redis:8 vs redis:8-alpine

The short answer

• redis:8-alpine is 28 MB smaller unpacked on amd64 (120 MB vs 149 MB, 19% less).
• As a download, redis:8-alpine is 40 MB compressed against 56 MB for redis:8: 1.4× less to pull.
• redis:8-alpine has fewer known vulnerabilities: 0 (0 critical or high) against 164 (43 critical or high) in redis:8.
• 0 of redis:8's 164 findings have a fixed version available upstream.
• Base OS: redis:8 is built on Debian 13.7 (trixie); redis:8-alpine on Alpine Linux 3.23.7.
• 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: 78 in redis:8, 23 in redis:8-alpine.
• Filesystem layers: 7 vs 7.
• Platforms: only redis:8 ships arm/v5; only redis:8-alpine ships arm/v6.