Depot vs Duckie

About

Depot is a remote Docker build cache and layer storage service that dramatically accelerates Docker image builds in CI/CD pipelines — providing a shared, persistent build cache that allows consecutive builds to reuse unchanged layers across different machines and parallel runners, turning 10-minute Docker builds into 2-minute builds. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in the United States, Depot targets engineering teams running Docker-based CI/CD on GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or other cloud CI platforms where each build starts from scratch without access to previous build cache.\n\nDepot's shared remote cache stores Docker build layers in cloud infrastructure and makes them available to all CI runners across a team — when a build starts, it checks Depot's cache for previously built layers and only rebuilds what has changed. This is particularly impactful for large monorepos and multi-stage Dockerfiles where base dependency layers (npm install, pip install, Maven dependencies) represent significant build time but rarely change between commits. Depot also provides native ARM build support (building ARM64 images without slow emulation).\n\nIn 2025, Depot competes with Docker's own Build Cloud, Buildkite Depot, and engineering teams' self-managed BuildKit caching solutions for CI Docker build optimization. The Docker build performance market has grown as teams running microservices in containers experience significant CI cost and time from slow Docker builds. Depot's managed service eliminates the infrastructure management burden of self-hosted build cache. The 2025 strategy focuses on expanding GitHub Actions integration (native action available in GitHub Marketplace), growing ARM native build adoption as teams adopt Apple Silicon development, and building build analytics that help teams identify slow Dockerfile patterns.