Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Earthly
Build anything via containers
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Earthly launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1EB
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Turn your AGENTS.md, engineering standards, and process docs into deterministic enforcement in AI authoring loops and on PRs — in minutes, not quarters.
2021 · earthly.dev · its alternatives →
- 3DE
Devbox is a command-line tool that lets you easily create isolated shells and containers. You start by defining the list of packages required by your development environment, and devbox uses that definition to create an isolated environment just for your application. In practice, Devbox works similar to a package manager like yarn – except the packages it manages are at the operating-system level (the sort of thing you would normally install with brew or apt-get). See it in action: https://youtu.be/WMBaXQZmDoA
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4CY
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5DC
I've been frustrated with dependency hell and clutter on my VPS from dev, so I built Devbox: a lightweight, open-source CLI tool that spins up isolated development environments using Docker. Each project runs in its own container, but your code stays in simple flat folders on the host machine—no messing with volumes or sync issues. Environments are disposable, so you can nuke and recreate them without losing your work. Key features: - Instant setup: `devbox init my-project` and you're in a fresh env with `devbox shell`. - Configurable via JSON: Define packages, services, and more in a…
Sep 2025 · devbox.ar0.eu · its alternatives →
- 6HM
A developer's machine accumulates tools fast. A Rust CLI you compiled last year, a Python formatter installed via `uv`, a language server pulled from npm, a terminal emulator from a curl script, a Go binary built from source. Each came from a different package manager, each with its own install incantation you half-remember. I wanted a way to declare what I need without adopting a complex system like Nix or Ansible just for a single laptop. The result was a plain old Makefile. I wrote a short post on using Make (along with a tiny bash script and fzf) to create a searchable, single-command…
Mar 2026 · thottingal.in · its alternatives →
- 7BY
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
- 9
zero▲94One command to deploy Docker containers to your own server
Apr 2026 · shipzero.sh · its alternatives →
- 10BB
This project addresses the inefficiencies of traditional Dockerfile-based container builds where each customization layer creates storage bloat through duplicate dependencies from repeated apt-get install commands, network inefficiency from redundant package downloads across different images, and slow iteration cycles requiring full rebuilds of all previous steps. Our solution enables building minimal base images from scratch using debootstrap that precisely include only required components in the initial build, while allowing creation of specialized variants (Java, Kafka, etc.) from these…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Hi HN, I've been building Nucleus, a lightweight Linux container runtime focused on two workloads: ephemeral AI-agent sandboxes and declarative NixOS services. It's a single Rust binary, no daemon. It is not a Docker replacement and not a strict subset of Docker either. I dropped the entire image-and-distribution half (no Dockerfile, no layers, no registry, no pull/push, no persistent storage layer) in exchange for going deeper on isolation and reproducibility. The rootfs is either a directory copied into tmpfs (agent mode) or a Nix-built closure mounted read-only (production mode). If…
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12NS
Hello! This is Edgar and Robbie and we built nix-snapshotter. nix-snapshotter brings native understanding of Nix packages to containerd. We built this because Nix is a great fit for making efficient containers. They don't need an OS because Nix captures all dependencies exactly. However, the current process of creating Nix images is subpar because one needs to transform Nix packages into a format that container runtimes understand. Using nix-snapshotter, instead of downloading image layers, packages come directly from the Nix store. Packages can be fetched from a binary cache or built on the…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
- 14AD
Hello HN! We just launched a new feature we built at Depot that accelerates Docker image builds on your local machine in a team environment, and we wanted to share some of the details with you all. The launch blog post: https://depot.dev/blog/local-builds Depot is a hosted container build service - we run fully managed Intel and Arm remote build machines in AWS, with large instance sizes and SSD cache disks. The machines run BuildKit, the build engine that powers Docker, so generally anything you can `docker build`, you can also `depot build`. Most people use Depot in CI,…
2023 · its alternatives →
- 15
ohai! I've released Lightwhale 3, which is possibly the easiest way to self-host Docker containers. It's a free, immutable Linux system purpose-built to live-boot straight into a working Docker Engine, thereby shortcutting the need for installation, configuration, and maintenance. Its simple design makes it easy to learn, and its low memory footprint should make it especially attractive during these times of RAMageddon. If this has piqued your interest, do check it out, along with its easy-to-follow Getting Started guide. In any event, have a nice day! =)
Apr 2026 · lightwhale.asklandd.dk · its alternatives →
- 16
We kept hitting the same wall: you clone some arbitrary repo and just want it to run without any configuration work. So we built Keystone, an open source tool that spins up a Modal sandbox, runs Claude Code inside it, and produces a working .devcontainer/ config (Dockerfile, devcontainer.json, test runner) for any git repo. We build on the dev container standard, so the output works with VS Code and GitHub Codespaces out of the box. Main use cases: reproducible dev/CI environments, self-describing repos, and safely sandboxed coding agents. Our goal is to encourage all repos to…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17BI
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
- 19
Livinity▲90Open-source homeserver OS with a built-in AI agent
Jul 2026 · livinity.io · its alternatives →
- 20
Hi HN - We've been working on Coasts (“containerized hosts”) to make it so you can run multiple localhost instances, and multiple docker-compose runtimes, across git worktrees on the same computer. Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRiySdGQZZA. There are also videos in our docs that give a good conceptual overview: https://coasts.dev/docs/learn-coasts-videos. Agents can make code changes in different worktrees in isolation, but it's hard for them to test their changes without multiple localhost runtimes that are isolated and scoped to those…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21NM
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22IB
2024 · manifest.build · its alternatives →
- 23FN
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24BA
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Earthly – Build automation for the container era alternatives
- Earthly – Better Builds alternatives
- Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers alternatives
- Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS alternatives
- Devbox – Containers for better dev environments alternatives
- Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →