Artifact Registry vs Container Registry: Migration Guide

When you're managing container images and software artifacts in Google Cloud, you need a reliable place to store and distribute them. For years, Container Registry served this purpose for GCP users, but Google Cloud has introduced Artifact Registry as its successor, and the transition is now underway. Understanding the differences between Artifact Registry vs Container Registry helps you plan your migration and take advantage of newer capabilities.

Container Registry will be deprecated, meaning organizations currently using it need to understand what's changing and how to move forward. This transition reflects how Google Cloud is consolidating and modernizing its artifact management strategy, moving from a container-only solution to a unified repository service that handles multiple artifact types.

What Container Registry Provided

Container Registry was Google Cloud's original service for storing Docker container images. It worked by creating a Cloud Storage bucket behind the scenes, using that bucket to store image layers and metadata. When you pushed a container image to Container Registry, you used a hostname like gcr.io, us.gcr.io, or eu.gcr.io followed by your project ID and image name.

The service integrated cleanly with other GCP services. Cloud Build could push images directly to Container Registry, and services like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Cloud Run could pull from it without additional authentication configuration. Container Registry handled the Docker Registry API, allowing standard Docker and container tooling to work without modification.

The storage model meant that billing came through Cloud Storage charges for the image data and Cloud Networking charges for egress. This approach was straightforward but had limitations. Container Registry focused exclusively on container images and didn't support other artifact types like language packages, OS packages, or generic files. It also lacked granular access controls beyond the project level and didn't provide vulnerability scanning without enabling an additional service.

How Artifact Registry Differs

Artifact Registry takes a broader approach to artifact management in Google Cloud. Rather than storing only container images, it supports multiple repository formats within a single service. You can create repositories for Docker containers, Maven packages for Java applications, npm packages for Node.js projects, Python packages, Apt packages for Debian systems, Yum packages for Red Hat systems, and generic artifact storage.

The architecture uses dedicated repositories instead of relying on Cloud Storage buckets. When you create an Artifact Registry repository, you specify the format (Docker, Maven, npm, etc.), the region where data should be stored, and access control policies. This gives you more control over where artifacts live and who can access them. A video streaming service might have separate repositories for their frontend npm packages, backend container images, and Python libraries used in their transcoding pipeline, each with different access policies and regional locations.

Access control is more granular in Artifact Registry. Instead of project-level permissions, you can assign IAM roles at the repository level. This means a payment processor could give their fraud detection team access to specific container repositories without granting access to all artifacts across the project. You can have different developers with push access to development repositories while restricting production repository access to CI/CD service accounts only.

Vulnerability scanning is built directly into Artifact Registry rather than being a separate service. When you enable scanning, Google Cloud automatically analyzes container images for known security vulnerabilities and provides actionable reports. This integration makes security assessment more seamless compared to Container Registry, where you needed to enable Container Analysis separately.

The Key Differences That Matter

When comparing Artifact Registry vs Container Registry, several practical differences affect how you use the services day to day. The hostname changes from gcr.io to a region-specific format like us-central1-docker.pkg.dev. This means updating your CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes manifests, and anywhere else you reference container images.

Regional control is more explicit in Artifact Registry. With Container Registry, you chose a multi-region endpoint (gcr.io for US, eu.gcr.io for Europe, asia.gcr.io for Asia), but Artifact Registry lets you select specific regions. A logistics company operating primarily in the US Midwest might choose us-central1 for their repositories to minimize latency to their primary data center and keep data in a specific geographic location for compliance reasons.

The pricing model also differs. Artifact Registry charges based on storage consumed by artifacts and egress charges when transferring data out of Google Cloud. Container Registry used Cloud Storage pricing, which had its own structure. In practice, Artifact Registry pricing is often comparable or better, particularly when you consider the integrated features like vulnerability scanning that would have been additional costs with Container Registry.

Repository isolation means better organization. A mobile game studio might create separate repositories for different game titles, allowing them to manage access control independently. Their racing game team can push images to their repository without seeing or affecting the puzzle game team's artifacts. This isolation wasn't possible with Container Registry, where all images in a project shared the same namespace and access controls.

Migration Considerations

Moving from Container Registry to Artifact Registry requires planning but isn't technically complex. The basic process involves creating Artifact Registry repositories, copying your existing container images, and updating references throughout your infrastructure.

Google Cloud provides a migration tool that can copy images from Container Registry to Artifact Registry. You can use this command to copy all images from a Container Registry location:

gcloud container images list --repository=gcr.io/your-project-id
gcloud artifacts repositories create my-docker-repo \
  --repository-format=docker \
  --location=us-central1 \
  --description="Migrated from Container Registry"

for image in $(gcloud container images list --repository=gcr.io/your-project-id --format="value(name)"); do
  gcloud container images add-tag $image:latest \
    us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/your-project-id/my-docker-repo/$(basename $image):latest
done

This example shows the general approach, though production migrations typically need more sophisticated scripts to handle image tags, maintain image history, and validate successful transfers.

Your CI/CD pipelines need updates to push to the new Artifact Registry location. A Cloud Build configuration that previously pushed to Container Registry might have looked like this:

steps:
  - name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/docker'
    args: ['build', '-t', 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/my-app:$SHORT_SHA', '.']
images:
  - 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/my-app:$SHORT_SHA'

After migration to Artifact Registry, it would become:

steps:
  - name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/docker'
    args: ['build', '-t', 'us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/$PROJECT_ID/my-docker-repo/my-app:$SHORT_SHA', '.']
images:
  - 'us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/$PROJECT_ID/my-docker-repo/my-app:$SHORT_SHA'

Kubernetes deployments need similar updates. Any Deployment, StatefulSet, or Pod specification referencing Container Registry images must change to the new Artifact Registry location. A hospital network running a telehealth platform on GKE would need to update their deployment manifests for each microservice, testing thoroughly in development environments before updating production.

Authentication usually continues working without changes when services like GKE or Cloud Run pull from Artifact Registry instead of Container Registry, since both use the same underlying IAM permissions. However, if you're pulling images from outside Google Cloud or using service account keys for authentication, you should verify that your service accounts have the appropriate Artifact Registry Reader role.

Why Artifact Registry Is Replacing Container Registry

Google Cloud decided to replace Container Registry with Artifact Registry because the newer service better aligns with how software development has evolved. Applications rarely consist of just container images anymore. A typical deployment for a solar farm monitoring system might include container images for the API services, Python packages for data processing libraries, npm packages for the dashboard frontend, and generic artifacts like configuration templates or machine learning models.

Managing these different artifact types in separate systems creates operational overhead and security gaps. With Container Registry for images, Cloud Storage for generic files, and external repositories for language packages, you end up with fragmented access controls and multiple security scanning approaches. Artifact Registry consolidates this into a single service with consistent access patterns and security practices.

The regional storage model in Artifact Registry also provides better data locality controls. Companies subject to data residency requirements can ensure their artifacts remain in specific regions. A European financial services company might need to keep all artifacts in european-west1 to comply with regulations, which is straightforward to enforce in Artifact Registry but harder to guarantee with Container Registry's multi-region model.

Integrated vulnerability scanning means security becomes part of the artifact lifecycle rather than an afterthought. When a new vulnerability is disclosed, Artifact Registry automatically rescans affected images and updates the vulnerability reports. A software as a service provider can configure policies that prevent deployment of images with critical vulnerabilities, implementing security guardrails directly in their artifact storage layer.

Practical Implications for Different Scenarios

The transition from Container Registry to Artifact Registry affects different organizations in various ways. A small startup with a handful of microservices might complete their migration in an afternoon, updating a few deployment files and CI/CD configurations. The main benefit they'll see is integrated vulnerability scanning without additional setup.

A larger enterprise running hundreds of services faces more complexity but gains more value. An insurance company with separate teams for claims processing, customer portals, and underwriting systems can create isolated repositories for each business unit. They can implement policies where only specific service accounts can push to production repositories, and they can enable vulnerability scanning with automated notifications to security teams when high-severity issues are detected.

Organizations using multiple artifact types benefit immediately. A climate modeling research institution that containerizes their simulation code, packages Python libraries for data analysis, and maintains Debian packages for their custom Linux environment can manage all these artifacts in Artifact Registry. They avoid juggling multiple systems and can implement consistent access controls across all artifact types.

Companies with strong compliance requirements find the regional control valuable. A healthcare provider storing container images for their electronic health records system can ensure those artifacts never leave specific GCP regions, making compliance audits more straightforward. The ability to prove where artifacts are stored and who accessed them becomes simpler with Artifact Registry's unified audit logging.

Implementation Timeline and Support

Google Cloud announced that Container Registry would enter deprecation, with a timeline for users to migrate. While Container Registry continues to function during the transition period, new projects should start with Artifact Registry rather than Container Registry. Google Cloud provides migration guides, tooling, and support to help organizations transition.

The service remains fully compatible with Docker tooling and container runtimes. You can use standard Docker commands like docker push and docker pull with Artifact Registry by configuring Docker to authenticate to the Artifact Registry hostname. This compatibility means your development workflows don't need to change beyond updating the registry URL.

For organizations planning their migration, the practical approach is to create Artifact Registry repositories alongside your existing Container Registry usage, gradually migrate services, and validate each step. An online learning platform might migrate their authentication service first, run it in production for a few weeks to verify everything works correctly, then migrate additional services incrementally. This reduces risk compared to a big bang migration of all services simultaneously.

Certification and Learning Context

Understanding Artifact Registry vs Container Registry is relevant for several Google Cloud certifications. The Professional Cloud Architect exam covers artifact management as part of designing GCP solutions, and the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer exam includes topics around CI/CD pipelines and artifact storage. The Associate Cloud Engineer certification also touches on container registry concepts as part of deploying applications.

The migration from Container Registry to Artifact Registry represents the kind of service evolution that appears in certification exams. Questions might ask about choosing the appropriate storage for different artifact types, implementing access controls, or designing migration strategies. Understanding not just how each service works but why Google Cloud made this transition helps with the architectural reasoning questions that appear in professional-level certifications.

Moving Forward

The replacement of Container Registry with Artifact Registry reflects a broader shift toward unified artifact management in Google Cloud. Rather than maintaining separate services for different artifact types, GCP is consolidating around a single, more capable solution. For practitioners, this means learning new hostnames and updating configurations, but it also means gaining capabilities like multi-format support, repository-level access control, and integrated security scanning.

Organizations still using Container Registry should plan their migration based on their specific timelines and complexity. The service transition is well-supported with tooling and documentation, and the underlying concepts remain similar. The investment in migrating pays dividends through better artifact organization, stronger security controls, and the flexibility to store more than just container images in a consistent way.

Whether you're managing containers for a small application or orchestrating artifacts for a complex enterprise system, Artifact Registry provides the foundation that Google Cloud is building its artifact management future on. Understanding the differences from Container Registry and planning your migration appropriately ensures you're ready for that future.