Docker Desktop is free for personal use and for companies under both 250 employees and $10M revenue. Cross either threshold and it's $9–$24 per user per month — and Docker does run licensing audits, so for a mid-size company this is a real compliance line item, not a suggestion.
| Price | Notable | |
|---|---|---|
| Docker Desktop | free under 250 emp / $10M rev; else $9–24/user/mo | most polished, deepest integration |
| Podman Desktop | free, Apache 2.0, no paid tier ever | daemonless, rootless (Red Hat) |
| Rancher Desktop | free, personal and commercial | bundles Kubernetes (SUSE) |
Both alternatives are genuinely free with no company-size restrictions, which is the whole point. Podman Desktop, from Red Hat, runs daemonless and rootless by design — a security posture some teams specifically want — and it's Apache-licensed with no paid tier that could ever appear. Rancher Desktop, from SUSE, is the closest like-for-like swap if you also want a GUI and a local Kubernetes cluster bundled in.
The honest case for paying Docker: it remains the most polished experience with the deepest ecosystem integration, and if your company qualifies for free use anyway, there's no decision to make — stay on it. The case against: if you've crossed the licensing threshold, you're now paying $9–24/seat for something two well-supported competitors give away, and the migration is usually a weekend, not a quarter.
For an individual developer or a small startup: Docker Desktop is free for you, use it. For a company past 250 employees or $10M in revenue that's suddenly facing a per-seat bill: Podman Desktop if you want the rootless architecture, Rancher Desktop if you also want local Kubernetes, and either way you stop paying the tax.