Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Launch VM workloads securely and instantaneously, without VMs
Hello HN! We've been working on a new hypervisor https://kwarantine.xyz that can run strongly isolated containers. This is still a WIP, but we wanted to give the community an idea about our approach, its benefits, and various use cases it unlocks. Today, VMs are used to host containers, and make up for the lack of strong security as well as kernel isolation in containers. This work adds this missing security piece in containers. We plan on launching a free private beta soon. Meanwhile, we'd deeply appreciate any feedback, and happy to answer any questions here or on our slack…
Kwarantine is a hypervisor that runs strongly isolated containers without requiring virtual machines. It addresses container security limitations by providing kernel isolation and strong process isolation at the… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Launch VM workloads securely and instantaneously, without VMs launched in 2021; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
I wanted to see how fast an isolated code sandbox could start if I never had to boot a fresh VM. So instead of launching a new microVM per execution, I boot Firecracker once with Python and numpy already loaded, then snapshot the full VM state. Every execution after that creates a new KVM VM backed by a `MAP_PRIVATE` mapping of the snapshot memory, so Linux gives me copy-on-write pages automatically. That means each sandbox starts from an already-running Python process inside a real VM, runs the code, and exits. These are real KVM VMs, not containers: separate guest kernel, separate guest…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Create microVMs from OCI images. Contribute to slp/krunvm development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
I've built this to make it easy to host your own infra for lightweight VMs at large scale. Intended for exec of AI-generated code, for CICD runners, or for off-chain AI DApps. Mainly to avoid Docker-in-Docker dangers and mess. Super easy to use with CLI / Python SDK, friendly to AI engs who usually don't like to mess with VM orchestration and networking too much. Defense-in-depth philosophy. Would love to get feedback (and contributors: clear & exciting roadmap!), thx
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Build and run tiny vms from Dockerfiles. Small and sleek. - ottomatica/slim
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
HiddenVM — Use any desktop OS without leaving a trace. - aforensics/HiddenVM
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
"interesting" VM in C. Let's see how this goes. Contribute to tekknolagi/carp development by creating an account on GitHub.
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Virtink is a Kubernetes add-on for running Cloud Hypervisor virtual machines. By using Cloud Hypervisor as the underlying hypervisor, Virtink enables a lightweight and secure way to run fully virtualized workloads in a canonical Kubernetes cluster.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Build and run tiny vms from Dockerfiles. Small and sleek. - GitHub - ottomatica/slim at 2.x
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Hi HN! We’re Yann, Edouard, and Bastien from Koyeb (https://www.koyeb.com/). We’re building a platform to let you deploy full-stack apps on high-performance hardware around the world, with zero configuration. We provide a “global serverless feeling”, without the hassle of re-writing all your apps or managing k8s complexity [1]. We built Scaleway, a cloud service provider where we designed ARM servers and provided them as cloud servers. During our time there, we saw customers struggle with the same issues while trying to deploy full-stack applications and APIs resiliently. As…
2023 · koyeb.com · its alternatives →
- 10
I've long wanted to harness QEMU/KVM for my desktop virtual machines, but I'm befuddled by virt-manager's lack of support for working NVIDIA 3D acceleration, dogmatic embrace of ugly XML, and the puzzling UI decision of having to click what seems like 15 buttons to attach an ISO to a VM image. When I further learned that NVIDIA's broken 3D acceleration is the fault of libvirt as opposed to QEMU's virtio driver, I had an idea... Behold, vm-curator! A fast and friendly VM management TUI written in Rust. You can create, configure, organize, and manage VMs directly with QEMU. No libvert. No…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Contribute to libriscv/drogon-sandbox development by creating an account on GitHub.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
hey guys. the other day i was migrating hosting providers and i just needed something not too heavy and convenient to spin up my backups for awhile and realised there is almost nothing out there. kimchi hasn't been updated for years and cockpit is heavy. so here's something i came up with in a couple hours because of a sudden urge, nothing fancy just basic creation with cloud init, lifecycle management and image/storage, but it's modern-ish and it compiles to a 8.4mb binary inclusive of the embedded web UI, CLI and API, and only dep is libvirt.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
HVM1 (2022): a massively parallel, optimal functional runtime in Rust - HigherOrderCO/HVM1
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
This is a project I made over the weekend. What if when you SSH'd into a machine, instead of giving you a user login, it would provision a new microVM just for you? It's like a little SimCity for VMs. This turned out to be a lot of fun, and I've wanted to make my own custom SSH server for a while now, with its fancy progress bars and color animations. The hardest part was definitely debugging VM setup, boot, and networking though! Compiling the Linux kernel with all the right configs was difficult. For a while I had issues with silent hangs on boot due to lack of available system entropy, on…
2025 · ekzhang.substack.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Over the past few months, as we scaled our internal AI Agents, we hit a dead end: Running LLM-generated arbitrary code in Docker is basically running naked on security due to container escape risks. But using full traditional VMs takes minutes to boot and eats too much memory to support high-density concurrency. We loved the developer experience of SaaS sandboxes on the market, but they are closed-source, expensive, and have too high a barrier to entry for self-hosting. So, our team decided to build our own. After months of grinding, using RustVMM and KVM, we built a blazing-fast,…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
:aerial_tramway: Minimal linux container runtime. Contribute to flouthoc/vas-quod development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18BI
Self-hosted virtual machines for background coding agents.
Jun 2026 · bastion.computer · its alternatives →
- 19
A fast, hackable and simple x64 VT-x hypervisor for Windows and Linux. Builtin userspace sandbox and introspection engine. - asamy/ksm
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
A fast, rootless sandbox and virtual resource runtime for any workload, including untrusted and AI-generated code. Daemonless: a real, kernel-enforced container in ~3.5 ms from an OCI image, out of one static binary - getkern/kern
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Open-source agent runtime — SSH-native isolation, eBPF egress policy, Kubernetes + LXC backends, GPU passthrough, MCP-native CLI - FootprintAI/Containarium
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Dear HN community! Looking forward to hearing your feedback on ACE (assured confidential execution), technology that implements VM-based trusted execution environment (TEE) for embedded RISC-V systems with focus on a formally verified and auditable firmware. We target high-assurance systems that can benefit from compartmentalization and hardware-backed isolation. The key ingredient called security monitor (firmware) is implemented in Rust. The formal specification is defined as annotations directly in code and gets translated to Coq using RefinedRust automation. ACE design is now part of the…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
We needed a secure, multi-tenant way to offer shell accounts to users, but most VMMs were using too much memory and containers are unsafe. With clone, VMs are now more memory efficient than containers in most cases. Since many other projects on HN looked like they were doing this too, open sourcing this was the right thing to do. Feel free to use in whole or in part as you see fit!
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24HS
2016 · blog.hyper.sh · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Sub-millisecond VM sandboxes using CoW memory forking alternatives
- krunvm – Create and run lightweight VMs from OCI images alternatives
- Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec alternatives
- Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles alternatives
- HiddenVM – Use any desktop OS without leaving a trace alternatives
- A small virtual machine written in C alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →