TL;DR: The thing that actually forced my hand wasn't performance or security — it was a Slack message from our finance team asking why we had a $21/seat/month line item for "Docker Business" across 40 developers. Docker Desktop's licensing change (introduced back in 2022 but increasing

📖 Reading time: ~31 min

What's in this article

Why I Started Looking Past Docker

The Contenders I Actually Tested

Podman: The Closest Drop-In

nerdctl + containerd: What CI Actually Uses

Lima on macOS: The Missing Piece

Buildah: When You Only Need to Build Images

Rancher Desktop: The 'It Just Works' Option

Side-by-Side Comparison

Why I Started Looking Past Docker

The thing that actually forced my hand wasn't performance or security — it was a Slack message from our finance team asking why we had a $21/seat/month line item for "Docker Business" across 40 developers.…