Clair review
An open-source service that indexes container images and matches their contents to known vulnerabilities.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Clair is an open-source service for teams that need to identify known vulnerabilities in OCI and Docker container images. Clients submit image manifests through its API; Clair fetches and indexes the image layers, then matches their contents against vulnerability data. It is suited to teams that can operate self-hosted software and want image-focused scanning, rather than conventional source-code or runtime analysis.
Its central workflow is indexing, matching, and reporting. Clair produces index and vulnerability reports and continually ingests vulnerability data for matching; it can also notify teams when newly discovered vulnerabilities affect previously indexed manifests. Documentation describes support for Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, SUSE, Oracle, Alpine, AWS Linux, VMware Photon, and Python. This makes its coverage relevant to teams working with those distributions, while the scope remains container image contents rather than behavior during execution.
Clair can run as a combined process or as distributed processes, including on Kubernetes or OpenShift, so deployment can fit different self-hosted arrangements. It is open source, with community and documentation support. The published information describes deployable software rather than a hosted plan or commercial pricing. Choose Clair if your priority is ongoing static vulnerability matching for container images and you can manage its deployment and API workflow. Look elsewhere if you need runtime analysis, a hosted scanner, or a product with listed integrations beyond Clair's image-indexing and matching API.
Clair pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Indexes OCI and Docker manifests and image layers for static analysis
- Matches image contents against continuously ingested vulnerability data
- Can notify teams when new vulnerabilities affect indexed manifests
- Where it doesn't
- Analyzes image contents, not runtime behavior
- Requires self-hosted deployment and clients to submit manifests through its API
- Lists no integrations beyond its image-indexing and matching API
Clair fact sheet, pricing and score →
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