Testcontainers Desktop vs Vessel
Testcontainers Desktop
testcontainers.comVessel
vessel.shippingdocker.comSide by side
| Figure | Testcontainers Desktop | Vessel |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 0 |
| Spec score · Container Development Environments | 8.3 (#10) | 6.8 (#38) |
| Purpose | Testcontainers Desktop is a companion app for the open source Testcontainers libraries, intended to improve local development and testing with real dependencies. | Vessel provides simple Docker development environments for Laravel projects. |
| Support | The docs direct users experiencing embedded-runtime issues to the public Testcontainers Slack channel. | The opened Vessel pages link to usage and customization documentation and do not state a support service or response time. |
| Supported operating systems | The desktop app is available for macOS, Windows and Linux. | Vessel currently works on Macintosh and Linux; the docs say Windows is not currently supported. |
Plans
Testcontainers Desktop
- Free individual developer planFree
- Free plan for individual developersFree
In their own words
Testcontainers Desktop
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.
Vessel
Vessel has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.