Chainguard Registry vs Cloudsmith
No clear leader: Cloudsmith (63.0) and Chainguard Registry (59.3) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for container registries. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Chainguard Registry
A registry service providing pre-hardened container images, language libraries, and VM images built with security-first design and continuously patched against vulnerabilities. Designed to reduce engineering overhead and ensure compliance without manual security management.
Cloudsmith
A cloud-native platform for centralizing, securing, and distributing software artifacts in 30+ formats, featuring built-in vulnerability scanning, malware detection, and policy-based access controls.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Chainguard Registry
Free tier with 5 images. Paid plans from $19K/year for catalog access.
- FreeFree
- 5 images per organization
- Base, Application, and AI/ML images
- No CVE remediation SLA
- Catalog$19K/year for team of 10 (full container catalog access)
- Full access to 3,000+ images
- Unlimited pulls with no metering
- CVE remediation SLA (7 days critical, 14 days high/medium/low)
- SLSA L3 hardened infrastructure
- Sigstore signed artifacts with build-time SBOMs and attestations
- +3 more
- Per-ImageContact sales
- Flexible licensing by image count and type (base, app, AI/ML, FIPS)
- CVE remediation SLA
- Libraries-
- Python, Java, JavaScript libraries
- Unlimited applications per language with no metering
- Cross-compatibility across Linux distributions
- Virtual MachinesContact sales
- Minimal hardened OS images for general use or language runtimes
- CVE remediation SLA
- Multi-cloud and on-premises support
Cloudsmith
Pricing not documented yet.
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
- GitHub Actions
Chainguard Registry
- Cursor
- AWS Security Hub
- Wiz
- GitHub
- npm
- SAP Cloud Application Programming Model
- Kubernetes
- Kiro
- Grype
- Trivy
- AWS Inspector
- Anchore Enterprise
- Snyk
- GitLab
- CrowdStrike
- Qualys
- JFrog Artifactory
- Cloudsmith
- Harbor
- Nexus
- Google Artifact Registry
- Docker Hub
- Amazon ECR
- Microsoft ACR
Cloudsmith
- AWS CodeBuild
- Aikido
- Ansible
- Argo CD
- Azure AD SSO
- Azure DevOps
- Bitbucket Pipelines
- Buildkite
- Chainguard
- Chef
- CircleCI
- Codefresh
- Datadog
- Dependabot
- Drone CI
- GitHub Secret Scanning
- GitLab CI/CD
- Google SSO
- Harness
- Jenkins
- JumpCloud SSO
- Kusari
- Microsoft Teams
- Octopus Deploy
- +13 more
Chainguard Registry or Cloudsmith: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.