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What's the difference between these two products?

Artifact Registry - https://cloud.google.com/artifact-registry/
Container Registry - https://cloud.google.com/container-registry/

Drew
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Dustin Ingram
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2 Answers2

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Artifact Registry includes all the features of Container Registry (storing container images) as well as new features for language-specific artifact repositories.

From https://cloud.google.com/artifact-registry/docs/transition/transition-from-gcr

Artifact Registry is the evolution of Container Registry. As a fully-managed service with support for both container images and non-container artifacts, Artifact Registry extends the capabilities of Container Registry.

From https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-development/understanding-artifact-registry-vs-container-registry, the key improvements are:

  • "A unified control plane for container, OS and language repositories" - AR is for storing language and OS packages as well
  • "A more granular permission model with Cloud IAM" - permissions can be per-repository
  • "Repositories in the region of your choice" - can choose individual regions for repositories instead of multi-regions
  • "A pricing model that respects your region" - higher costs for storage, but potentially lower (or no) costs for network egress
  • "Part of a secure supply chain" - works directly with other Google Cloud 'secure supply chain' products
Dustin Ingram
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    Add some use cases to your answer to show the benefits of Artifact Registry. – John Hanley Jan 14 '21 at 19:57
  • Worth mentioning as said here https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-development/understanding-artifact-registry-vs-container-registry, "Container Registry will only receive critical security fixes" – froblesmartin Mar 28 '23 at 19:06
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Artifact Registry is simply a better version of Container Registry. Build artifact formats beyond container images are supported, including popular language and Debian-related packages.

As of this writing, only Docker image and Helm chart support are GA. (You have to sign up through this form to access the pre-GA functionality for Java (Maven/Gradle), Node (npm), Python (PEP 503), and Debian (APT) packages.)

Container Registry will still continue to work and will not go away soon. You can still use both services in the same project.

Here's the key differences:

  1. Artifact Registry supports multiple repositories per project. Repositories are separate and unique resources and you are required to create one before pushing an image. With this feature, you'll be able to give names, descriptions, and specific permissions on a repository so you can properly manage who can access your images.
  2. Artifact Registry has its own IAM permissions to access your repositories.
  3. Artifact Registry uses new hosts under pkg.dev rather than gcr.io.
  4. Container Registry is only multi regional but Artifact Registry supports multi regional or regional repositories.
  5. Artifact Registry has its own pricing. Users are charged for storage and network egress.
Drew
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Alex G
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  • is it cheaper / simpler / better in any way to still use Container Registry for any reason for a new simple Cloud Run docker image? – Zaffer Jul 25 '21 at 21:19
  • I like this explanation, but one small note: Artifact Registry now has alpha support for gcr.io domain as well (for better backwards compatibility with GCR): https://cloud.google.com/artifact-registry/docs/transition/setup-gcr-repo – James Aug 03 '21 at 22:27
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    It's worth noting that currently, Artifact Registry's pricing is considerably higher per GB: `Price (per GB / month): $0.10`; compared to Container Registry: `about $0.026 per GB per month` Granted, they are both quite cheap! – Venryx Aug 16 '21 at 00:35
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    Artifact Registry seems marketing speak to get more money from customers. Google mispriced container registry, regrets that decision and came up with rip off artifact registry pricing. For the vast bulk of use cases, container registry does what artifact registry can at a fraction of the cost. – Atlas Dec 14 '21 at 06:53
  • Can't +1 the above more comment more than once, unfortunately – Anshuman Kumar Dec 28 '22 at 09:08
  • The upvoted comments suggest gcr.io is cheaper than pkg.dev, but that's only true of storage costs. pkg.dev is likely cheaper in most cases as it offers free egress in many cases, and the difference in storage cost is negligible, it'd be hard to come up with 100GB of images but that'd only cost $10/month in GAR/pkg.dev. pkg.dev lets you have a multi-regional pkg.dev (at the same storage cost as single regional pkg.dev) then when egressing to the same continent egress is free because it'll pull from the closest region. https://cloud.google.com/artifact-registry/pricing#network-egress – neoakris Apr 04 '23 at 16:51