diff --git a/sdks/python/container/Dockerfile b/sdks/python/container/Dockerfile
index 7f5aa3604fe9..a1e17edb82d1 100644
--- a/sdks/python/container/Dockerfile
+++ b/sdks/python/container/Dockerfile
@@ -53,7 +53,8 @@ RUN  \
 
     # Install required packages for Beam Python SDK and common dependencies used by users.
     # use --no-deps to ensure the list includes all transitive dependencies.
-    pip install --no-deps -r /tmp/base_image_requirements.txt --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu && \
+    # use --prefer-binary to avoid compiling wheels from source when prebuilt wheels exist.
+    pip install --prefer-binary --no-deps -r /tmp/base_image_requirements.txt --extra-index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu && \
     rm -rf /tmp/base_image_requirements.txt && \
     python -c "import nltk; nltk.download('stopwords')" && \
     rm /root/nltk_data/corpora/stopwords.zip && \
diff --git a/sdks/python/container/run_generate_requirements.sh b/sdks/python/container/run_generate_requirements.sh
index 4c7eea0b7398..ed1f57faac4e 100755
--- a/sdks/python/container/run_generate_requirements.sh
+++ b/sdks/python/container/run_generate_requirements.sh
@@ -93,8 +93,8 @@ fi
 # Force torch dependencies to be pulled from the PyTorch CPU wheel
 # repository so that they don't include GPU dependencies with
 # non-compliant licenses
-pip install ${PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS:+"$PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS"}  --no-cache-dir "$SDK_TARBALL""$EXTRAS" $INDEX_URL_OPTION
-pip install ${PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS:+"$PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS"}  --no-cache-dir -r "$PWD"/sdks/python/container/base_image_requirements_manual.txt
+pip install --prefer-binary ${PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS:+"$PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS"}  --no-cache-dir "$SDK_TARBALL""$EXTRAS" $INDEX_URL_OPTION
+pip install --prefer-binary ${PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS:+"$PIP_EXTRA_OPTIONS"}  --no-cache-dir -r "$PWD"/sdks/python/container/base_image_requirements_manual.txt
 
 pip uninstall -y apache-beam
 echo "Checking for broken dependencies:"