Choosing the Right Container Registry

Software developers nowadays have a lot of options when choosing a container registry to upload containers to their infrastructure or share the artifacts with customers.

But not all OCI registries serve the same purpose. Some are designed primarily for internal use—filling the gap between developers, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment within a single organization. Others are built for external distribution—helping software vendors distribute artifacts to customers, often across security boundaries or into air-gapped environments.

In this post, we'll compare different registry options, focusing on how each supports real-world software distribution needs.

But first, let's define a few key terms.

Terminology

• Registry: A service for storing and distributing container artifacts. Examples include private Docker image registries, OCI registries, and many proprietary registries which will be covered below.
• Artifact: Can have multiple meanings, but in this context it refers to an OCI-compliant image.
• Container Image: A type of artifact. It consists of manifests and blobs.
• Digest: A unique identifier for a specific version of an artifact, typically a SHA256 hash. The digest cannot change.
• Tag: A human-readable label for a specific version of an artifact, often used for versioning (e.g., latest, v1.0, etc.). It points to a unique digest. If tags in a registry are immutable, it is not possible to change the pointer to another digest.
• Manifest: Metadata that defines how blobs are combined to form a container image. It can also reference other manifests in the case of a multi-arch image.
• Blob: The actual data of an artifact, most commonly an archive of files.
• SBOM (Software Bill of Materials): A list of components and dependencies used in a software build. It is most common to directly add it as a layer to the OCI image.
• Image Signing: A cryptographic process that ensures the integrity and authenticity of container images. The signature can also be directly integrated into the OCI image.
• OCI Compliance: Adherence to the Open Container Initiative standards, ensuring OCI-compliant containers can be used across different platforms.

What Is a Container Registry?

A container registry is used by software developers as a service to store, manage, and distribute container images and related OCI-compliant artifacts. It provides APIs for pushing and pulling artifacts and is mostly consumed by CLI clients in CI/CD environments or deployment targets. Mature container registries come with advanced access control, analytics, and user interfaces.

Understanding the OCI Format

Based on the original Docker runtime and image format, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) stepped in to standardize these into open, vendor-neutral specifications: the OCI Image, Distribution, and Runtime specs. This brought consistency and portability to container images, and now, the same is happening for other types of software artifacts.

Popular tools like Helm, Docker, and ORAS support pushing and pulling OCI-compliant artifacts. A growing trend is using ORAS to package and store non-OCI-native formats, like Kubeflow pipelines, configuration bundles, or machine learning models, as OCI artifacts.

ORAS handles the heavy lifting under the hood: it wraps arbitrary files in a compliant OCI format, generating the appropriate manifests, content digests, and metadata needed to make the artifact registry-friendly.

For example, you can push a machine learning model like this:

oras push registry.distr.sh/my-org/ml-model:0.0.1 ./model.pkl:application/vnd.myorg.model

This command will wrap my model.pkl file in an OCI-compliant format of my custom type application/vnd.myorg.model, generating the necessary manifest and digest, and then push it to the specified registry.

Key Considerations When Choosing a Registry

When evaluating registries, consider these core criteria:

Internal vs. External Use Is this for your internal development team's workflow, or for distributing to customers? This is the most fundamental distinction.

OCI Compliance Level How completely does the registry implement the OCI specification? This affects which artifact types you can store and distribute.

Security & Access Controls For internal use, integration with your existing IAM may be sufficient. For external distribution, you'll need granular controls over which artifacts are visible to which customers. Vulnerability scanning is also an important consideration.

Deployment Flexibility Can the registry be deployed where you need it—cloud, on-prem, or air-gapped environments?

Support Does the registry have a strong support community or a commercial vendor backing?

List of private (internal) container registries

Internal registries are for the most part built for trusted, in-house use. They integrate tightly with cloud services, IAM systems, and CI/CD pipelines to support internal teams.

They're ideal when dev and deploy happen inside the same security boundary, with no need to serve external customers.

But they often come with limited user interfaces, access control options, and analytics.

Azure Container Registry (ACR)

Azure Container Registry (ACR) allows users to store artifacts either in a default global namespace or organize them more granularly using the supported repository structure. Thanks to Microsoft's scale, ACR comes with some compelling features like global image replication and built-in automation for building and patching images. There's also support for vulnerability scanning, apparently via an integration with Aqua Security, though I've mostly seen that mentioned in Aqua's own documentation.

Key features:

• OCI v1.1 compliant, strong integration with Azure
• Supports specialized artifacts (WASM modules, Bicep files, ML models)
• Built-in Azure policy management and security
• Pricing transparency
• Automated container building and patching

AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR)

Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) supports both private and public repositories, integrating nicely with AWS services. ECR features include lifecycle policies for image management, automated vulnerability scanning, immutable tags, and cross-region replication. Access control is managed in AWS IAM. It's ideal for AWS-centric workflows, offering high availability and durability for container images.

Key features:

• Private and Public repositories
• Automated vulnerability scanning
• Built-in lifecycle policy management
• Powerful, but complicated access control via AWS IAM

Google Artifacts Registry (GCR)

Google Artifact Registry is the successor to Google Container Registry, offering a unified platform for managing both container images and non-container artifacts like Maven, npm, and OS packages. It integrates with Google Cloud services (e.g., Cloud Build, Deploy, GKE) and supports fine-grained access via IAM, CMEK encryption, and regional or multi-regional setups.

For users transitioning from Google Container Registry, Artifact Registry offers improved features and support for a broader range of artifact types.

Key features:

• Multi-Format Support
• Custom Security and Access Control, including customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for individual repositories
• Regional and Multi-Regional Repositories

Oracle Container Registry (OCR)

Oracle Container Registry is a managed service for storing and sharing container images, with support for public and private repos. It integrates with Oracle Cloud IAM for access control, supports multi-architecture images, and offers high availability via replication. Best suited for Oracle Cloud users, it works seamlessly with tools like Kubernetes Engine and Visual Builder Studio.

Key features:

• Private and Public Docker Registries
• Multi-Architecture Image Support

JFrog Artifactory

JFrog Artifactory is without a doubt a huge player in the registry product catalog, being both a registry and a universal repository manager, supporting 30+ package formats.

Instead of a unified registry space, each format typically gets its own dedicated repository of a specific type. JFrog Artifactory pricing varies based on scale and features, but it offers one of the most comprehensive solutions for internal registries on the market.

It supports three repo types:

• Local – for internal artifacts
• Remote – for caching external sources
• Virtual – unified views of local and remote repos

Artifactory includes enterprise-grade features like OCI v1.1 compliance, a proprietary query language (AQL), CDN integration, and fine-grained access controls for large-scale distribution.

Key features:

• Artifactory can be deployed on-prem or in the cloud
• Full OCI-compliant registry with Referrers API support
• Universal artifact management across multiple formats
• Advanced artifact tracking, dependency management, and caching
• Image vulnerability scanning and security features
• Proprietary query language
• Artifactory cloud + CDN Distribution

GitLab Container Registry

GitLab Container Registry is a part of the GitLab suite, offering easy integration with GitLab's CI/CD pipelines. It is currently working towards full OCI compliance, making it suitable for teams deeply embedded in the GitLab ecosystem. The registry supports webhook integrations for automation, allowing for more streamlined workflows.

Key features:

• It can also be self-hosted.
• Tight integration with GitLab CI/CD for build, test, and deployment
• Webhook support for automation and external integrations
• Built-in image and repository management via the GitLab UI
• Ideal for teams already using GitLab for version control
• OCI compliance in progress

Cloudsmith

Cloudsmith is a SaaS-based package management solution that supports OCI v1.1, enabling the management of container images alongside other package formats. It includes a unified policy management engine, which simplifies the enforcement of organizational policies across different artifact types. Cloudsmith is particularly useful for complex software distribution scenarios, offering features like ML model tracking.

Key Features:

• OCI v1.1 compliance
• Unified policy engine across artifact types
• ML model tracking support
• Scalable, cloud-hosted (SaaS) solution
• Ideal for complex, multi-format distribution scenarios

Mirantis

Mirantis Secure Registry (MSR) is an impressive enterprise-grade, private container registry designed to enhance the security and efficiency of any software supply chain. Unlike public registries, MSR offers a secure environment for storing, sharing, and managing container images, ensuring that only approved and trusted images are used in your development and production environments.

Key Features:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Image Scanning
• Image Signing
• Caching and Mirroring
• Image Lifecycle Management
• High Availability (HA) Configurations
• Exportable Health Metrics

Recent announcement: Mirantis has moved the open-source core of its Mirantis Secure Registry (MSR) to CNCF Harbor. Instead of continuing to develop their own registry independently, Mirantis now uses Harbor as the foundation of MSR.

Harbor

Harbor is an open source container registry that is quite robust in the feature set that it offers. It allows administrators to organize repositories into projects, which can be either public or private, with access controlled through role-based access control (RBAC).

Harbor supports full OCI v2.0 compliance and extends beyond basic container management by including features like vulnerability scanning, image replication, and automatic SBOM generation upon push. It is well-suited for enterprise environments due to its extensive security features and support for various artifact types.

Key Features:

• Full OCI v2.0 Compliance
• Extensive Artifact Support: Includes support for CNABs, OPA bundles, and user-defined OCI artifacts like ML models.
• Enterprise Security Features: Offers vulnerability scanning, image replication, and advanced access control.
• Supply Chain Security Tools: Provides features like auto-generated SBOMs for enhanced security.

Gitea

Gitea is a lightweight, open-source platform that integrates a container registry with its code hosting capabilities. It supports basic OCI compliance, allowing users to manage Docker images and Helm charts within the Gitea ecosystem. The registry is suitable for smaller projects or teams already using Gitea for version control. Authentication is facilitated through personal access tokens, making it easy to manage access to private registries.

Key Features:

• Basic OCI Compliance: Supports publishing of OCI-compliant images.
• Integration with Gitea Code Hosting
• Lightweight and Easy to Use
• Personal Access Token Authentication

GitHub Container Registry

GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) is GitHub's OCI-compliant registry service that works alongside GitHub Packages. It's optimized for users already managing code and automation through GitHub, supporting fine-grained permissions via GitHub repositories and GitHub Actions for publishing and consuming container images. It is best used for open source images

Key Features:

• Full OCI support for container images
• Integrated with GitHub Actions for automated image builds and publishing
• Fine-grained permission management tied to GitHub repos and orgs
• Namespace-scoped images using GitHub user/org paths
• Supports Helm charts and other OCI artifacts

Docker Hub

Docker Hub is the default public registry for Docker images and one of the most widely used registries in the container ecosystem. It's deeply integrated with the Docker CLI and provides a huge catalog of public images from official vendors and community publishers. While it's a convenient starting point for development, its rate limits and security concerns (due to its public nature) often lead teams to use it mainly for base images or non-sensitive workloads.

Key Features:

• Native integration with Docker CLI and Docker Desktop
• Public and private repositories
• Automated builds and webhooks for CI integration
• Official and Verified Publisher image libraries
• Rate-limited anonymous access (login recommended for better limits)

List of container registries that support external users

External registries face a fundamentally different challenge: distributing software to end customers, usually outside of your organization. That shift requires a different focus: access control, auditing, version visibility, and compliance.

While GitHub Container Registry and Docker Hub are excellent for open-source and low-security use cases, they're not well suited for commercial software distribution because they lack:

• Granular access control: No way to give specific customers access to specific artifact versions
• Air-gapped support: Limited options for distributing to high-security environments
• Usage visibility: Missing audit logs and download tracking that commercial vendors need
• License management: No built-in capabilities to manage software entitlements

This is where purpose-built external registries like Distr come in, addressing these gaps for vendor-to-customer distribution.

Distr

Distr comes with an OCI-compliant artifact registry natively built into the platform.

Distr itself is fully open source on GitHub and can be self-hosted. It not only features a vendor portal that allows software and AI companies to manage their artifacts, invite end customers, and manage their licenses and access policies to specific tags of an image or version of an application.

It also comes with a customer portal where end customers see all available artifacts and can create access tokens to interact with the registry.

Key features:

• Offers a vendor and customer portal
• Supports OCI-formatted and OCI-compliant artifacts (Helm, Docker, etc)
• Built specifically for commercial self-managed deployment options for software and AI companies.
• Advanced features: artifact tag restrictions, usage tracking, and granular access controls
• It can be consumed as a managed service (SaaS). (Sign up at signup.distr.sh) or self-managed.
• Open Source and free to use

Who it's for:

Built for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), B2B platforms, and enterprise software teams who need to distribute commercial software to customer environments, especially air-gapped, self-managed, or regulated deployments.

Comparison Table

Registry	Managed service	Can be self-managed	Great support for external users
Gitea	❌️	✅️	❌️
Harbor	❌️	✅️	❌️
Docker Hub	✅️	❌️	❌️
GitLab CR	✅️	✅️	❌️
GitHub CR	✅️	❌️	❌️
JFrog Artifactory	❌️	✅️	✅️
Azure CR	✅️	❌️	❌️
AWS ECR	✅️	❌️	❌️
Google CR	✅️	❌️	❌️
Oracle CR	✅️	❌️	❌️
Cloudsmith	✅️	❌️	❌️
Distr	✅️	✅️	✅️

Conclusion: Which container registry fits your needs best?

• For enterprises that use artifacts internally: Choose JFrog Artifactory or Harbor for large organizations managing complex internal workflows. Both offer robust access controls, multi-format support, and policy enforcement for secure, large-scale internal use.

• SaaS vendors that only host at one cloud provider without self-managed support: If your infrastructure runs in a specific cloud, consider the container registry your cloud provider offers.

• Non-commercial open source projects: GitHub Container Registry and Docker Hub are ideal for distributing public artifacts to a wide audience with minimal setup. They're straightforward to adopt, work well with standard dev tooling, and are commonly known.

• Commercial open source projects and SaaS vendors that want to offer self-managed deployment options: Distr is built for software vendors distributing artifacts to external customer environments, including regulated, self-managed, or air-gapped deployments. It offers granular access controls, usage tracking, and flexible deployment models that internal or public registries can't deliver.