TL;DR — Quick Summary

ctop provides a top-like interface for container metrics. Monitor CPU, memory, network, and I/O for Docker and Podman containers in real-time.

ctop is htop for containers. See CPU, memory, and network for every container at a glance — and manage them with keyboard shortcuts.

Installation

# macOS
brew install ctop

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S ctop

# Binary download
sudo wget https://github.com/bcicen/ctop/releases/latest/download/ctop-linux-amd64 \
  -O /usr/local/bin/ctop && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ctop

Usage

# Launch (auto-detects Docker/Podman)
ctop

# Keyboard shortcuts:
# Enter   → Inspect container (detailed metrics)
# l       → View logs
# s       → Stop container
# r       → Restart container
# p       → Pause container
# d       → Remove container
# f       → Filter by name
# h       → Toggle header
# q       → Quit

# Sort by column
# Press the column header letter to sort

Comparison

Featurectopdocker statslazydockerPortainer
TypeTUICLITUIWeb UI
Live metricsYesYesYesYes
ManageYesNoYesYes
LogsYesNoYesYes
ShellNoNoYesYes
PodmanYesN/ANoYes

Summary

  • ctop shows real-time CPU, memory, network, and I/O per container
  • Interactive TUI with sorting, filtering, and container management
  • Supports Docker and Podman auto-detection
  • Start, stop, pause, restart, remove containers from keyboard
  • Lightweight Go binary — no dependencies