What is Depot used for?

Depot is hosted build and CI infrastructure offering remote container builds, CI runners, caches and registries to speed up Docker builds. It is a good fit for speeding up Docker image builds, replacing slow default CI runners and sharing build caches across a team.

How much does Depot cost?

Paid plans for Depot start at $20 per month, and there is no free plan. A free trial is available.

Is Depot open source?

No. Depot is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Depot include Earthly, NativeLink and RunsOn.

What are some alternatives to Depot?

Depot competes with Blacksmith and Buildkite. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Depot alternatives.

Depot: features, pricing and alternatives

About Depot

Depot is a commercial service that provides fast remote infrastructure for building and shipping software. It started as a way to run container image builds on remote machines and now describes a broader platform that includes source control hosting, image builds, CI runners, sandboxes, shared caches and container registries, all running on Depot's own infrastructure.

The vendor frames the platform around the volume of work produced by AI coding agents, arguing that underpowered runners, slow image builds, fragmented caches and full pipeline reruns become bottlenecks. Its homepage also announces a product called Depot Metal and lists case studies from engineering teams across several industries.

Depot is a proprietary hosted service. New users can start building for free, and the vendor publishes a pricing page for paid usage. It suits teams that want faster Docker builds and CI jobs without running and tuning their own build servers.

Key features

Remote container image builds
Hosted CI runners
Shared build caches across jobs
Hosted container registry for images
Sandboxes for isolated workloads
Source control hosting

Good fit for

→Speeding up Docker image builds
→Replacing slow default CI runners
→Sharing build caches across a team

Tags: docker; container-builds; ci-runners; build-cache; ci-cd; devops; managed-service

Depot: questions and answers

What is Depot used for?: Depot is hosted build and CI infrastructure offering remote container builds, CI runners, caches and registries to speed up Docker builds. It is a good fit for speeding up Docker image builds, replacing slow default CI runners and sharing build caches across a team.
How much does Depot cost?: Paid plans for Depot start at $20 per month, and there is no free plan. A free trial is available.
Is Depot open source?: No. Depot is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Depot include Earthly, NativeLink and RunsOn.
What are some alternatives to Depot?: Depot competes with Blacksmith and Buildkite. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Depot alternatives.