The best Docker Desktop alternatives

LXD suits teams and individuals managing containers or virtual machines on Linux, from laptop workloads to clustered data-center deployments.

OrbStack suits macOS developers running containers, Linux machines, or a local Kubernetes cluster.

Apptainer suits users running complex applications on shared systems or high-performance computing clusters.

Incus suits users managing containers and virtual machines across Linux infrastructure, including development and production workloads.

It suits developers who want a local container and Kubernetes environment with a graphical interface and selectable container engines.

Finch suits developers who need an open-source local container runtime across macOS, Windows, or Linux.

Podman suits developers and teams working with containers across Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Colima may suit developers who want container runtimes or a local Kubernetes cluster on macOS or Linux.

It suits teams embedding a container runtime in a larger system or using a Kubernetes cluster.

crun suits Linux users and teams managing OCI containers in self-hosted environments, including those who need rootless operation or documented…

It is for Linux users running containerd who need virtualized container isolation or sandboxing and can meet its host requirements.

gVisor suits teams running containers that include untrusted code on Linux hosts.

It suits Linux users and teams looking for an OCI runtime that can run containers rootlessly and integrate with Docker or Podman.

It suits developers using Apple-silicon Macs for backend work, reproducible builds, or local Kubernetes testing.

It suits HPC teams needing rootless, Linux-based containers with image registries and accelerator access.

Kata Containers suits users seeking container ecosystem integration with stronger isolation from lightweight virtual machines.

It suits Linux users and developers who need system or application containers without separate kernels.