Alpine Linux vs Debian
| Alpine Linux | Debian | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free trial | No | No |
| Paid from | — | Free |
| Open source | No | No |
| Platforms | Linux | Linux, self-hosted |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Device types | Physical computers, Raspberry Pi, routers, servers, virtual machines, cloud images, containers and chroots | Personal computers; cloud virtual machines |
| CPU architectures | aarch64, armhf, armv7, loongarch64, ppc64le, riscv64, s390x, x86, x86_64 | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x; i386 supported as a co-architecture for 32-bit software on amd64; armel upgrades only |
| Support lifecycle | Main repository typically supported for 2 years; community repository until the next stable release | Debian 13: five years, including three years of full Debian support through August 9, 2028 and LTS through June 30, 2030 |
| Deployment models | Physical installation images, cloud images, virtual-system images, container and chroot root filesystems, netboot, Raspberry Pi and Xen Dom0 | Physical computer installation; live boot from CD, DVD, or USB; OpenStack and QEMU cloud images; Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure images |
| Built-in management | — | APT package installation, removal, and distribution upgrades |
| App compatibility | — | Debian packages (.deb); APT package manager |
Both are listed in Best Operating Systems. On Inferse, Debian scores higher on our published basis.