BuildKit
Container image builder in Developer tools
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.
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.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not 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
Faster, more efficient builds
“Works pretty great so far, same or faster builds and we now create multi arch images.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything” “parallel builds using Buildkit reduced build times by 2 to 3”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything” “Buldkit is far more efficient than the old model.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “A faster path to container images in Bazel” Powerful caching via cache mounts
“The --mount=type=cache for package managers is genuinely transformative once you figure it out.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything” “Buildkit can be very efficient at caching, but you need to design your image build around it.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “A faster path to container images in Bazel”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Caching breaks or needs careful design
“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.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything” “This is an entirely useless step. It also breaks caching all the time.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “A faster path to container images in Bazel” Buggy and poorly designed in places
“It's yet one more incomprehensible Buildkit decision.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything” “Buildkit from Docker is just a pure bullshit design.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “A faster path to container images in Bazel” “And it's also just plain buggy.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “A faster path to container images in Bazel” Limited networking support
“Except anything that requires any non-trivial networking or hermetic building”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything” “BuildKit does not have support for specifying a network which is crazy”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “What Has Docker Become?”
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BuildKitThis page | 10 | 9 | 53% | 6 | — | — |
| Buildah | 9 | 4 | 69% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
28 of the 31 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The BuiltKit API sucks compared to Dagger's”
“pretty close to as optimal of a setup as one can get”
“enables the ecosystem to scale way beyond what alternative BuildKit-based solutions can”
“those are apparently still unsupported over v2”
“The OCI foundations make saving each step as a layer, diff, clone/fork, and time travel easy.”
“The SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support in buildkit is a good step”
“parallel builds using Buildkit reduced build times by 2 to 3”
“The --mount=type=cache for package managers is genuinely transformative once you figure it out.”
“its better written software than buildkit”
“It's yet one more incomprehensible Buildkit decision.”
“Except anything that requires any non-trivial networking or hermetic building”
“always faster for me than Buildkit”
“Works pretty great so far, same or faster builds and we now create multi arch images.”
“It's a big glob of homegrown thoughts and ideas.”
“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.”
“BuildKit is very cool tech, but painful to run at volume”
“the real hidden power of buildkit is the ability to swap out the Dockerfile parser”
“BuildKit does not have support for specifying a network which is crazy”
“You can see it easily when you use docker-compose with podman.”
“Which is dog-slow, because it squirts the cache through a socket.”
“Buildkit can be very efficient at caching, but you need to design your image build around it.”
“And it's also just plain buggy.”
“Buldkit is far more efficient than the old model.”
“This is an entirely useless step. It also breaks caching all the time.”
“Buildkit from Docker is just a pure bullshit design.”
“that dependency order is usually just one big blob of "COPY src/ . + RUN make"”
“way more powerful when you use it directly”
“Had to add an entrypoint to chown the mounts and also some Buildkit cache volumes for all the package managers.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.