Depot Pricing in May 2026

Depot's standard pricing follows usage-based per-build tiers: Free for 5 build minutes/month, Starter at $20/month for 60 build minutes, Pro at $50/month for 200 build minutes, Business custom-quote. Real-world Depot bills for engineering teams with Docker-heavy builds land at $50-500/month for early-stage; mid-stage teams with high CI volume hit $1K-5K/month.

The Free Trial offer provides 7 days to evaluate paid tiers. Eligibility focuses on accelerator-backed engineering teams with verified Docker build optimization needs. The strategic decision: Depot's value is the build-speed-as-a-service model — drop into existing CI pipelines and dramatically reduce Docker build times (claims 20x faster than typical CI). For teams running heavy CI Docker builds where build times affect velocity, Depot's caching infrastructure is genuinely differentiated. The free trial is the right time to validate whether Depot's specific approach matches your build patterns. For Docker build optimization more broadly, BuildKit (built into Docker) provides the underlying engine that Depot uses under the hood. For self-hosted Docker build acceleration, Buildkite Build Cloud, GitHub Actions cache, and self-hosted BuildKit instances target this. For specifically GitHub Actions-faster runners, BuildJet, Actuated, and self-hosted runners target this slice — usually overlapping with Depot for some use cases. For specifically multi-architecture (arm64 + amd64) without Depot, GitHub Actions's QEMU emulation handles arm64 builds (slowly); using actual arm64 runners (BuildJet, Depot, Actuated) speeds up significantly. For specifically Docker registry alternatives, AWS ECR, GCP Artifact Registry, GitHub Container Registry, and Docker Hub target image storage rather than build acceleration. For specifically container image scanning, Snyk Container, Trivy, and Aqua target security scanning rather than build speed. Depot's specific niche is build-speed acceleration for Docker-heavy CI workflows.