How to Monitor Container Resource Usage with Apple container stats

Jun 12, 2026

Problem

When I run multiple containers on my Mac, I need to know how much CPU and memory each one uses. Is the database container eating too much memory? Is the web server hitting the CPU limit? Without monitoring, I am guessing.

Container Stats Basics

The container stats command shows real-time resource usage for running containers:

container stats

This opens an interactive live display that updates continuously — similar to the top command. Press Ctrl+C to exit.

Sample Output

CONTAINER NAME   CPU %     MEM USAGE / LIMIT     NET RX    NET TX    BLOCK I/O     PIDS
my-web-server    12.5%     120.5 MiB / 2.00 GiB  1.2 GB    3.4 GB    256 MB / 0 B   8
my-database       8.2%     845.3 MiB / 4.00 GiB  3.4 GB    1.2 GB    4.5 GB / 2 GB  34

Key metrics explained:

CPU %: percentage of available cores. A dual-core container can show up to 200%.
MEM USAGE: current memory usage vs configured limit.
NET RX/TX: network bytes received and transmitted.
BLOCK I/O: disk read and write volumes.
PIDS: number of processes inside the container.

Monitor Specific Containers

Pass container names or IDs:

container stats my-web-server my-database

Single Snapshot

For one-time checks, use --no-stream:

container stats --no-stream my-web-server

CONTAINER NAME   CPU %     MEM USAGE / LIMIT     NET RX    NET TX    BLOCK I/O     PIDS
my-web-server    12.5%     120.5 MiB / 2.00 GiB  1.2 GB    3.4 GB    256 MB / 0 B   8

JSON Output for Automation

For monitoring scripts, use JSON format:

container stats --format json --no-stream my-web-server

[
  {
    "name": "my-web-server",
    "cpu_percent": 12.5,
    "memory_usage": 120500000,
    "memory_limit": 2147483648,
    "net_rx": 1200000000,
    "net_tx": 3400000000,
    "block_read": 256000000,
    "block_write": 0,
    "pids": 8
  }
]

Other supported output formats: yaml and toml.

Use Cases

I use container stats for:

Finding memory leaks: watch memory usage over time with --no-stream in a loop
Detecting CPU spikes: correlated with recent deployments
Verifying resource limits: confirming --memory and --cpus are applied correctly
Capacity planning: figuring out how many containers fit in the system’s resources
Debugging performance regressions: comparing before/after a change

while true; do
  container stats --no-stream --format json my-app | \
    python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin)[0]; print(d['name'], d['memory_usage'])"
  sleep 5
done

Summary

In this post, I showed how to monitor container resource usage with container stats. The key point is that it supports interactive live monitoring, single snapshots, and JSON output for automation — covering ad-hoc debugging and scripted monitoring.

Final Words + More Resources

My intention with this article was to help others share my knowledge and experience. If you want to contact me, you can contact by email: Email me

Here are also the most important links from this article along with some further resources that will help you in this scope:

👨‍💻 Apple container Stats Command Reference
👨‍💻 Docker container stats Documentation

Oh, and if you found these resources useful, don’t forget to support me by starring the repo on GitHub!