What is Harbor used for?

Harbor is an open-source cloud native registry that stores, signs and scans container images and Helm charts with access control. It is a good fit for private registry for an organization's images and mirroring images across data centers.

Is Harbor open source?

Yes. Harbor is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at goharbor/harbor and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Harbor is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Harbor?

Yes. Harbor can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Harbor an alternative to?

Harbor is an open-source alternative to JFrog, Cloudsmith, Sonatype Nexus Repository and Docker Hub. Other open-source alternatives to JFrog include Gitea, Harness and GitLab.

Is Harbor actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Harbor was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.15.2, published on 2 July 2026. The project has 29k stars on GitHub.

Harbor: open-source alternative to JFrog, Cloudsmith

About Harbor

Harbor is an open-source, trusted cloud native registry for storing, signing and scanning content. It extends the open-source Docker Distribution with the security, identity and management features organizations usually need, and a registry close to the build and run environment can speed up image transfers. Harbor is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, is written in Go, and is released under the Apache-2.0 license.

It stores both container images and Helm charts for container runtimes and orchestration platforms. Role-based access control works through projects, where users have different permissions for images or charts. Policy-based replication synchronizes content between registry instances using filters on repository, tag and label, with automatic retries. Other capabilities include user management, access control and activity auditing. The project warns that the main branch may be unstable during development, so use tagged releases.

Key features

Registry for container images and Helm charts
Role-based access control through projects
Policy-based replication between registries
Image signing and vulnerability scanning
User management and activity auditing
CNCF-hosted open-source project

Good fit for

→Private registry for an organization's images
→Mirroring images across data centers

Built with: Go; Docker; Kubernetes
Tags: container-registry; docker; kubernetes; helm; cncf; security; registry; image-scanning

Harbor: questions and answers

What is Harbor used for?: Harbor is an open-source cloud native registry that stores, signs and scans container images and Helm charts with access control. It is a good fit for private registry for an organization's images and mirroring images across data centers.
Is Harbor open source?: Yes. Harbor is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at goharbor/harbor and is written mainly in Go.
Is Harbor free?: Yes. Harbor is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Harbor?: Yes. Harbor can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Harbor an alternative to?: Harbor is an open-source alternative to JFrog, Cloudsmith, Sonatype Nexus Repository and Docker Hub. Other open-source alternatives to JFrog include Gitea, Harness and GitLab.
Is Harbor actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Harbor was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.15.2, published on 2 July 2026. The project has 29k stars on GitHub.