On a Mac every container runs inside a Linux VM, and two popular tools make that VM nearly invisible. Neither is run here, since both need macOS.
OrbStack 76,715 (orbstack.dev (https://orbstack.dev 76,715 )) is a proprietary, macOS-only application built for speed: a lightweight VM with fast file sharing and networking, containers reachable by name from the Mac, a Kubernetes 5,150 cluster, and full Linux machines alongside Docker 514 . It uses the standard Docker Engine 514 , so docker and docker compose work unchanged. It is free for personal, non-commercial use and costs $8 per user per month (Pro) for any business use.
Colima 31,010 (github.com/abiosoft/colima (https://github.com/abiosoft/colima 31,010 ), MIT, version 0.10.3) is the minimal, command-line route, built on Lima: brew 6,457 install colima docker, then colima start, and the plain Docker CLI talks to a Docker Engine in a VM with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 100 GB of disk by default (--cpu, --memory and --disk change them). colima start --runtime containerd 234,762 switches to containerd and nerdctl 10,397 , and --kubernetes adds k3s 51,195 . Colima also runs on Linux, though there Docker Engine itself (Installing Docker Engine) is simpler.
Licensing decides as much as speed: on a company Mac, OrbStack needs a paid seat for any business use, Docker Desktop 514 once the company reaches 250 employees or US $10 million in revenue (Desktop Licensing), while Colima, Podman Desktop 105,833 and Rancher Desktop 40,103 never do.