Alpine provides the Linux tools and libraries that an application can run on inside a container. Teams use it to keep that starting environment small, especially when they need only a few system packages. Its small size comes partly from musl and BusyBox, alternative implementations of common libraries and command-line tools. Check that your application supports those choices before treating Alpine as an interchangeable replacement for another Linux image.
Deployment and operating notes
The older article says Alpine has no CVE database and predicts random musl bugs. Those statements are not a current assessment. Alpine publishes a security database and a release-support table. Its main and community repositories have different support windows, so an image tag alone is not enough to establish coverage for every installed package.
Alpine still uses musl and BusyBox, which can make it a good small runtime when the application and native dependencies support that environment. Compatibility is the useful decision criterion: test DNS behavior, native extensions, shared libraries, locale requirements and debugging tools for the actual workload. A glibc-based runtime may require less adaptation for some binary distributions. Pin a supported release and image digest, rebuild when security fixes arrive, and configure the scanner to use Alpine package metadata. Compare complete application images and operational effort rather than the dated image-size anecdotes below. Neither a small image nor a low scanner count proves a secure application.
Historical upstream link check · 2026-10-09
The recorded upstream address responded successfully (HTTP 200) on 2026-10-09. Link availability does not certify the historical installation instructions or current security support.
Website availability is separate from project, chart and image support. Use the current guidance and primary sources on this page to assess the distribution.
Historical Kubedex content
Original publication: 2018-10-13T15:33:28+00:00. Preserved for context. Commands, versions, prices and results below reflect the original research.
Alpine is a small image and rose to fame at the time when other alternatives were several hundred megabytes in size. This is no longer true and there are better alternatives.
There are 3 issues with Alpine:
- You will get random bugs related to the use of musl libc
- Security patches aren’t released frequently enough
- There is no CVE database
To expand on point 3 which is what most people argue against here are some facts. There are over 13,000 vulnerabilities reported in 2018. Teams at Redhat, Ubuntu and Debian review every CVE and update their database to state if the vulnerability effects their packages or not. While this is not a perfect system these teams provide an invaluable service to those who want to know and therefore patch their systems.
Alpine has alpine-secdb which is updated by a single person and has around 100 commits. This so woefully inadequate from a security perspective it’s funny. The result of this means that depending on which vulnerability scanner you use on Alpine you’ll get different results. Some will compare directly to the global CVE database and report multiple issues. Some will solely use alpine-secdb and hope that this single person has really reviewed all 13,000+ CVE’s this year alone (which I find to be quite a weird leap of faith).
For these reasons we recommend switching from Alpine to either RHEL, Debian or Ubuntu.
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