diff --git a/DEVELOPMENT.md b/DEVELOPMENT.md
index 0f24453f7..46694fff7 100644
--- a/DEVELOPMENT.md
+++ b/DEVELOPMENT.md
@@ -74,6 +74,10 @@ development command line options.
   new set on each run.  Set this environment variable to `0` to cause the
   containers to be destroyed at the end of the next run.
 
+- `DANDI_TESTS_PULL_DOCKER_COMPOSE` -- When set to an empty string or `0`, the
+  tests will not pull the latest needed Docker images at the start of a run if
+  older versions of the images are already present.
+
 ## Sourcegraph
 
 The [Sourcegraph](https://sourcegraph.com) browser extension can be used to
diff --git a/dandi/tests/fixtures.py b/dandi/tests/fixtures.py
index 92c5d02dd..811df11dc 100644
--- a/dandi/tests/fixtures.py
+++ b/dandi/tests/fixtures.py
@@ -253,7 +253,8 @@ def docker_compose_setup() -> Iterator[Dict[str, str]]:
     env = {**os.environ, "DJANGO_DANDI_SCHEMA_VERSION": DANDI_SCHEMA_VERSION}
     try:
         if create:
-            run(["docker-compose", "pull"], cwd=str(LOCAL_DOCKER_DIR), check=True)
+            if os.environ.get("DANDI_TESTS_PULL_DOCKER_COMPOSE", "1") not in ("", "0"):
+                run(["docker-compose", "pull"], cwd=str(LOCAL_DOCKER_DIR), check=True)
             run(
                 ["docker-compose", "run", "--rm", "django", "./manage.py", "migrate"],
                 cwd=str(LOCAL_DOCKER_DIR),