Docker on a Raspberry Pi: running containers on ARM

Running Docker on a Raspberry Pi ARM opens up a huge library of self-hosted services — from media servers to home automation to monitoring stacks. This guide covers everything: installing Docker on a Raspberry Pi, understanding ARM64 image compatibility, the most useful containers to run, and storage best practices to keep your SD card from dying prematurely.

Requirements

• Raspberry Pi 3B+, 4B, or 5 (2GB RAM minimum, 4GB recommended)
• Raspberry Pi OS Lite 64-bit — the 64-bit OS is important, as many images only ship ARM64 builds
• A decent SD card or, better, a USB SSD (SD cards degrade fast under Docker’s write load)

Install Docker on Raspberry Pi

Don’t use the version in apt — it’s outdated. Use Docker’s official install script:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

Verify it works:

docker run --rm hello-world

Install Docker Compose

Docker Compose V2 is included with modern Docker installations as a plugin:

docker compose version

If it’s missing:

sudo apt install -y docker-compose-plugin

Docker Raspberry Pi ARM compatibility: what you need to know

The Pi 4 and 5 are ARM64 (aarch64) machines when running the 64-bit OS. Most major images on Docker Hub now publish multi-arch manifests — when you pull nginx or postgres, Docker automatically grabs the ARM64 layer. You don’t need to do anything special.

Where you’ll run into trouble is with niche or older images that only have amd64 builds. Before pulling an image, check Docker Hub for the supported architectures. If ARM64 is missing, look for community forks or check Linuxserver.io — they maintain ARM-compatible builds for dozens of popular self-hosted apps.

Useful containers to run on your Raspberry Pi

Portainer — Docker management UI

docker run -d \
  --name portainer \
  --restart always \
  -p 9000:9000 \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v portainer_data:/data \
  portainer/portainer-ce:latest

Nginx Proxy Manager — reverse proxy with SSL

services:
  npm:
    image: jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 443:443
      - 81:81
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt

Uptime Kuma — self-hosted status page

docker run -d \
  --name uptime-kuma \
  --restart always \
  -p 3001:3001 \
  -v uptime-kuma:/app/data \
  louislam/uptime-kuma:1

Grafana + Prometheus — metrics and dashboards

services:
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      - prometheus_data:/prometheus
    ports:
      - 9090:9090

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    volumes:
      - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana

volumes:
  prometheus_data:
  grafana_data:

Storage: use a USB SSD

SD cards have a finite write cycle count and will fail eventually — often within months under Docker workloads. Mount the SSD at /var/lib/docker:

sudo systemctl stop docker
sudo mv /var/lib/docker /mnt/ssd/docker
sudo ln -s /mnt/ssd/docker /var/lib/docker
sudo systemctl start docker

Useful commands

docker stats
docker system prune -a
docker logs -f container_name
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Related posts

Once you have Docker running on your Pi, you can use it to self-host a password manager — see Self-hosting Vaultwarden on a VPS. You can also add a WireGuard VPN to reach your services from anywhere, or Pi-hole for network-wide ad blocking.