Most teams don’t realize how much their Node.js base image affects build time, storage costs, and runtime performance—until they compare them side by side.
📦 node:22 → 1.12 GB
📦 bitnami/node:22 → 974 MB
Lean alternatives:
📦 node:22-slim → 220 MB
📦 node:22-alpine → 155 MB
📦 Chainguard Node → 145 MB
📦 Distroless Node → 141 MB
That’s nearly 1 GB of overhead eliminated by a simple base image change.
Why this matters on AWS:
Faster CI/CD pipelines (CodeBuild, GitHub Actions, Jenkins)
Lower ECR storage and data transfer costs
Smaller attack surface → fewer CVEs to track
Faster cold starts on EKS and ECS
Better developer feedback loops
The best part: you can unlock these improvements without touching application code—just choose the right base image.
Happy learning
Prithiviraj Rengarajan
DevOps Engineer
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