---
title: Remote driver
description: |
  The remote driver lets you connect to a remote BuildKit instance
  that you set up and configure manually.
keywords: build, buildx, driver, builder, remote
aliases:
  - /build/buildx/drivers/remote/
  - /build/building/drivers/remote/
  - /build/drivers/remote/
---

The Buildx remote driver allows for more complex custom build workloads,
allowing you to connect to externally managed BuildKit instances. This is useful
for scenarios that require manual management of the BuildKit daemon, or where a
BuildKit daemon is exposed from another source.

## Synopsis

```console
$ docker buildx create \
  --name remote \
  --driver remote \
  tcp://localhost:1234
```

The following table describes the available driver-specific options that you can
pass to `--driver-opt`:

| Parameter      | Type    | Default            | Description                                                            |
| -------------- | ------- | ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `key`          | String  |                    | Sets the TLS client key.                                               |
| `cert`         | String  |                    | Absolute path to the TLS client certificate to present to `buildkitd`. |
| `cacert`       | String  |                    | Absolute path to the TLS certificate authority used for validation.    |
| `servername`   | String  | Endpoint hostname. | TLS server name used in requests.                                      |
| `default-load` | Boolean | `false`            | Automatically load images to the Docker Engine image store.            |

## Example: Remote BuildKit over Unix sockets

This guide shows you how to create a setup with a BuildKit daemon listening on a
Unix socket, and have Buildx connect through it.

1. Ensure that [BuildKit](https://github.com/moby/buildkit) is installed.

   For example, you can launch an instance of buildkitd with:

   ```console
   $ sudo ./buildkitd --group $(id -gn) --addr unix://$HOME/buildkitd.sock
   ```

   Alternatively, [see here](https://github.com/moby/buildkit/blob/master/docs/rootless.md)
   for running buildkitd in rootless mode or [here](https://github.com/moby/buildkit/tree/master/examples/systemd)
   for examples of running it as a systemd service.

2. Check that you have a Unix socket that you can connect to.

   ```console
   $ ls -lh /home/user/buildkitd.sock
   srw-rw---- 1 root user 0 May  5 11:04 /home/user/buildkitd.sock
   ```

3. Connect Buildx to it using the remote driver:

   ```console
   $ docker buildx create \
     --name remote-unix \
     --driver remote \
     unix://$HOME/buildkitd.sock
   ```

4. List available builders with `docker buildx ls`. You should then see
   `remote-unix` among them:

   ```console
   $ docker buildx ls
   NAME/NODE           DRIVER/ENDPOINT                        STATUS  PLATFORMS
   remote-unix         remote
     remote-unix0      unix:///home/.../buildkitd.sock        running linux/amd64, linux/amd64/v2, linux/amd64/v3, linux/386
   default *           docker
     default           default                                running linux/amd64, linux/386
   ```

You can switch to this new builder as the default using
`docker buildx use remote-unix`, or specify it per build using `--builder`:

```console
$ docker buildx build --builder=remote-unix -t test --load .
```

Remember that you need to use the `--load` flag if you want to load the build
result into the Docker daemon.

## Example: Remote BuildKit in Docker container

This guide will show you how to create setup similar to the `docker-container`
driver, by manually booting a BuildKit Docker container and connecting to it
using the Buildx remote driver. This procedure will manually create a container
and access it via it's exposed port. (You'd probably be better of just using the
`docker-container` driver that connects to BuildKit through the Docker daemon,