Earthly vs Dagger (2026)

Overview

Earthly and Dagger are both modern build tools that solve the same frustrating problem: CI pipelines that work differently than local builds, YAML-heavy configurations that are hard to debug, and builds that can't be reproduced reliably. Both are containerized, CI-agnostic, and designed as alternatives to the chaos of shell scripts and platform-specific CI YAML. But they have meaningfully different approaches to the problem.

Core Philosophy

Earthly is a build tool. It replaces Makefiles and shell scripts with Earthfiles — a declarative syntax inspired by Dockerfiles. An Earthfile defines targets (like build, test, docker) that run in containers. The same Earthfile runs identically on a developer's MacBook and in GitHub Actions. Earthly is focused on being the best build tool that happens to work in CI.

Dagger is a programmable CI/CD engine. Pipelines are written in real programming languages — Go, Python, TypeScript, PHP — using the Dagger SDK. Dagger runs pipelines in containers using a GraphQL API, and pipelines can be developed and tested locally before pushing to CI. Dagger positions itself as replacing CI YAML with real code.

Configuration Language

Earthly uses Earthfiles — a custom but approachable syntax that combines Dockerfile and Makefile concepts. It's a domain-specific language, not a general-purpose one. Engineers typically learn Earthly's syntax in an hour or two, and Earthfiles are readable by anyone familiar with Dockerfiles.

Dagger uses the programming language your team already knows. Pipeline logic in Go looks like Go, in Python looks like Python. You get full language features: loops, conditionals, error handling, unit tests for your pipeline code. The tradeoff is more initial boilerplate than Earthfiles for simple cases, but significantly more power for complex pipelines.

Local Development Experience

Earthly excels at local development. earthly +test runs your test target locally in a container, identical to CI. Caching is automatic — unchanged layers are cached. Debugging a failing CI build means running the same command locally.

Dagger also runs locally. dagger run go run ./ci executes your pipeline on your machine using the Dagger engine. The local experience is strong, though the Go/Python/TypeScript wrapper adds a layer compared to Earthly's direct CLI.

Caching

Earthly has automatic layer caching similar to Docker — unchanged build steps are cached. Earthly Cloud provides remote caching shared across the team, so developer A's build cache is available to developer B and CI runners.

Dagger has a sophisticated caching system built into its execution engine. Pipeline steps that haven't changed are automatically cached and reused, and Dagger's cache is sharable across machines and CI runners.

Integration with Existing CI

Earthly is CI-agnostic by design. You add one line to your GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / CircleCI config: earthly +pipeline. Everything else is in the Earthfile. Migrating from platform-specific YAML to Earthly typically takes a day.

Dagger is also CI-agnostic. Your Dagger pipeline runs anywhere the Dagger engine runs. A GitHub Actions workflow just calls dagger run. The CI-agnostic promise is the same, though moving complex pipelines to Dagger typically requires more rewriting than Earthly.

Community and Maturity

Earthly has 10,000+ GitHub stars and has been in active production use since 2020. The community is large, documentation is extensive, and most questions have Stack Overflow answers.

Dagger has 11,000+ GitHub stars and was created by Solomon Hykes (Docker co-creator), giving it significant credibility. The SDK approach is newer (v0.2+ from 2022) and the ecosystem is actively growing. Dagger raised $35M and has strong venture backing.

Pricing

Earthly — CLI: free and open-source. Earthly Cloud (remote caching + CI integration): ~$50/month for small teams.

Dagger — Open-source engine: free. Dagger Cloud (pipeline visualization, distributed caching): paid plans.

When to Choose Each

Choose Earthly when:

• You want a simple, approachable build tool that's faster to learn and migrate to
• Your builds are currently Makefiles or shell scripts that you want to containerize
• You prefer a DSL over writing pipeline code in a general-purpose language
• Earthly's Earthfile syntax maps naturally to your existing build structure

Choose Dagger when:

• Your pipelines have complex logic (loops, conditionals, dynamic configurations) that benefit from a real programming language
• Your team wants to unit-test pipeline code
• You need maximum programmatic flexibility in pipeline composition
• Your team is comfortable with Go, Python, or TypeScript and prefers code over DSLs

Verdict

Choose Earthly for simpler, faster migration and a flatter learning curve. It's the right tool for teams wanting to make their builds reproducible without rewriting them in a new programming language.

Choose Dagger if your pipelines are complex enough to benefit from real programming language features, or if you want to write pipeline code with the same rigor (testing, abstraction, composition) as application code.