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

Feature ctop docker stats lazydocker Portainer
Type TUI CLI TUI Web UI
Live metrics Yes Yes Yes Yes
Manage Yes No Yes Yes
Logs Yes No Yes Yes
Shell No No Yes Yes
Podman Yes N/A No Yes

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