What is Quay used for?

Quay is Red Hat's container registry service for building, storing, distributing and scanning container images, with free public repositories. It is a good fit for hosting images for OpenShift and Kubernetes clusters, and sharing public container images.

No. Quay is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Quay include Harbor.

Can I self-host Quay?

Yes. Although Quay is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.

What are some alternatives to Quay?

Quay competes with Docker Hub, Amazon ECR and Google Artifact Registry. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Quay alternatives.

Quay: features, pricing and alternatives

About Quay

Quay is a container registry from Red Hat where teams can store and distribute container images and scan them for issues. The hosted service at quay.io describes itself as a place to build, store and distribute containers, and it states that public repositories are always free.

The homepage text captured for this entry was an error message about the web application failing to load, so details beyond the tagline and description are limited. A registry of this kind is typically used as the source of images for CI pipelines and Kubernetes or OpenShift clusters. The registry software is also generally known to be developed upstream as the open-source Project Quay and to be available for installation on your own infrastructure.

Quay is offered by Red Hat as both a hosted service and a product. Pricing for private repositories and enterprise use should be confirmed with the vendor.

Key features

Hosted container image registry
Free public repositories
Image scanning for vulnerabilities
Build and distribute container images
Documentation and security pages from Red Hat

Good fit for

→Hosting images for OpenShift and Kubernetes clusters
→Sharing public container images

Tags: container-registry; containers; red-hat; image-scanning; devops; registry

Quay: questions and answers

What is Quay used for?: Quay is Red Hat's container registry service for building, storing, distributing and scanning container images, with free public repositories. It is a good fit for hosting images for OpenShift and Kubernetes clusters, and sharing public container images.
Is Quay free?: Yes. Quay has a free plan.
Is Quay open source?: No. Quay is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Quay include Harbor.
Can I self-host Quay?: Yes. Although Quay is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Quay?: Quay competes with Docker Hub, Amazon ECR and Google Artifact Registry. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Quay alternatives.