combine container images, configurations, and file systems ## How Many Runtime Software Products Does G2 Track? **Total Products under this Category:** 17 ### Category Stats (May 2026) - **Average Rating**: 4.38/5 *Last updated: May 27, 2026* ## How Does G2 Rank Runtime Software Products? **Why You Can Trust G2's Software Rankings:** - 30 Analysts and Data Experts - 100+ Authentic Reviews - 17+ Products - Unbiased Rankings G2's software rankings are built on verified user reviews, rigorous moderation, and a consistent research methodology maintained by a team of analysts and data experts. Each product is measured using the same transparent criteria, with no paid placement or vendor influence. While reviews reflect real user experiences, which can be subjective, they offer valuable insight into how software performs in the hands of professionals. Together, these inputs power the G2 Score, a standardized way to compare tools within every category. ## Which Runtime Software Is Best for Your Use Case? - **Leader:** [IBM Storage Ceph](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-storage-ceph/reviews) - **Easiest to Use:** [IBM Storage Ceph](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-storage-ceph/reviews) - **Top Trending:** [IBM Storage Ceph](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-storage-ceph/reviews) - **Best Free Software:** [Quobyte](https://www.g2.com/products/quobyte/reviews) ## What Are the Top-Rated Runtime Software Products in 2026? ### 1. [IBM Storage Ceph](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-storage-ceph/reviews) IBM Storage Ceph is a massively scalable, open source, distributed storage system. It is comprised of an object store, block store, and a distributed file system. **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 21 **How Do G2 Users Rate IBM Storage Ceph?** - **Quality of Support:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 8.0/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.0/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind IBM Storage Ceph?** - **Seller:** [IBM](https://www.g2.com/sellers/ibm) - **Year Founded:** 1911 - **HQ Location:** Armonk, New York, United States - **Twitter:** @IBMSecurity (74,796 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/1009/ (324,553 employees on LinkedIn®) - **Ownership:** SWX:IBM **Who Uses This Product?** - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services - **Company Size:** 36% Mid-Market, 32% Enterprise ### 2. [Red Hat Runtimes](https://www.g2.com/products/red-hat-runtimes/reviews) Red Hat Runtimes is a collection of cloud-native runtimes for developing Java™ or JavaScript applications on OpenShift. It provides portability across multiple cloud infrastructures, allowing the developer to use microservices, containers, and DevOps automation. **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 60 **How Do G2 Users Rate Red Hat Runtimes?** - **Quality of Support:** 8.6/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Red Hat Runtimes?** - **Seller:** [Red Hat](https://www.g2.com/sellers/red-hat) - **Year Founded:** 1993 - **HQ Location:** Raleigh, NC - **Twitter:** @RedHat (300,364 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/3545/ (19,305 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Who Uses This:** Software Engineer - **Top Industries:** Information Technology and Services, Computer Software - **Company Size:** 47% Enterprise, 28% Mid-Market ### 3. [GlusterFS](https://www.g2.com/products/glusterfs/reviews) GlusterFS is an open source, distributed storage system capable of scaling to several petabytes and handling thousands of clients. **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 27 **How Do G2 Users Rate GlusterFS?** - **Quality of Support:** 7.6/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 8.4/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.0/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind GlusterFS?** - **Seller:** [Red Hat](https://www.g2.com/sellers/red-hat) - **Year Founded:** 1993 - **HQ Location:** Raleigh, NC - **Twitter:** @RedHat (300,364 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/3545/ (19,305 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Top Industries:** Computer Software - **Company Size:** 44% Small-Business, 33% Mid-Market ### 4. [Apache Karaf](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-karaf/reviews) Apache Karaf provides dual polymorphic container and application bootstrapping paradigms to the Enterprise. **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 24 **How Do G2 Users Rate Apache Karaf?** - **Quality of Support:** 7.4/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 9.3/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 7.6/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Apache Karaf?** - **Seller:** [The Apache Software Foundation](https://www.g2.com/sellers/the-apache-software-foundation) - **Year Founded:** 1999 - **HQ Location:** Wakefield, MA - **Twitter:** @TheASF (66,161 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/215982/ (2,408 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 33% Mid-Market, 33% Small-Business ### 5. [containerd](https://www.g2.com/products/containerd/reviews) - an industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability. **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 11 **How Do G2 Users Rate containerd?** - **Quality of Support:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind containerd?** - **Seller:** [The Linux Foundation](https://www.g2.com/sellers/the-linux-foundation) - **Year Founded:** 2015 - **HQ Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Twitter:** @hyperledger (295 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/10851358/ (92 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Top Industries:** Computer Software - **Company Size:** 55% Small-Business, 36% Enterprise ### 6. [Apache ServiceMix](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-servicemix/reviews) Apache ServiceMix is a flexible, open-source integration container that unifies the features and functionality of Apache ActiveMQ, Camel, CXF, and Karaf into a powerful runtime platform you can use to build your own integrations solutions. It provides a complete, enterprise ready ESB. **Average Rating:** 3.9/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 13 **How Do G2 Users Rate Apache ServiceMix?** - **Quality of Support:** 7.6/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 7.2/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Apache ServiceMix?** - **Seller:** [The Apache Software Foundation](https://www.g2.com/sellers/the-apache-software-foundation) - **Year Founded:** 1999 - **HQ Location:** Wakefield, MA - **Twitter:** @TheASF (66,161 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/215982/ (2,408 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 38% Enterprise, 31% Small-Business ### 7. [NexentaStor](https://www.g2.com/products/nexentastor/reviews) Nexenta Systems offers NexentaStor, a platform delivering ultra-scalable, cloud and virtualization-optimized storage solutions. **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 4 **How Do G2 Users Rate NexentaStor?** - **Quality of Support:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind NexentaStor?** - **Seller:** [DataDirect Networks (DDN)](https://www.g2.com/sellers/datadirect-networks-ddn) - **Year Founded:** 1998 - **HQ Location:** Los Angeles, California, United States - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/ddn/ (1,221 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 50% Mid-Market, 50% Small-Business ### 8. [Diego](https://www.g2.com/products/diego/reviews) Diego is Cloud Foundry's container management system, responsible for scheduling, running, and monitoring application instances and tasks. It ensures applications are efficiently distributed across virtual machines (VMs, maintains desired application states, and automatically recovers from failures to uphold high availability. Key Features and Functionality: - Container Orchestration: Diego manages the lifecycle of application containers, handling their creation, execution, and termination. - Task and Process Management: It differentiates between one-time tasks and long-running processes (LRPs, allocating resources accordingly to optimize performance. - Self-Healing Mechanism: Diego monitors application health and automatically restarts instances that have crashed, ensuring continuous operation. - Load Balancing: Through the Diego Auction system, it balances workloads across VMs, optimizing resource utilization and application resilience. - Platform Agnostic: Built with flexibility in mind, Diego supports various operating systems and architectures, facilitating diverse deployment environments. Primary Value and Problem Solved: Diego addresses the complexities of container orchestration within Cloud Foundry by automating the deployment, scaling, and management of applications. It ensures that applications run reliably and efficiently, automatically handling failures and distributing workloads to maintain optimal performance. This automation reduces operational overhead, allowing developers to focus on building applications without concerning themselves with the underlying infrastructure. **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 3 **How Do G2 Users Rate Diego?** - **Quality of Support:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Diego?** - **Seller:** [Cloud Foundry](https://www.g2.com/sellers/cloud-foundry) - **Year Founded:** 2011 - **HQ Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Twitter:** @cloudfoundry (75,300 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/2509135/ (6 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 67% Mid-Market, 33% Small-Business ### 9. [Quobyte](https://www.g2.com/products/quobyte/reviews) From our humble beginnings through today, Quobyte has been empowering customers by providing real software storage so that they can keep up with the ever-increasing amounts of data in today’s data-driven world. We take data storage and make it authentically software-based and unconditionally simple. We enable you to scale performance while managing large amounts of data and streamlining administration. Whether it’s in the cloud, on-prem or a hybrid of the two, Quobyte’s POSIX compatible, distributed parallel file system aids users so they can build a truly flexible software-based storage infrastructure. To find out more about real software storage, visit quobyte.com. **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 5 **How Do G2 Users Rate Quobyte?** - **Quality of Support:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Quobyte?** - **Seller:** [Quobyte](https://www.g2.com/sellers/quobyte) - **Year Founded:** 2013 - **HQ Location:** Santa Clara, US - **Twitter:** @Quobyte (408 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/quobyte/ (25 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 60% Mid-Market, 40% Small-Business ### 10. [cri-o](https://www.g2.com/products/cri-o/reviews) CRI-O is an implementation of the Kubernetes CRI (Container Runtime Interface) to enable using OCI (Open Container Initiative) compatible runtimes. It is a lightweight alternative to using Docker as the runtime for kubernetes. **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 2 **How Do G2 Users Rate cri-o?** - **Quality of Support:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 5.8/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind cri-o?** - **Seller:** [cri-o](https://www.g2.com/sellers/cri-o) - **HQ Location:** N/A - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/No-Linkedin-Presence-Added-Intentionally-By-DataOps (1 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 100% Mid-Market ### 11. [Diamanti](https://www.g2.com/products/diamanti/reviews) Diamanti is an appliance built to combine the ease of hyperconverged infrastructure with the unparalleled performance of bare-metal containers. **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 3 **How Do G2 Users Rate Diamanti?** - **Quality of Support:** 5.6/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 5.8/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 7.2/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Diamanti?** - **Seller:** [Diamanti](https://www.g2.com/sellers/diamanti) - **Year Founded:** 2014 - **HQ Location:** San Jose, US - **Twitter:** @Diamanticom (693 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/diamanti (142 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 100% Small-Business ### 12. [Payara Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/payara-cloud/reviews) Payara Cloud is the next generation of cloud native application runtime. It offers a flexible and powerful way to easily run your Jakarta EE apps on the cloud. Simply select your WAR, click deploy, and watch your apps run on the cloud – automatically, like magic. Any web application following the Jakarta Web Profile specification can be uploaded and it will run in a containerized Payara Micro instance. As an app developer we know you’re expected to do everything from writing the code to deploying the application. We also know the potential problems you face when provisioning the Jakarta EE runtime, TLS and SSL certificates, the Pod, setting up your containers, and the nightmare of making it all work with Kubernetes… And so we’re creating an easier way to run your apps on the cloud. Payara Cloud is a “serverless” runtime that runs and scales Jakarta EE/MicroProfile applications seamlessly. Unlike building an application server deployment on a Cloud Infrastructure as a Service or on raw Kubernetes, Payara Cloud takes care of provisioning infrastructure, installation, configuration, deployment and scaling of your application. **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 2 **How Do G2 Users Rate Payara Cloud?** - **Quality of Support:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Payara Cloud?** - **Seller:** [Payara Services Ltd](https://www.g2.com/sellers/payara-services-ltd) - **Year Founded:** 2014 - **HQ Location:** Global, GB - **Twitter:** @Payara_Fish (10,027 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/5349063/ (48 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 50% Mid-Market, 50% Small-Business ### 13. [Sheepdog](https://www.g2.com/products/sheepdog/reviews) Sheepdog is a distributed object storage system for volume and container services and manages the disks and nodes intelligently. Sheepdog features ease of use, simplicity of code and can scale out to thousands of nodes. **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 2 **How Do G2 Users Rate Sheepdog?** - **Quality of Support:** 1.7/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 1.7/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Sheepdog?** - **Seller:** [Nippon Telegraph and Telephone](https://www.g2.com/sellers/nippon-telegraph-and-telephone) - **Year Founded:** 1985 - **HQ Location:** Chiyoda-ku, JP - **Twitter:** @NTTPR (96,289 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/92814 (6,531 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 50% Small-Business, 50% Enterprise ### 14. [Springpath](https://www.g2.com/products/springpath/reviews) Springpath is the pioneer in hyperconvergence software, turning standard servers of choice into a single pool of compute and storage resources. The Springpath Data Platform eliminates the need for network storage and intuitively integrates into existing management tools to maximize operational efficiency. **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 2 **How Do G2 Users Rate Springpath?** - **Quality of Support:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind Springpath?** - **Seller:** [Springpath](https://www.g2.com/sellers/springpath) - **Year Founded:** 2012 - **HQ Location:** Sunnyvale, US - **Twitter:** @SpringpathInc (580 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/3517498 (18 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 50% Small-Business, 50% Enterprise ### 15. [mimik edgeEngine](https://www.g2.com/products/mimik-edgeengine/reviews) edgeEngine is a downloadable runtime software that enables smart devices to act as a cloud servers when plausible. the engine works on any smart device with any OS across any network and connected to any cloud. **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 1 **How Do G2 Users Rate mimik edgeEngine?** - **Quality of Support:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Ease of Use:** 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind mimik edgeEngine?** - **Seller:** [mimik Technology](https://www.g2.com/sellers/mimik-technology) - **Year Founded:** 2021 - **HQ Location:** Oakland, US - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/418809 (80 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 100% Small-Business ### 16. [OpenEBS](https://www.g2.com/products/openebs/reviews) OpenEBS is containerized storage for containers integrated tightly into K8S and other environments and based on distributed block storage and containerization of storage control. **Average Rating:** 5.0/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 1 **How Do G2 Users Rate OpenEBS?** - **Quality of Support:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10) - **Has the product been a good partner in doing business?:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.4/10) - **Ease of Use:** 10.0/10 (Category avg: 8.0/10) **Who Is the Company Behind OpenEBS?** - **Seller:** [OpenEBS](https://www.g2.com/sellers/openebs) - **Year Founded:** 2016 - **HQ Location:** Fort Lauderdale, US - **Twitter:** @openebs (2,943 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/13308308 (2 employees on LinkedIn®) **Who Uses This Product?** - **Company Size:** 100% Small-Business ### 17. [UNICOM PurifyPlus](https://www.g2.com/products/unicom-purifyplus/reviews) UNICOM Digital Transformation Toolkit supports faster multichannel application development, especially for the banking industry. It provides runtime infrastructure based on IBM WebSphere Application Server to deliver targeted, multichannel marketing campaigns for retail banking. UDTT provides a development environment with design templates to support high-volume and transactional-oriented banking functions. **Who Is the Company Behind UNICOM PurifyPlus?** - **Seller:** [UNICOM Global](https://www.g2.com/sellers/unicom-global) - **Year Founded:** 1981 - **HQ Location:** Mission Hills, CA - **Twitter:** @unicomglobal (160 Twitter followers) - **LinkedIn® Page:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/unicom-global (101 employees on LinkedIn®) ## What Is Runtime Software? [Containerization Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/containerization)