diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/582-stream-close.yml b/changelogs/fragments/582-stream-close.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..3f9a297e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/582-stream-close.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+bugfixes:
+  - "docker_api connection plugin, docker_container_exec, docker_container_copy_into - properly close socket to Daemon after executing commands in containers (https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.docker/pull/582)."
diff --git a/plugins/module_utils/_api/api/client.py b/plugins/module_utils/_api/api/client.py
index fa99e069..d9ec5870 100644
--- a/plugins/module_utils/_api/api/client.py
+++ b/plugins/module_utils/_api/api/client.py
@@ -394,6 +394,10 @@ class APIClient(
             yield out
 
     def _read_from_socket(self, response, stream, tty=True, demux=False):
+        """Consume all data from the socket, close the response and return the
+        data. If stream=True, then a generator is returned instead and the
+        caller is responsible for closing the response.
+        """
         socket = self._get_raw_response_socket(response)
 
         gen = frames_iter(socket, tty)
@@ -408,8 +412,11 @@ class APIClient(
         if stream:
             return gen
         else:
-            # Wait for all the frames, concatenate them, and return the result
-            return consume_socket_output(gen, demux=demux)
+            try:
+                # Wait for all the frames, concatenate them, and return the result
+                return consume_socket_output(gen, demux=demux)
+            finally:
+                response.close()
 
     def _disable_socket_timeout(self, socket):
         """ Depending on the combination of python version and whether we're