| Product | Depot |
| Website | depot.dev |
| Category | Developer Infrastructure / CI/CD |
| Key Feature | Cloud-hosted Docker builds with persistent caching |
| Pricing | Free tier (100 build minutes/month), Teams from $20/user/month |
What Is Depot?
Depot is a hosted Docker build service. Replace docker build with depot build and your builds run on high-performance cloud machines with NVMe caches instead of your local machine or CI runner. The Dockerfile is unchanged; the build context is the same; the output image is identical. The difference is speed.
Docker builds in CI are slow because CI runners have limited CPU, no persistent cache, and often emulate architectures (building arm64 images on amd64 runners). Depot solves all three: fast bare-metal machines, NVMe-backed layer caches that persist between builds, and native runners for both amd64 and arm64.
Key Features
Persistent Layer Cache
Docker layer caches persist on NVMe SSDs between builds. When your Dockerfile changes only the final layer, Depot reuses every cached layer before it. In CI, the cache starts cold on every build (or requires a slow pull from a registry). Depot’s cache is always warm, always fast, and always local to the builder.
Native Multi-Architecture
Build amd64 and arm64 images simultaneously on native hardware. No QEMU emulation, no cross-compilation. A multi-arch build that takes 20 minutes under QEMU finishes in 2 minutes on Depot because both architectures compile natively in parallel.
Drop-In Replacement
Replace docker build with depot build. Same Dockerfile, same build args, same output. Depot handles the rest. CI integration takes one line: install the Depot CLI and prepend depot to your build command.
Who Is This For?
- Teams with slow Docker builds in CI (the most common pain point)
- Anyone building multi-architecture images (amd64 + arm64) and suffering from QEMU emulation
- Organizations spending money on large CI runners just for Docker builds
- Developers who want faster local builds without buying a bigger machine
Pros
- Dramatic speed improvement (often 5-10x)
- Persistent layer cache across builds
- Native multi-arch (no QEMU)
- Drop-in replacement for docker build
- Works with any CI provider
- Free tier for open source
Cons
- Requires sending build context to Depot servers
- Per-seat pricing adds up for large teams
- Not useful if builds are already fast
- Limited benefit for simple, single-layer Dockerfiles
- Dependency on external service for builds
Verdict
If your Docker builds take more than 5 minutes in CI, Depot is likely to be the fastest ROI improvement you can make to your development pipeline. The persistent cache alone transforms incremental builds from minutes to seconds. Native multi-arch builds eliminate the QEMU tax that makes arm64 builds painfully slow on amd64 runners.
The value proposition is simple: developer time is expensive, CI minutes are expensive, and slow builds compound across every PR. Depot makes builds fast enough that they stop being a bottleneck. For teams where Docker builds are in the critical path of every deployment, this is infrastructure that pays for itself.
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