Docker reached 71.1% and Podman 11.1% in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, among the 24,473 people who answered the cloud development question. Both tools build and run the same OCI containers. This post tracks the distance between them using survey shares, sentiment scores, download counts and project governance dates, each taken from the organisation that published it.
Docker vs Podman Usage Statistics
How Many Developers Use Docker vs Podman?
Docker leads Podman in every respondent group Stack Overflow published for 2025. Podman sits in a narrow band, from 7.9% among learners who use AI tools to 11.1% across all respondents.
Docker swings much wider, from 52.5% among people learning to code to 75% among professionals who use AI.
| Respondent group | Docker | Podman | Responses |
|---|---|---|---|
| All respondents | 71.1% | 11.1% | 24,473 |
| Professional developers | 73.8% | 10.9% | 20,070 |
| Professionals that use AI | 75.0% | 10.7% | 17,258 |
| Learning to code | 52.5% | 8.7% | 1,558 |
| Learners that use AI | 53.1% | 7.9% | 1,249 |
Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, cloud development question, opt-in survey, share of each group reporting extensive development work in the past year
The learner rows are worth reading twice. Podman reads 11.1% across all respondents and 8.7% among people learning to code, while Docker reads 71.1% and 52.5% for the same two groups, so the tools look closer among learners because Docker sits lower there.
Docker vs Podman Usage Growth From 2024 to 2025
Podman’s share among all respondents moved from 5% to 11.1% between the two surveys. Docker moved from 53.9% to 71.1% over the same pair of editions.
One caveat travels with those numbers. Stack Overflow asked about both tools under “Other tools” in 2024 and moved them into a consolidated cloud development question in 2025, and the survey team attributes Docker’s 17-point jump partly to that consolidation.
| Tool and group | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Docker, all respondents | 53.9% | 71.1% |
| Podman, all respondents | 5.0% | 11.1% |
| Kubernetes, all respondents | 19.4% | 28.5% |
| Docker, professional developers | 58.7% | 73.8% |
| Podman, professional developers | 5.2% | 10.9% |
Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024 (“Other tools” question, 54,175 responses) and 2025 (“Cloud development” question, 24,473 responses), share of respondents reporting extensive work in the past year
Docker vs Podman Sentiment Statistics: Admired and Desired
Admired measures the share of past-year users who want to keep using a tool. Both engines fell on that measure between 2024 and 2025, Docker from 77.5% to 63.6% and Podman from 67.1% to 57.4%.
| Tool | Admired 2024 | Admired 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Docker | 77.5% | 63.6% |
| Podman | 67.1% | 57.4% |
Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024 and 2025, admired score, share of past-year users who want to continue using the tool
Desired scores tell a different story
Desired counts all respondents who want to work with a tool next year, a separate denominator from admired. Podman’s desired score reached 10.3% in 2025, up from 6% in 2024, and now sits close to its 11.1% reported usage.
Docker’s desired score was 50.4% in 2025 against 49.5% in 2024, roughly 20 points below its usage share, the normal shape for a tool most respondents already run.
Podman Downloads, Governance and Release Milestones
Red Hat announced its intent to contribute Podman and Podman Desktop to the CNCF in November 2024, reporting more than 1.5 million Podman Desktop downloads at that point. Both projects were accepted at Sandbox maturity on 21 January 2025.
By 17 February 2026, when Red Hat announced general availability of the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop, the project had recorded over 3 million downloads. Downloads are cumulative and count installations of the installer, not active users.
Source: Red Hat, CNCF contribution announcement (November 2024) and Red Hat build of Podman Desktop GA announcement (17 February 2026), cumulative downloads
Podman 6.0.0 shipped in June 2026 and removed cgroups v1, iptables, CNI, slirp4netns and BoltDB support, along with Intel Mac and Windows 10 support. The release notes also record the move of Podman’s import path into a CNCF-owned GitHub organisation.
Container Adoption Behind Docker vs Podman Demand
Container usage reached 92% among IT professionals in Docker’s 2025 State of Application Development Report, up from 80% in its 2024 edition. Across all industries in the same survey, 30% of developers said they use containers anywhere in their workflow.
Docker points to application structure as a possible explanation: 68% of IT industry respondents work with microservice-based architectures against 31% elsewhere. The survey drew on more than 4,500 respondents and was fielded in the autumn of 2024.
On the operations side, the CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey found 82% of container users running Kubernetes in production, up from 66% in 2023, with 98% of surveyed organisations reporting some cloud native adoption. Wider Kubernetes adoption data sits alongside those figures, and the same shift shows up in server operating system share, where container workloads sit largely on Linux hosts.
| Period | Cloud native developers |
|---|---|
| Q3 2025 | 15.6 million |
| Q1 2026 | 19.9 million |
Source: CNCF and SlashData, State of Cloud Native Development Q1 2026, published 24 March 2026, estimate based on responses from more than 12,500 developers across 100 countries
Where that work happens has moved too. Docker reported 64% of developers using non-local environments as their primary setup in 2025, with local machines accounting for the remaining 36%.
What the Docker vs Podman Data Shows for 2026
Three points hold up. Docker’s lead is intact and grew in absolute terms across the two survey editions, though part of that rise reflects a changed question.
Podman roughly doubled its reported share and closed the distance between what developers want to use and what they already run. Its distribution figures are counted in cumulative millions against Docker’s position as the default in the 2025 survey, so the two are not directly comparable measures.
Container work also spreads well past conventional workstations. Linux remains the base for most container tooling, which is visible in desktop Linux share figures and in the way developers run Linux containers on Chromebooks through Crostini.
Discussion of these tools clusters in a handful of places. Reddit was used by 53.7% of respondents in the 2025 survey’s community platforms question, on 30,190 responses, behind Stack Overflow at 84.2% and GitHub at 66.9%.
Hardware sets the floor for anyone testing either engine locally. The practical limits show up in Linux development data for Chromebooks, in device storage patterns, and in whether a Chromebook handles programming work at all.
FAQs
How many developers use Docker vs Podman?
Docker was reported by 71.1% of respondents and Podman by 11.1% in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, on 24,473 responses to the cloud development question. Both figures describe opt-in survey respondents, not all developers.
Is Podman growing faster than Docker?
Podman’s share moved from 5% in 2024 to 11.1% in 2025; Docker’s moved from 53.9% to 71.1%. Stack Overflow attributes part of Docker’s rise to consolidating separate technology questions into one.
Which is more admired, Docker or Podman?
Docker, at 63.6% in 2025 against Podman’s 57.4%. Admired counts past-year users who want to keep using the tool. Both scores fell from 2024, when Docker held 77.5% and Podman 67.1%.
Do developers discussing Docker and Podman use Reddit?
Reddit was used by 53.7% of respondents in the 2025 survey’s community platforms question, on 30,190 responses. That places Reddit behind Stack Overflow at 84.2% and public GitHub at 66.9%.
What did Podman 6.0 remove?
Podman 6.0.0, released in June 2026, dropped support for cgroups v1, iptables, CNI, slirp4netns and BoltDB, plus Intel Macs and Windows 10, according to the project’s release notes.
Sources
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology
https://www.docker.com/blog/2025-docker-state-of-app-dev/
https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2026/01/20/kubernetes-established-as-the-de-facto-operating-system-for-ai-as-production-use-hits-82-in-2025-cncf-annual-cloud-native-survey/
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-red-hat-build-podman-desktop-enterprise-ready-local-container-development-environments
