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Amazon ECR vs VMware Harbor Registry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon ECR
Ranking in Container Registry
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Harbor Registry
Ranking in Container Registry
7th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Container Registry category, the mindshare of Amazon ECR is 16.6%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Harbor Registry is 4.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Registry Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon ECR16.6%
VMware Harbor Registry4.3%
Other79.1%
Container Registry
 

Featured Reviews

PrashantaPaudel - PeerSpot reviewer
Wordpress Trainer at SpeedZone.fi
Has supported container workflows through fast image handling and seamless service integrations
The most valuable feature of Amazon ECR is that we can push and pull faster than other similar products. It means saving and retrieving more efficiently. This is not manual dragging and dropping, but rather programmatic taking and saving. I have used Amazon ECR with Lambda, EC2, and EFS. These are integrable services where you can call Amazon ECR from anywhere in AWS. If my product is not always dependent totally on Amazon ECR only, but if the product is dependent on Amazon ECR only, then having a low time to load, low time to save, and a faster containerizing process time would affect the software's response time. This is important.
reviewer2321613 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Have struggled to find consistent use cases but have used it to support container deployment workflows
I never determined the accuracy of the scanning because I did not utilize this feature. Unfortunately, I have limited experience as I have only helped utilize from a client's platform that installed it before. Regarding VMware Harbor Registry, I did not use it extensively, so I cannot provide detailed feedback. I did not use any specialized use cases of the particular product. I do not think they have anything to improve. It is more about the difference in the product because VMware Harbor Registry is installed mostly on-premises as an image registry, whereas Docker Hub is more convenient and online. One has on-premises secure security, and the other offers convenience because it is online. The initial navigation required learning, but that is more of a developer issue rather than a product issue. The image scanning in VMware Harbor Registry is quite limited compared to other specialized image scanning tools. While it is convenient to have image scanning packaged with VMware Harbor Registry, it is not as comprehensive in terms of security.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"There are no issues. The service is remarkably stable."
"One feature of Amazon ECR that I find particularly useful is its web interface, which makes management easy. The ability to manage and support token image updates is crucial for us. Moreover, utilizing load balancers via AWS features allows us to manage all traffic."
"It is easy to use compared to other container registries."
"The ECR solution is good. It is integrated with AWS, and it's free. Everything is free, which makes it nice to use."
"Amazon ECR has a native integration with all AWS services, making it convenient for use within the AWS ecosystem."
"ECR provides robust security features, including image scanning and vulnerability assessment, supported by AWS identity and access management for fine-grained access control."
"The autoscaling functionality is the main beneficial feature of Amazon ECR. It simplifies management, but some configurations can complicate things a bit."
"The solution is very stable."
"The most valuable features of VMware Harbor Registry are that it's lightweight and the in-built Trivy solution, which I find valuable mainly for the vulnerability scanning that it publishes."
"It is very convenient to automate consistently deploying it to a Kubernetes environment to see how it performs."
 

Cons

"If there were a way to use containers as tasks directly, that would simplify things. Currently, when we use EC2 instances, scaling horizontally means increasing the instance count by five times, which might not be cost-effective. Maybe using containers directly for tasks could be a better option."
"Its support for system architecture needs improvement."
"When it comes to pricing for Amazon ECR, that is the only area AWS has to look into."
"Amazon ECR's manipulation capability of tags needs to be improved."
"Improving the documentation for easy understanding will help bring in more clients to use Amazon ECR."
"Providing more ways to scan the image integrated with ECR would enhance security in the software development life cycle."
"The Amazon ECR interface could benefit from improvements to enhance user experience."
"There were some initial connectivity issues, especially when accessing ECR from our on-prem setup."
"The image scanning in VMware Harbor Registry is quite limited compared to other specialized image scanning tools."
"The default credential rewrite is one of the major pains with Harbor, so this has to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price is reasonable compared to its competitors"
"The product is expensive."
"My company currently has Amazon ECR under the pay-as-you-go model. The tool is more affordable than Azure Container Registry, and it's worth the money."
"The solution's prices are high in India as compared to the US."
"Amazon ECR does not have a high cost."
"The main difference between Amazon ECR and other solutions, like Google Kubernetes Engine, is that I haven't personally used GKE. However, I know that GKE costs around $60 per month, which is quite cost-effective."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon ECR?
When it comes to pricing for Amazon ECR, that is the only area AWS has to look into. Services like IoT services or SageMaker are very high, and many times customers complain that while the initial ...
What needs improvement with Amazon ECR?
For potential areas of improvement in Amazon ECR, I need to check if AWS has features similar to Azure Defender for scanning, getting vulnerabilities, and patching recommendations. Regarding additi...
What is your primary use case for Amazon ECR?
The main use case for Amazon ECR is that whatever containerized image we are building will be pushed to Amazon ECR, and then it will get deployed into a Kubernetes cluster. I appreciate that if my ...
What needs improvement with VMware Harbor Registry?
I never determined the accuracy of the scanning because I did not utilize this feature. Unfortunately, I have limited experience as I have only helped utilize from a client's platform that installe...
What is your primary use case for VMware Harbor Registry?
I am mainly deploying pilot applications in my region where many applications are more traditional and have normally used traditional frameworks. Because of this, they want to implement containeriz...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Container Registry
VMware Harbor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
360 Total Security, OVHcloud, TalkingData, Trend Micro
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon ECR vs. VMware Harbor Registry and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.