Docker Registry Pricing: Managed vs Self-Hosted
The cheapest managed Docker Registry starts at about $9/month. Self-hosted, this stack measures 256 MiB across 1 service, which fits a $5/month flat plan with room left over.
#the numbers
Managed prices as of June 2026, each linked to its source. The self-hosted row is not an estimate: the RAM figure is what this stack allocates in its compose file, and the plan is the smallest one that holds it.
| Option | Plan | Monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted on Miget ★ | 512 MiB, 1 vCPU | $5 | the whole stack, flat - no per-user or per-request metering, and the plan holds your other apps too |
| Docker Hub | Pro | ~$9 | $9/user/mo annual ($11 monthly); meters pull rates |
| GitHub Packages | private storage | usage-based | ~$0.25/GB-mo storage + $0.50/GB egress for private repos |
Hosted registries meter seats, storage, and pull rates; self-hosted is one small plan plus Bucket storage, unlimited private repos.
#the difference, plainly
$4/month, or about 44%, against the cheapest managed tier - $48 over a year. Worth stating what that money buys and what it costs, because the honest answer is not "it is just cheaper".
- You gain a bill that does not move with usage, no execution or seat metering, and root on your own data.
- You gain spare capacity: the plan is sized for this stack, and anything else you deploy inside it is free.
- You take on upgrades, backups and the pager. Managed services charge for exactly that, and for some teams it is worth every dollar.
- You should not switch for the saving alone if your team has nobody who wants to own it.
#on usage-based pricing
GitHub Packages bills by usage rather than a fixed monthly price, so a table cannot compare it honestly. The structural difference is the one that matters: a flat plan has a known worst case, and a meter does not.
#what it costs on other platforms
Same stack, published rates elsewhere - estimates from each platform's own pricing page, not quotes.
| Platform | Estimated monthly | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Miget ★ | $5 | flat plan, 512 MiB - databases included, no meters |
| Heroku | ~$13 | no volumes; nothing between 1 GB ($50) and 2.5 GB ($250) dynos - 2 GB containers cost far more than shown |
| Render | ~$10 | per-service instances (0.5 GB $7, 2 GB $25) - every container is its own paid service |
| DO App Platform | ~$10 | no persistent volumes - stateful containers need managed DBs/Spaces (base $5 Spaces included here) |
| Railway | ~$4 | usage-based ($10/GB RAM-mo); vCPU billed separately at $20/vCPU-mo on top |
| Fly.io | ~$4 | cheapest sticker price - but burstable shared CPUs (1/16 core; dedicated vCPUs cost ~2-3×), no compose deploys (one app per container, manual wiring), managed DBs billed extra |
#sizing, if you outgrow the small plan
The $5 plan is the smallest that fits. For production traffic you generally want the next tier up, and dedicated vCPU if the workload is CPU-bound rather than idle-waiting.
| Use case | Plan | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Fits the stack | 512 MiB, 1 vCPU shared | $5 |
| Comfortable, room for your own apps | 1 GiB, 1 vCPU shared | $7 |
| Dedicated vCPU (production) | 2 GiB, 1 vCPU dedicated | $22 |
The registry is a thin Go service - 256 MiB is plenty even under concurrent pushes. With S3 storage it keeps no local disk; capacity is the Bucket.
Run Docker Registry yourself
The compose file is open source and runs locally with docker compose up. One step to deploy it to
Miget on the $5/month plan, databases included.