Top 9 Docker Competitors & Alternatives in 2026

Updated on 12/24/2025

Find more companies/brands/products like Docker. We've shortlisted leading alternatives and mapped their strengths, pricing, and go-to-market focus.

Docker

Best for SMBs

Est. 2008 • 201-1k employees • Private

Docker is a private American software company that provides the Docker container platform, including Docker Desktop and Docker Hub, to help developers build, share, and run containerized applications.

Starts at $0 / user / month

Competitors

#1

Podman

Best for enterprises
Est. 2018 • 11-50 employees • Private

Open source container management tool for running and managing OCI-compliant containers, pods, and images across Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Starts at $0
#2

Rancher Desktop

Best for power users
Est. 2021 • 11-50 employees • Private

Rancher Desktop is an open-source desktop application that provides container management and a local Kubernetes environment for development on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Starts at $0
#3

OrbStack

Best for SMBs
Est. 2023 • 2-10 employees • Private

OrbStack is a fast, lightweight macOS tool for running Docker containers, Kubernetes clusters, and Linux virtual machines as a drop-in replacement for Docker Desktop.

Starts at $0 / user / month

Has a free trial
#4

Mirantis

Best for enterprises
Est. 1999 • 201-1k employees • Private

Mirantis is a private US-based cloud and AI infrastructure software company that provides open-source-based platforms, tools, and services for managing Kubernetes, containers, and multi-cloud environments for enterprise customers.

Starts at $600 / node / year
#5

containerd

Best for enterprises
Est. 2016 • 11-50 employees • Private

containerd is an open source, industry-standard container runtime project, maintained under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, that manages the full container lifecycle on Linux and Windows hosts.

Starts at $0
ChampSignal

Best for SMBs
Est. 2025 • 1 employee • Private

Get the insights your competitors don't want you to have. ChampSignal discovers, monitors, and analyzes your competitors. Like having a full-time competitive intelligence analyst.

Starts at $39 / month

Has a free trial

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#6

CRI-O

Best for enterprises
Est. 2016 • 1 employee • Private

CRI-O is an open-source, lightweight container runtime that implements the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) using Open Container Initiative (OCI)–compatible runtimes for running Kubernetes pods.

Starts at $0
#7

GitHub Container Registry

Best for enterprises
Est. 2020 • 1k+ employees • Private

GitHub Container Registry is a cloud-based container image registry service at ghcr.io for storing, managing, and distributing Docker and OCI images integrated with GitHub.

Starts at $0 / month
#8

Quay.io

Best for enterprises
Est. 2012 • 1k+ employees • Private

Quay.io is a hosted container image and OCI artifact registry service operated by Red Hat, offering secure storage, automated builds, and global distribution with free public repositories and paid private tiers.

Starts at $0 / account / month
#9

Harbor

Best for enterprises
Est. 2016 • 11-50 employees • Private

Harbor is an open source, CNCF‑graduated cloud native registry that stores, scans, and signs container images and other artifacts for secure Kubernetes and Docker environments.

Starts at $0

Market overlap

Asymmetric competition means that Docker is a competitor of these companies, but they are not necessarily competitors of Docker.

Kubernetes

Best for enterprises
Est. 2014 • 1k+ employees • Private

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Starts at $0
ChampSignal

Best for SMBs
Est. 2025 • 1 employee • Private

Get the insights your competitors don't want you to have. ChampSignal discovers, monitors, and analyzes your competitors. Like having a full-time competitive intelligence analyst.

Starts at $39 / month

Has a free trial

Generate My Report

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Category ownership, top pages, keywords, and gaps to exploit.

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