nginx:1.30 vs nginx:1.30-alpine

The short answer

• nginx:1.30-alpine is 102 MB smaller unpacked on amd64 (64 MB vs 166 MB, 62% less).
• As a download, nginx:1.30-alpine is 26 MB compressed against 64 MB for nginx:1.30: 2.4× less to pull.
• nginx:1.30-alpine has fewer known vulnerabilities: 49 (3 critical or high) against 342 (59 critical or high) in nginx:1.30.
• 0 of nginx:1.30's 342 findings have a fixed version available upstream.
• 49 of nginx:1.30-alpine's 49 findings have a fixed version available upstream.
• Base OS: nginx:1.30 is built on Debian 13.7 (trixie); nginx:1.30-alpine on Alpine Linux 3.24.3.
• Alpine images use musl libc instead of glibc. Most software runs unchanged; prebuilt binaries linked against glibc (some Python wheels, Node native modules, vendor agents) may not.
• Packages detected: 151 in nginx:1.30, 71 in nginx:1.30-alpine.
• Filesystem layers: 7 vs 8.
• Platforms: only nginx:1.30 ships arm/v5; only nginx:1.30-alpine ships arm/v6.