diff --git a/energy-tests/Dockerfile-mariadb b/energy-tests/Dockerfile-mariadb
index ee69078469..9ff0e09aa9 100644
--- a/energy-tests/Dockerfile-mariadb
+++ b/energy-tests/Dockerfile-mariadb
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
-FROM mariadb:10.8.2-focal
+FROM mariadb:latest
 COPY ./wordpress-dump.sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/wordpress-dump.sql
 EXPOSE 3306
diff --git a/energy-tests/Dockerfile-wordpress b/energy-tests/Dockerfile-wordpress
index f3c86bb00d..fe046d61a5 100644
--- a/energy-tests/Dockerfile-wordpress
+++ b/energy-tests/Dockerfile-wordpress
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-FROM wordpress:7.0.4-php8.3-apache
+FROM wordpress:latest
 EXPOSE 9875
 COPY ./html /var/www/html
 COPY ./wordpress.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/wordpress.conf
diff --git a/energy-tests/compose.yml b/energy-tests/compose.yml
index 87b139c3aa..35d9f4a9f7 100644
--- a/energy-tests/compose.yml
+++ b/energy-tests/compose.yml
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ services:
       - 3306
     healthcheck:
       test: [
-        "CMD", "bash", "-c", "mysqladmin ping -h localhost -u wordpress -pwordpress | grep \"mysqld is alive\""
+        "CMD", "bash", "-c", "mariadb -h localhost -u wordpress -pwordpress -e 'SELECT 1' >/dev/null 2>&1"
       ]
       interval: "1h" # effectively turns repeated healthchecks during runtime off
       start_period: "60s"