Clair
v4.9.0 open-sourceThe section your link pointed to isn't on Clair's page any more, so we've brought you to the top.
Performs static analysis of vulnerabilities in OCIOCIOpen Container Initiative standard, maintained by the Linux Foundation, defining the image format and runtime spec that container tools share so images built once run anywhere OCI-compliant. and Docker container images via an API for indexing and matching.
clairctl -D admin pre v4.8.0
func (u *MyUpdater) UpdateVulnerabilitiesIter(ctx context.Context, iter Iterator) error {
// Use iter instead of returning a slice
}
curl http://localhost:6060/delta_pprof/mutex?debug=1
Summary
Clair is an open-source, Apache 2.0-licensed tool for static analysis of vulnerabilities in container images, covering both OCI and Docker formats. It runs as a service with an API: clients submit an image to be indexed, then match that index against known vulnerabilities, rather than running Clair as a one-off CLI scan. This suits platform and security teams building vulnerability scanning into a registry or container pipeline rather than developers wanting a quick local check. Its README ties it closely to Quay, the container registry it was built to back, positioning it as infrastructure for registry-level scanning rather than a standalone desktop tool. First committed in 2015, it remains active with 181 contributors and 139 commits over the past year, though the most recent release was 254 days ago.
Performs static analysis of vulnerabilities in OCI and Docker container images via an API for indexing and matching.
How Clair helps
Which vulnerabilities are present in an image before it reaches a registry?
indexes the image's contents through the API and matches that index against known vulnerability data, returning the matches rather than requiring a manual scan step
Which of my container images share a vulnerable package?
since indexing is decoupled from matching, the same stored index can be re-matched whenever vulnerability data updates, surfacing every image built on that package without re-scanning each one
Has a new vulnerability disclosure made an already-published image unsafe?
re-runs matching against the existing index when the vulnerability database changes, so images already indexed are re-checked without resubmitting them
Are my images built from OCI or Docker formats both covered by the same scanning pipeline?
accepts both formats through the same indexing and matching API, so a single service backs scanning regardless of which spec an image follows
Can my registry or pipeline get vulnerability answers without a local scan tool on every machine?
runs as a standing service with an API that clients call to submit images and retrieve match results, so the scanning logic lives centrally rather than on each developer's machine
Languages
Command line
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for Clair, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail Clair puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
15 entries
No entries match these filters.
- December 20251
- October 20241
- May 20241
- February 20241
- October 20231
- July 20231
- November 20221
- June 20212
- May 20211
- March 20211
- June 20201
- May 20171
- April 20161
- March 20161
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in quay/clair, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 14 +7 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 3 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 2 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 10 days first maintainer reply 1.6 hours
- Open backlog 19 of 683 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 19
- Contributors / month 1
- Commits / month 1
- Stars 11,057
- other 100%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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