Docker Desktop becomes a paid tool for companies with more than 250 employees

Docker will charge through several new subscription forms for the use of Docker Desktop for companies with more than 250 employees and an annual turnover of more than 10 million dollars. Individual developers can use Docker Desktop for free.

Docker introduces four different subscription types. Personal, intended for individual developers, education, open source communities and small businesses, will replace the current Docker Free plan.

All other plans are paid: Pro for individual developers, Team for teams of more than five developers, and the new Business plan for companies with more than 50 users. The prices are converted respectively 5.93 euros, 7.63 euros or 17.79 euros per user with a monthly terminable subscription. Pro and Team are cheaper with an annual subscription. Then the price is respectively 4.24 euros per month and 5.93 euros per month per user.

The free subscription, which gives access to the free Docker Desktop app, is specifically intended for small businesses with fewer than 250 employees and less than 8.5 million euros in annual turnover, for personal use, for education and for non-commercial open source projects. Beginning August 31, under the new Subscription Service Agreement, users who do not meet these requirements and use Docker Desktop will be required to purchase a paid subscription. However, Docker says there will be a grace period until January 31, 2022, within which it is not yet enforcing.

Small businesses, individual developers, education developers and open source communities collectively account for more than half of Docker users, the company explains. They can continue to use all Docker tools for free, including Docker CLI, Docker Compose, Docker Build/BuildKit, Docker Engine, Docker Desktop, Docker Hub and Docker Official Images.

The new Docker Business plan empowers organizations to leverage Docker at scale with a management platform for IT administrators and enhanced tools to manage which users can access which images from the Docker Hub. In addition, Docker for Business will soon be getting SAML SSO, which will allow administrators to manage which registries developers can access and remotely manage Docker Desktop instances.