Ferrodock vs. the alternatives
Free for your whole team
A fraction of the download
What it costs, what you download and what it uses, side by side. Every number here is measured or taken from the vendor's own page, with the source next to it.
What your team pays per year
Show as a table
| Tool | Per year | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Ferrodock | Free | MIT licensed: free for everyone, companies included |
| Docker Desktop | $4,500 | Team, $15/user/month, billed yearly |
| OrbStack | $2,400 | Pro, $96/user/year; free for personal use only |
| Rancher Desktop | Free | Apache-2.0: free |
| Podman Desktop | Free | Apache-2.0: free |
Prices billed yearly, in US dollars, checked October 20, 2026: Docker pricing and who must pay; OrbStack pricing and licensing. Check them before you buy: prices change.
What you download
Everything needed to run containers on an Apple Silicon Mac, the first time.
Show as a table
| Tool | Download | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Ferrodock | 149.4 MB | 31.5 MB app (v1.27.1) + 117.9 MB engine, downloaded on first start |
| Rancher Desktop | 648.4 MB | v1.24.0 DMG, engine included |
| Podman Desktop | 246.6 MB | v1.30.5 DMG; its Podman machine image comes on top, on first start |
Exact sizes of the release files: Ferrodock, Rancher Desktop, Podman Desktop. Docker Desktop's and OrbStack's installers aren't on a page we could check, so they're left out rather than guessed.
Memory given to the engine
Each tool runs Linux in a virtual machine on your Mac. This is what it may take by default; every tool lets you change it.
Speed and weight
Idle memory and CPU, start time, and how fast a container starts: measured with the same script, on the same machine, for every tool.
Being measured
We only publish numbers we've measured ourselves, on one machine, with each tool's defaults. The script is open, so you can check them, or run it on your own Mac today:
git clone https://github.com/manimovassagh/Ferrodock
Ferrodock/bench/bench.sh "Ferrodock" 'Ferrodock|com.apple.Virtualization.VirtualMachine' 'open -a Ferrodock'