Buildah
Container image builder in Developer tools
People recommend Buildah for building container images rootless and pairing with Podman. Critics say it is slow with Dockerfiles and has weak cache checking.
People recommend Buildah for building container images rootless and pairing with Podman. Critics say it is slow with Dockerfiles and has weak cache checking.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 69%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Pairs well with Podman
“I would also add buildah and skopeo to the mix of things that podman does better.”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC” “I've really appreciated RH's work both on podman/buildah”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “What Has Docker Become?” “I could get this working with Podman/buildah however.”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “A Decade of Docker Containers” Builds images rootless without root
“buildah frees you from Dockerfile and lets you build containers completely rootlesslessly.”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “What Has Docker Become?” “buildah lets you build an efficient OCI image from scratch without needing root”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “I got hacked: My Hetzner server started mining Monero” Efficient images without leftover layers
“I also used buildah to combine everything into an single layer to prevent removed files from wasting space.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Docker pulls more than it needs to” “buildah lets you build an efficient OCI image from scratch without needing root”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “I got hacked: My Hetzner server started mining Monero”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BuildKit | 10 | 9 | 53% | 6 | — | — |
| BuildahThis page | 9 | 4 | 69% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
13 of the 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I would also add buildah and skopeo to the mix of things that podman does better.”
“buildah and skopeo are pretty useful as well”
“Now I have to install and learn another tool when having yum inside the container will just work?”
“providing straightforward command line tools to create containers, work with layers, mount and unmount container filesystems”
“I could get this working with Podman/buildah however.”
“I also used buildah to combine everything into an single layer to prevent removed files from wasting space.”
“It has a braindead cache checking”
“buildah is sort of unbearably slow when using dockerfiles”
“I've encountered this one”
“buildah frees you from Dockerfile and lets you build containers completely rootlesslessly.”
“I've really appreciated RH's work both on podman/buildah”
“the experience introduced too much friction for me without being on a Linux system”
“buildah lets you build an efficient OCI image from scratch without needing root”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.