Docker Compose has emerged as a standard solution for testing applications with Postgres, providing isolated, consistent databases to test against. However, as testing requirements grow more complex, teams often discover the limitations of this approach, including cumbersome data population, managing test data between runs, and CI pipelines slowing down due to repeated database instance spinning up. Despite its benefits, Docker Compose has shortcomings such as populating larger datasets for testing, persistence issues with cleaning up containers and volumes after testing, and resource consumption due to running local databases. Database branching offers an alternative approach by creating isolated copies of the database using copy-on-write mechanics, providing instant test environments, parallel testing, and clean-up automation. The choice between Docker Compose and database branching depends on team needs, with many teams successfully leveraging containers for local development while using branches for CI/CD pipelines and complex testing scenarios.