Testcontainers Desktop vs Tokaido

Testcontainers Desktop is a companion app for the open source Testcontainers libraries, for local development and testing with real dependencies. The closed-source app runs in the system tray and lets users switch between local container runtimes, including Podman and Colima. It can also run containers through Testcontainers Cloud on demand without local resources or a local Docker daemon. Users can expose services on fixed ports for debugging tools, inspect container logs, and open a shell for a configured service. A beta freeze option can stop containers from shutting down after tests, while session tracking feeds collaborative dashboards with desktop and CI data from an organization. More than 15 example service configurations include PostgreSQL and Kafka. The embedded runtime is beta and requires macOS 11 or later. A Docker account is required to sign in. The free plan includes 300 minutes of cloud runtime per month; Turbo mode requires a paid account.

Tokaido is a free, open-source tool for creating local Drupal development environments with Docker and the `tok` command-line interface. Its containers can run PHP, Nginx, and MySQL, with optional services including Solr, Memcache, Mailhog, and Adminer. The `tok up` command starts an environment and sets up HTTPS. Project settings can be kept in `.tok/config.yml` in the Git repository, allowing teammates to share configuration. An SSH endpoint provides access to tools such as Drush, Composer, Gulp, Yarn, and Npm. Tokaido supports Linux, macOS, and Windows, though its Windows build is described as beta and experimental. Its local environment is ephemeral: the database resets on restart, and files outside `/tokaido/site` are lost. Drupal multisite is supported, but `tok snapshot` and `tok test` do not account for multisite databases. The project lists Drupal 7 or 8, PHP 7.1, and a Git repository as requirements. Tokaido was founded in 2016, is headquartered in Melbourne, and is primarily maintained by Ironstar.