# BuildKit

10 Hacker News commenters recommended BuildKit and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Fast, efficient container image builder with cache mounts and parallel builds, though people say good caching takes deliberate build design and it is painful to run at volume.

## Why people recommend it

- Faster, more efficient builds (3 comments): "Works pretty great so far, same or faster builds and we now create multi arch images." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47170785)) "parallel builds using Buildkit reduced build times by 2 to 3" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47179145)) "Buldkit is far more efficient than the old model." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380144))
- Powerful caching via cache mounts (2 comments): "The --mount=type=cache for package managers is genuinely transformative once you figure it out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47172823)) "Buildkit can be very efficient at caching, but you need to design your image build around it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46381469))

## What people warn about

- Caching breaks or needs careful design (2 comments): "Its caching is plain broken, and the overhead of transmitting the entire build state to the remote computer every time is just busywork for most cases." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47170004)) "This is an entirely useless step. It also breaks caching all the time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378783))
- Buggy and poorly designed in places (3 comments): "It's yet one more incomprehensible Buildkit decision." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47172543)) "Buildkit from Docker is just a pure bullshit design." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378595)) "And it's also just plain buggy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380465))
- Limited networking support (2 comments): "Except anything that requires any non-trivial networking or hermetic building" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47172309)) "BuildKit does not have support for specifying a network which is crazy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46739178))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Buildah](https://hackerapproved.com/p/buildah.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "BuildKit", https://hackerapproved.com/p/buildkit/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).