About RuntimeDog

Purpose

RuntimeDog is a directory of runtime environments for developers and infrastructure engineers. It catalogs language runtimes, WebAssembly engines, containers, microVMs, edge platforms, and serverless offerings with objective performance metrics and classification.

Scope

Runtimes included in this directory:

Language Runtimes — V8, Bun, Deno, JVM, CPython, etc.
WebAssembly — Wasmtime, Wasmer, WasmEdge, etc.
Containers — Docker, Podman, containerd, etc.
MicroVMs — Firecracker, gVisor, Kata Containers, etc.
Edge Runtimes — Cloudflare Workers, Deno Deploy, Vercel Edge, etc.
Serverless — AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, etc.

Classification

Each runtime is classified using a 3-tier taxonomy:

Tier	Name	Values
0	Core Type	Language, WebAssembly, Container, MicroVM, Edge, Serverless, Unikernel
1	Execution Model	Interpreted, JIT, AOT, Hybrid
2	Interface	CLI, API, SDK, Platform, Embedded

RuntimeScore

Each runtime receives a score (0–100) based on weighted metrics:

Metric	Weight	Description
Cold Start	25%	Time to first execution (ms)
Memory	20%	Base memory footprint (MB)
Isolation	20%	Security boundary (process/container/microvm/hardware)
Startup Overhead	15%	Initialization overhead (ms)
Language Support	10%	Number of supported languages
Maturity	10%	Production readiness (experimental/beta/stable/production)

Grades: A+ (90+), A (85+), A- (80+), B+ (75+), B (70+), B- (65+), C+ (60+), C (55+), C- (50+), D (45+), F (<45)

Disclaimer

Performance metrics are indicative and may vary based on workload, configuration, and hardware. Data is collected from official documentation, benchmarks, and community reports.

RuntimeDog is an independent project and is not affiliated with any runtime vendor. Trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Data & API

Runtime data is stored in YAML format and validated against a Zod schema. A static JSON index is available at API documentation for programmatic access.