balenaEngine vs Buildah
balenaEngine
balena.io
Buildah
buildah.ioSide by side
| Figure | balenaEngine | Buildah |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 7.3 (#20) | 8.5 (#4) |
| Purpose | balenaEngine is a container engine purpose-built for embedded and IoT use cases, based on Moby Project technology from Docker. | Buildah is a command-line tool for building Open Container Initiative (OCI) container images. |
Plans
In their own words
balenaEngine
balenaEngine has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Buildah
Buildah is a free command-line tool for building OCI container images on Linux. It can create images from working containers, Dockerfiles, or Containerfiles, and can also build through commands and scripts without a build file. Output can use OCI format or the traditional upstream Docker image format. Builds can run without root privileges, and Buildah follows a fork-exec model rather than running as a daemon. Its commands create, mount, unmount, delete, and rename working containers, as well as create or delete images; users can also pull images from a specified location and push local images elsewhere. Buildah is based on a Go API that other tools can vendor, and Podman uses it for Dockerfile builds while remaining independently installable. Buildah requires a kernel with OverlayFS or fuse-overlayfs support; RHEL or CentOS requires version 7.4 or later. Installation guidance warns that short image names can be spoofed and recommends fully qualified names from trusted registries or pulling by digest. The project points users to tutorials, releases, and a mailing list for questions.