What is Incus used for?

Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager for Linux with a REST API, scaling from one machine to a cluster, forked from LXD. It is a good fit for running a small private cloud and replacing LXD in existing setups.

Is Incus open source?

Yes. Incus is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at lxc/incus and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Incus is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Incus?

Yes. Incus can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is Incus an alternative to?

Incus is an open-source alternative to Amazon EC2, VMware vSphere, Google Compute Engine and Azure Virtual Machines. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon EC2 include LXD, Harvester and Apache CloudStack.

Is Incus actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Incus was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v7.5.1, published on 25 September 2026. The project has 6.3k stars on GitHub.

Incus: open-source alternative to Amazon EC2, VMware vSphere

About Incus

Incus manages system containers and virtual machines. It gives a single, unified way to run and manage full Linux systems inside either, with images for many Linux distributions, including official Ubuntu images and community-provided ones.

It is built around a REST API and runs anywhere from a lone instance on one host to a cluster that fills a data center rack, so it can serve both development and production workloads. The README describes it as a way to set up something that feels like a small private cloud, and suggests it for people who want to containerize different environments, run virtual machines or manage infrastructure cost-effectively. A try-it page lets you test Incus online.

Incus began as a community fork of LXD, made after Canonical took over that project from the Linux Containers community, and it is maintained by the same developers who first created LXD. It is written in Go, has no contributor license agreement and remains under the Apache 2.0 licence.

Key features

System containers and virtual machines
Images for many Linux distributions
REST API
Scales from one host to a cluster
Online try-it demo

Good fit for

→Running a small private cloud
→Replacing LXD in existing setups

Built with: Go
Tags: containers; virtual-machines; lxd; linux; virtualization; rest-api; go; infrastructure

Incus: questions and answers

What is Incus used for?: Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager for Linux with a REST API, scaling from one machine to a cluster, forked from LXD. It is a good fit for running a small private cloud and replacing LXD in existing setups.
Is Incus open source?: Yes. Incus is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at lxc/incus and is written mainly in Go.
Is Incus free?: Yes. Incus is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Incus?: Yes. Incus can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is Incus an alternative to?: Incus is an open-source alternative to Amazon EC2, VMware vSphere, Google Compute Engine and Azure Virtual Machines. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon EC2 include LXD, Harvester and Apache CloudStack.
Is Incus actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Incus was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v7.5.1, published on 25 September 2026. The project has 6.3k stars on GitHub.