What Is Artifactory? | JFrog

JFrog Artifactory is a universal binary repository for managing the lifecycle of software artifacts, containers, and ML models, with native support for over 40 different package technologies.

The modern software supply chain is complex. JFrog research shows that almost half of all enterprises now manage 10 or more programming languages, with the typical organization pulling in over 450 new open-source packages every single year. Additionally, there is a wide array of tools to support the software development process, including Source Code Managers (SCMs), Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), CI/CD suites, AI model hubs, and more.

But managing the diverse activities associated with the software supply chain with separately administered tools can be tricky. It slows the application of consistent DevSecOps practices across an organization, increasing risk and limiting the speed, safety, and quality of software delivery.

To mitigate those risks and streamline the software delivery lifecycle, the world’s leading companies use tools like JFrog Artifactory: a single solution for managing all software artifacts, AI/ML models, binaries, containers, and releases across your organization’s software supply chain.

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What’s New in Artifactory for 2026

AI/ML models are now first-class artifacts

Artifactory now natively manages ML models alongside traditional packages, meaning you can version, scan, and distribute a PyTorch model the same way you’d handle a Docker image or a Maven dependency. Artifactory recently became the first universal artifact management solution to natively support 40 unique package types, including ML models, NVIDIA NIM microservices, and Ansible collections. JFrog also proxies Hugging Face directly, so teams can access open source models while automatically scanning them for malicious code.

The framing has shifted from DevOps to software supply chain

Artifactory was originally described as a “DevOps tool.” Today the more accurate description is that Artifactory is the single solution for housing and managing all software artifacts, AI/ML models, binaries, packages, files, containers, components, and releases used in and generated across your organization’s software supply chain. That’s a meaningful difference — supply chain management implies security, governance, and auditability at every stage, not just storage and distribution.

Evidence-based release governance is now built in

Artifactory is no longer just the single source of truth for binaries, it’s also the system of record for all the metadata that testifies to how those artifacts were tested and checked, including security scans, attestations, and compliance evidence. This enables teams to enforce policies automatically: an artifact that hasn’t passed a security scan won’t be promoted to staging.

JFrog ML and AI Catalog are new additions to the platform

JFrog AI Catalog lets teams discover, govern, and secure their AI ecosystem, while JFrog ML covers the full build, train, serve, and monitor lifecycle for AI/ML models. Both sit alongside Artifactory in the JFrog Software Supply Chain Platform, giving DevOps, DevSecOps, and MLOps teams a single place to work.

The Foundation: Back to Basics

While Artifactory now natively manages complex AI models and enterprise-scale DevSecOps pipelines, the engine powering all of this innovation is its foundation as an artifact repository. To fully understand how Artifactory secures the modern software supply chain, it helps to step back and start with the basics.

What is a software artifact?

In software development, an artifact is any object produced during the software development and delivery process. Artifacts include the files used to install and run applications, as well as any complementary information necessary to configure or manage software.The name “Artifactory” reflects the fact that it can host any type of “artifact” needed in your software development “factory.”

Artifactory serves as the central hub for your software development processes. All artifacts, dependencies, packages, etc. ultimately get put into and pulled from Artifactory.

What is an artifact repository?

An artifact repository, sometimes referred to as a binary repository, is designed to house, manage, version, and deploy various types of artifacts from a central location.

Artifacts need to be stored and shared with all of the developers on a given project as well as different tools needed in typical CI/CD processes. To ensure quality, reliability, and auditability, all artifacts need to be managed, versioned, and deployed across development teams and even sometimes across multiple sites. This can be a real challenge without the right tool.

Artifact repositories are widely considered the best solution for managing an ever-expanding number of artifacts.

Benefits of a universal artifact manager

A universal artifact manager, also referred to as a universal repository manager, gives organizations control over all of the components of their software supply chain (e.g., artifacts, binaries, packages, AI/ML models, components, etc.).

From proxying public repositories and managing dependencies to screening and approving binaries for usage, a universal artifact manager provides a single source of truth for software development, acting as a central hub for your binaries and ML models as they enter and advance through your pipelines.

Artifactory takes this a step further with full automation. It is a universal artifact manager with native support, meaning it “speaks the same language” as your packages, ML frameworks, build tools, and automation scripts. Other universal repository managers may offer native support, but Artifactory is the only one that supports at the local, remote, and virtual repository levels, with high availability (HA) and replication for all package types.

Learn more about artifact management with JFrog Artifactory.

What Does Artifactory Do?

Artifactory is the original universal artifact repository, supporting 40+ software build packages and file types, all major CI/CD platforms, and the DevOps tools that organizations already use. In addition to packages built from application code, Artifactory supports OCI and Docker containers, Helm Charts for deployments to Kubernetes clusters, and AI/ML models for enterprise AI initiatives. It comes with full CLI and REST APIs, customizable to any ecosystem.

There are four essential pieces of functionality at the core of Artifactory’s expansive feature set:

• A centralized place to store software binaries, ML models, and artifacts from both first and third party sources, with automatic deduping.
• Version control tooling, which makes it possible to introduce immutability and track how software binaries and artifacts change over time.
• A way to distribute software binaries and artifacts to developers and clients based on granular access control rules.
• Multisite support for scalability, providing reliable access of software components to globally distributed dev teams or consumption points.

For more information about the Artifactory feature set, see the JFrog Artifactory Solution Sheet.

What Artifactory doesn’t do: Source Code Management

It’s worth noting that Artifactory is not designed for hosting, managing, or version-controlling the source code used to build applications. For that work, you’d want an SCM solution like Git, Apache Subversion, or CVS.

Instead, Artifactory is designed specifically for managing software binaries and artifacts. These resources are typically based on source code, but they are distinct from source code and include significant information that is not available at the source code level.

How DevSecOps Teams use Artifactory

For DevSecOps teams, Artifactory fills the crucial gap that exists in CI/CD pipelines between software development and software delivery.

DevSecOps teams typically use tools like SCMs, IDEs and Continuous Integration (CI) servers to build software. Then, they have to deliver it to the deployment environments where it will run. Storage of software artifacts intended for later delivery is not typically handled by SCMs, IDEs, CI servers or other tools used during the software development process.

Artifactory bridges this gap by providing a place to store and manage binaries and artifacts until they are needed, whether for other devs, AI agents, CI Pipelines, distribution to runtime environments, or any other consumption point. The entire lifecycle of a binary, including curation, creation, promotion, distribution, and even archival, is seamlessly handled by Artifactory.

Teams also use Artifactory to proxy public repositories and provide a robust caching strategy, which serves to prevent latency and outage issues and allow devs to apply the same security measures to open-source packages and public AI models as they would to their own local repositories. Additionally, storing all of your binaries in one place means that you can immediately find and remediate any issues when vulnerabilities are discovered.

Artifactory serves internal and external consumers

In addition to housing all of the components that comprise a piece of software that’s ultimately consumed by end-users, Artifactory also provides a way to distribute binaries and artifacts to other developers, who may need them for other projects.

For example, if one development team within a business creates software for accessing the organization’s database systems, another development team in the same company may need to access that software in order to incorporate it into an application it’s building. If the first team makes the software available via Artifactory, the second team has a secure, central place from which it can pull the product of the first team.

And if the teams are distributed, organizations can easily stand up connected instances of Artifactory close to each location to ensure all teams have fast and reliable access to required software components. In this way, Artifactory helps businesses to keep internal development operations efficient and streamlined.

Artifactory supports multiple technologies

A major draw for technical teams, and one of the qualities that differentiates Artifactory from other solutions, is that it can host binaries and artifacts that are produced using virtually any type of programming language or framework.

Unlike some software distribution platforms dedicated to certain languages or types of packaging models, Artifactory is software-agnostic. Whether your application is written in Java, C, Rust or any other language, and whether it’s packaged using Maven, Cargo, Docker, Helm, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Vagrant, Debian or virtually any other package format, Artifactory supports it.

As a result, Artifactory is equipped to support teams as they evolve over time. No matter which software they use today, or which ones they’ll need tomorrow, Artifactory can remain a constant resource.

See all of the package types supported by Artifactory. For a more in-depth look, schedule a personalized demo.