Benchmarks here: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=docker-s...

For Python in particular, significantly slower.

The Python test is indeed a large outlier! I wonder how reproducible it is, and what the reason might be.

That is very likely due to processor/architecture optimized precompiled Python. See e.g. https://clearlinux.org/blogs/transparent-use-library-package... and https://clearlinux.org/blogs/boosting-python-profile-guided-...

I did an analysis with the official Docker Python image [0] with the --enable-optimizations flag. Although not the point of the results [1], they show a decent speed up when using Debian vs Alpine as well.

[0] https://github.com/docker-library/python/issues/160 [1] https://gist.github.com/blopker/9fff37e67f14143d2757f9f2172c...