Top 8 Artifactory Alternatives in 2025

What Is JFrog Artifactory? 

JFrog Artifactory is a universal artifact repository manager that stores and manages binary artifacts throughout the software development lifecycle. It supports numerous package formats, including Maven, npm, and Docker, making it suitable for many development environments. 

Artifactory helps maintain the consistency and reliability of dependencies, which is crucial for successful software builds. It provides version control for binary files, ensuring that teams can track changes and maintain artifact integrity over time. It integrates with popular CI/CD tools, enabling continuous integration and deployment processes. 

By serving as a single source of truth for binaries, Artifactory ensures that all development teams access the same versions of components, reducing the risk of errors caused by mismatched dependencies. Its ability to cache and manage remote artifacts optimizes resource use and lowers build times by providing fast, local access to required dependencies.

Key Features of JFrog Artifactory 

JFrog Artifactory offers a range of features that simplify artifact management across the software development lifecycle:

  • Universal repository management: JFrog Artifactory supports a range of artifact types and repository formats, including Maven, Gradle, npm, Docker, and PyPI. This universality allows teams to use a single platform to store, manage, and access artifacts across different development stacks, minimizing the need for multiple repository managers.
  • Metadata and version control: It provides metadata management, allowing users to track versions, dependencies, and build information for each artifact. It helps teams maintain a detailed history of artifact versions, ensuring that each build is consistent and reproducible.
  • Integration with CI/CD tools: Artifactory integrates with many popular CI/CD tools, such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, and others, to automate the build, test, and deployment process. This integration enables simplified pipelines and ensures that the latest and approved artifacts are always available for deployment.
  • High availability and scalability: Artifactory can be configured in a high-availability (HA) setup, ensuring that artifacts are accessible even in the case of server failures. Additionally, it is horizontally scalable, making it suitable for organizations with high storage and performance requirements.

Security and access control: Artifactory’s security features provide fine-grained access control and permission management. Role-based access controls, token-based authentication, and integration with LDAP and OAuth services help ensure that only authorized users can access artifacts.

Artifactory Limitations 

While JFrog Artifactory is widely adopted and offers extensive artifact management features, it also has some limitations, as reported by users on the G2 platform:

  • High cost: The pricing for JFrog Artifactory can be a challenge for smaller businesses and startups. Subscription costs are based on factors like user count and required support, which can make it cost-prohibitive for smaller teams or individual developers.
  • Learning curve: Artifactory’s extensive feature set contributes to a steep learning curve, particularly for beginners or smaller teams without prior experience in artifact management.
  • System complexity and performance: Some Artifactory features require significant system resources, which can impact performance, especially in large-scale environments. This complexity can lead to slower operations and require more maintenance.
  • Server requirements: Artifactory often requires a dedicated server for optimal performance, adding an extra layer of infrastructure overhead that may not be feasible for smaller organizations.

Documentation gaps: Users have noted that the documentation could be more detailed, particularly on solving common setup challenges and avoiding issues like false positives during security scans.

Kostis Kapelonis headshot
Senior Developer Evangelist, Octopus Deploy
Kostis is a software engineer/technical-writer dual-class character. He lives and breathes automation, good testing practices, and stress-free deployments with GitOps.

TIPS FROM THE EXPERT

In my experience, here are tips that can help you choose and implement an Artifactory alternative effectively:

  1. Evaluate integration depth with your CI/CD tools: Ensure your chosen alternative integrates smoothly with your CI/CD tools (like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions). Seamless integration improves efficiency, as it allows automatic artifact storage and retrieval within pipelines, minimizing manual intervention.
  2. Assess feature support for multi-cloud environments: Look for tools that support multi-cloud or hybrid cloud deployments if your organization uses multiple cloud providers. This capability can be crucial in maintaining consistent artifact management across diverse environments, avoiding cloud vendor lock-in.
  3. Prioritize granular access controls for security: Some tools, like Harbor and Quay, provide detailed access control settings, allowing role-based access across projects. For security-sensitive environments, prioritize solutions offering robust RBAC and multi-tenant features to secure artifacts across teams.
  4. Consider total cost of ownership (TCO) and scaling options: Beyond license costs, evaluate costs associated with scaling, support, and maintenance. Nexus and GitLab Package Registry, for instance, may have more predictable costs at scale compared to pay-per-usage models like AWS CodeArtifact.
  5. Review open-source community support and documentation: Some alternatives, like Nexus and Harbor, have active open-source communities that offer quick issue resolution and extensive documentation. Community-backed tools can reduce dependency on vendor support, making them ideal for smaller teams.

Notable Artifactory Alternatives 

1. Nexus Repository

Nexus Repository is an artifact management tool developed by Sonatype, which allows organizations to store, manage, and secure software components throughout the development lifecycle. As a central repository, it supports numerous package formats and integrates with popular DevOps tools, increasing control over the software supply chain. 

License: EPL-1.0 

Repo: https://github.com/sonatype/nexus-public

GitHub stars: 1k+

Contributors: <10

Key features of Nexus Repository:

  • Centralized component management: Acts as a single source of truth for all software components, simplifying access and ensuring version consistency across teams.
  • Support for multiple package formats: Supports up to 18 package formats, including Maven, npm, Docker, and PyPI.
  • Open source risk management: Integrates Sonatype Firewall to assess and intercept potentially harmful open-source components, protecting the software supply chain.
  • Scalability and high availability: Supports multi-node setups, enabling resilient, high-availability clusters that can handle global workloads and scale based on demand.

Flexible security controls: Provides security features like single sign-on (SSO), role-based access controls, and audit trails to ensure secure access to components.

2. GitHub Packages

GitHub Packages is a package hosting service integrated directly with GitHub, allowing users to host, manage, and use software packages as dependencies within their GitHub projects. It supports both public and private packages, with centralized permissions management to simplify billing and access. 

License: Commercial

Key features of GitHub Packages:

  • Centralized package hosting: Allows users to host packages directly on GitHub, reducing the need for external package management solutions and ensuring all dependencies are in one place.
  • Support for multiple package formats: Supports several package formats, including npm, RubyGems, Maven, Gradle, NuGet, and Docker. 
  • Integrated access control: Permissions for packages can be inherited from the associated repository or customized for individual users or teams, allowing flexible management of access levels.
  • GitHub Actions integration: Works with GitHub Actions, enabling automated workflows that can publish, install, and manage packages within CI/CD pipelines.

Authentication and security: Access to private packages requires authentication via personal access tokens, ensuring that only authorized users can publish, install, or delete packages.

3. GitLab Package Registry

GitLab Package Registry is a built-in package management tool that allows users to publish, manage, and share packages within GitLab. It supports a range of package types and provides both private and public registry options.

License: MIT

Repo: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/generic_packages/

Key features of GitLab Package Registry:

  • Multi-format package support: Supports popular formats, including npm, Maven, NuGet, PyPI, Terraform, and generic packages, allowing teams to use a single registry across various languages and environments.
  • Customizable visibility and permissions: Packages can be made public or restricted based on the project’s settings. Permissions are managed at the project level, enabling control over actions like viewing, pushing, or pulling packages.
  • Integration with GitLab CI/CD: Works with GitLab’s CI/CD pipelines, supporting automated package publishing and importing.
  • Flexible authentication options: Supports several authentication methods, including personal access tokens, project and group deploy tokens, and job tokens.

Package search and management: Users can browse and search packages within the GitLab interface, filtering by project or group and viewing package details.

4. Harbor

Harbor is an open-source container registry designed to securely manage, store, and distribute container images and other artifacts across cloud-native platforms like Kubernetes and Docker. As a CNCF Graduated project, Harbor provides security features, such as vulnerability scanning and content signing, ensuring that only trusted, validated images are deployed. 

License: Apache-2.0

Repo: https://github.com/goharbor/harbor

GitHub stars: 24k+

Contributors: 300+

Key features of Harbor:

  • Enhanced security: Offers built-in security features, including vulnerability analysis to detect potential threats in container images and content signing for ensuring trusted deployments.
  • Role-based access control (RBAC): Ensures that only authorized users have access to specific projects and repositories.
  • Multi-tenancy: Supports multiple teams and projects within a single instance, providing a scalable solution for organizations with diverse container management needs.
  • Flexible replication capabilities: Supports replication across multiple registries, including other Harbor instances, allowing teams to synchronize images and artifacts across regions or backup environments.

Extensible API and web UI: Provides a web UI and a REST API, making it easy for users to manage repositories, access security features, and integrate with external tools.

5. Azure Artifacts

Azure Artifacts is a cloud-based package management tool within the Azure DevOps suite that enables teams to create, host, and share packages from public and private sources. It provides a centralized solution for managing dependencies and integrating packages into CI/CD workflows. 

License: Commercial

Key features of Azure Artifacts:

  • Multi-format package support: Supports various package formats like Maven, npm, NuGet, Python, and Rust.
  • Integrated CI/CD pipeline compatibility: Fully integrated with Azure Pipelines, enabling teams to incorporate package management into their CI/CD processes.
  • Universal package management: Teams can store and manage binaries and packages in a unified location, removing the need to store large files in Git repositories and keeping artifacts organized across projects.
  • Security and control: Packages from public sources (e.g., npmjs, NuGet) can be cached within Azure Artifacts feeds, allowing only authorized users to access, modify, or delete them.

Flexible sharing across teams: Supports code sharing across teams and enterprises by enabling efficient package feeds that can be shared within and outside the organization.

6. AWS CodeArtifact

AWS CodeArtifact is a fully managed artifact repository service that enables organizations to securely store and share software packages used in application development. Compatible with widely used package managers, it provides a scalable solution for managing public and private packages without requiring infrastructure management. 

License: Commercial

Key features of AWS CodeArtifact:

  • Multi-package format support: Supported package formats include Maven, npm, NuGet, and PyPI.
  • Integration with public repositories: Can connect to external public repositories (e.g., npmjs, Maven Central), automatically fetching and caching open-source packages as they’re requested. 
  • Centralized repository domains: Uses domains to group related repositories, facilitating organization-wide package sharing while allowing team-specific repositories.
  • Upstream and downstream repository configuration: Enables upstream and downstream repository configurations, where packages available in upstream repositories are accessible downstream.

Secure access and authentication: Access to CodeArtifact is controlled by AWS credentials, requiring users to authenticate and obtain authorization tokens for publishing or consuming packages.

7. Quay

Red Hat Quay is a container image registry designed for security and scalability, offering a centralized platform to manage and distribute containerized applications across data centers and cloud environments. Supporting integration with Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes clusters, Quay provides reliable access to images across globally distributed environments. 

License: Apache-2.0

Repo: https://github.com/quay/quay

GitHub stars: 2k+

Contributors: 80+

Key features of Red Hat Quay:

  • Granular security management: Continuously scans images for vulnerabilities and includes detailed access controls to manage who can push, pull, and modify images.
  • High availability and geographic replication: By supporting multi-instance deployment across regions, Quay provides high availability and fast, resilient image access.
  • Automated CI/CD integration: Can automatically build and deploy containers from repositories like GitHub, BitBucket, and GitLab.
  • Enterprise authentication and access control: Integrates with enterprise identity systems, including LDAP and OIDC, enabling team-based permissions and secure collaboration on shared images.

Red Hat OpenShift integration: Integrates with Red Hat OpenShift for automatic exchange of credentials, image pushes, and software rollouts.

8. ProGet

ProGet is a self-hosted, cross-platform package and container repository that allows organizations to store, manage, and secure their software packages and Docker containers. It  enables teams to control access, curate open-source packages, and integrate packages into CI/CD workflows. 

License: Commercial

Key features of ProGet:

  • Local caching and dependency management: Caches packages locally, reducing dependency on public repositories and improving reliability by ensuring that frequently used packages are always available.
  • Package approval workflows: Enables administrators to create workflows where only approved packages are accessible to developers, helping to prevent unapproved or vulnerable packages from entering production.
  • Vulnerability scanning and license management: Scans packages for security vulnerabilities and allows teams to manage open-source licenses.
  • Customizable compliance policies: Provides organization-wide and project-specific compliance policies, enabling teams to establish rules that ensure only compliant packages are deployed to production.

Container management: Supports private Docker registries, allowing for container image scanning, semantic versioning, and control over which images can progress through CI/CD pipelines.

Integrating Artifact Storage into Your CI/CD Pipeline with Codefresh

Codefresh is a CI/CD platform that helps with artifact storage in a number of ways:

  1. Out of the box integrations for several container registries (including Artifactory)
  2. Supports all Artifactory alternatives either with built-in pipeline steps or with direct integrations
  3. Stores and queries artifacts from any binary storage solution
  4. Includes a built-in dashboard specifically for Helm charts and container images
  5. Allows organizations to run security scans on the binary artifacts to validate them again security vulnerabilities

Most importantly, because GitOps is the central paradigm behind all aspects of the Codefresh platform, with Codefresh organizations get auditing and tracing facilities out of the box using standard Git tools. Every action in Codefresh (even from the UI) is backed by a Git commit. Simply looking at Git history provides an audit log for everything that happened in the platform.

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