8gears Container Registry

Overview

8gears Container Registry is a Harbor-based registry for container images and OCI artifacts, aimed at organizations that need control over deployment, identity, and security. Its strongest case is flexibility: teams can use hosted SaaS, run it in their own cloud, or self-host on Kubernetes, including on-premise and air-gapped setups.

That range suits platform teams with demanding infrastructure or supply-chain needs better than buyers seeking a simple, low-cost registry. The free Individuals plan is a useful starting point, but its 1 GB storage cap is restrictive for growing image collections.

Key features

Projects, proxying, quotas, retention policies, and replication give teams practical ways to organize artifacts and manage their lifecycle. Multi-region replication is relevant to distributed environments, while OCI artifact support and immutable tags help teams manage more than just mutable container images.

Identity controls include OIDC, LDAP, SAML 2.0, group synchronization, fine-grained RBAC, and workload identity federation. Trivy scanning, content trust and signing, SSL/TLS, and encrypted storage address image and registry security. Organization-wide vulnerability views, SBOM, image policies, and audit trails exported to enterprise systems extend visibility beyond individual repositories.

Terraform, Pulumi, the REST API, and Kubernetes CRDs support automation. Audit log export can connect to Kafka, SQS, SNS, Pub/Sub, or webhooks; audit shipping and message-queue integrations are part of Enterprise. These are meaningful capabilities for platform engineering, though teams that need those advanced audit options should account for the custom-priced Enterprise tier.

Deployment choice is a central strength. Fully managed deployments include automated backups, upgrades, patching, and 24/7 monitoring, with a stated 99.99% availability track record. Level 3 engineering support is available weekdays, 9–17 CET, by email, chat, and video conferencing; that schedule may not suit teams needing round-the-clock direct engineering help.

Pricing

The Individuals plan costs nothing, billed Free forever. It includes unlimited private repositories and community support, but just 1 GB of storage; additional storage is billed per GB per month. This is appropriate for individual use or a small evaluation, not for substantial image retention.

Dedicated is billed monthly, with price not displayed. It includes a dedicated Harbor instance, unlimited users and teams, 1000 GB storage, a custom domain, no egress fees, and a 14-day free trial. Its fixed storage allocation and unlimited seats can suit a team that wants dedicated infrastructure, but buyers need a quote to judge cost.

Enterprise uses custom pricing and an individual agreement. It adds dedicated infrastructure, multi-regional high availability, advanced authentication, a custom SLA, professional services, and white-label options. This is the tier for organizations whose operating requirements justify negotiated terms; it is not a transparent-price step up from the free plan.

Platforms

The registry supports API, Linux, self-hosted, and web access. Managed deployments can run on AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Exoscale, or StackIT, while self-hosted Kubernetes deployments cover on-premise and air-gapped environments. That deployment breadth matters for hybrid and regulated environments, but also means buyers should choose a plan around where they need to operate the registry.

Who it's for

8gears identifies enterprises, cloud providers, multi-cloud and hybrid teams, IoT or edge businesses, and independent software vendors as its intended users. It is strongest for organizations that need registry-location choice alongside identity controls, security visibility, or multi-region operations. Individuals and smaller teams can start free, but should expect the storage ceiling to arrive quickly if they retain many images.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Hosted, customer-cloud, and Kubernetes self-hosting options cover a wider range of infrastructure constraints than a hosted-only approach.
• Pros: Broad identity, scanning, signing, encryption, and supply-chain visibility features help central platform and security teams govern artifacts across projects.
• Pros: Dedicated includes 1000 GB, unlimited users and teams, and no egress fees, making its operating model clear even though its price requires a quote.
• Cons: The free plan's 1 GB storage limit is tight for sustained image use, and extra storage is billed per GB per month.
• Cons: Dedicated and Enterprise pricing is not displayed, so comparing total cost requires direct commercial discussions.
• Cons: Level 3 engineering support is weekday-only, which may leave teams with overnight or weekend escalation needs looking for another support arrangement.

Alternatives

Container Registries is a useful starting point for comparing the category. Choose Quay if an Apache 2-licensed open-source community distribution is the priority and you can provide its required database and reliable image storage. JFrog Container Registry is a fit for teams wanting a free self-managed edition covering Docker, OCI, Helm, Helm OCI, and Generic packages, without Xray.

Inedo ProGet may suit teams wanting unlimited feeds for private packages and Docker in a free edition, provided its limited security and compliance features are acceptable. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Registry is worth considering for OCI-oriented users who can work within its free monthly allowance of 2 million invocations and 400,000 gigabyte memory-seconds.

DigitalOcean Container Registry offers a simpler published entry point: its free Starter plan has one repository and 500 MiB, while Basic costs $5 a month for five repositories and 5 GiB. Amazon Elastic Container Registry is another option for buyers preferring pay-as-you-go pricing by stored and internet-transferred data, with no upfront fees or commitments.

Satama Container Registry is an alternative for use cases eligible under CSC's free-of-charge policy. Volcengine Container Registry is another option to compare.

Verdict

Choose 8gears Container Registry if your organization needs a Harbor-based registry that can move between hosted, customer-cloud, and self-hosted deployments, with substantial identity and supply-chain controls. Its deployment flexibility and security breadth are the main reasons to choose it; the 1 GB free cap and quote-based paid plans are the reasons to look elsewhere if you need predictable, low-cost scaling.