'docker ps' and 'docker-compose ps' commands give different result

docker ps lists all running containers in docker engine. docker-compose ps lists containers related to images declared in docker-compose file.

The result of docker-compose ps is a subset of the result of docker ps.

docker ps - lists all running containers in Docker engine.

docker-compose ps - lists containers for the given docker compose configuration. The result will depend on configuration and parameters passed to docker-compose command.

Example

Start the containers with the following command:

docker-compose -p prod up -d

(-p in the command above defines the project name)

Running docker-compose ps won't list containers since the project name parameters is not passed:

docker-compose ps

Name   Command   State   Ports
------------------------------

Running docker-compose -p prod ps will list all containers:

     Name                   Command               State                       Ports
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dev_app_1        sh -c exec java ${JAVA_OPT ...   Up      0.0.0.0:5005->5005/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9001->9000/tcp
dev_database_1   docker-entrypoint.sh postgres    Up      0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp
dev_nginx_1      /docker-entrypoint.sh ngin ...   Up      0.0.0.0:8443->443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp
dev_pgadmin_1    /entrypoint.sh                   Up      443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9100->80/tcp

The same goes if you define for example docker compose files with -f parameter.