What is Docker Hub?

Overview of Docker Hub

Docker Hub, Docker’s official container registry, supports massive global adoption, with billions of image pulls each month across public and private repositories.

Docker is ubiquitous,   which makes understanding the specifics of the ecosystem can be challenging. What exactly is a container registry? What benefits does using Docker Hub offer?  Here, we’ll help you answer those questions and provide you with a step-by-step example of how you can get started with Docker’s official registry, Docker Hub.

What is a Docker Registry?

A Docker registry is a service that hosts and distributes Docker images. In many cases, a registry will consist of multiple repositories which contain images related to a specific project. Within a given repository tags are used to differentiate between versions of an image, such as ubuntu/httpd:version2.4, ubuntu/httpd:version2.5, ubuntu/httpd:version2.6 where “version2.x” is the tag. Users can pull images they want to use or push images they want to store in a registry.

By providing a centralized source for images, registries enable tighter version control and make it easier to manage and distribute images. Additionally, many registry services offer additional features that help automate build and deployment processes while enhancing security.

Docker registries can be hosted in the cloud or on-premises. In addition to Docker Hub, other popular examples of Docker registries include:

• Quay
• Google’s Container Registry
• Amazon’s Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
• JFrog Artifactory and JFrog Container Registry

You can even create your own Docker registry from the official registry image, but generally it’s worth exploring alternatives before using this basic image as a starting point.

What are the Characteristics of Docker Hub?

Docker Hub is Docker’s official cloud-based registry for Docker images.

As you might expect, since Docker Hub is Docker’s official registry, it is the default registry when you install Docker. It hosts over 100,000 images including official images for MongoDB, nginx, Apache, Ubuntu, and MySQL that have all been downloaded over a billion times each.

In addition to the public repositories that anyone can pull from, Docker Hub offers private repositories where individuals or teams can host images only they can access. Docker Hub also offers features such as GitHub and Bitbucket integrations that help automate development build processes and support webhooks which can act as triggers for everything from automated tests to notifications.

Why use Docker Hub?

So, with all the different Docker registry options, why should you use Docker Hub? Here are a few of the key advantages it has over the competition:

• A large library of trusted images – Docker Certified images, Verified Publisher images (which are Docker Certified and verified by the publisher), and Official Images published by Docker add a layer of trust for users. With millions — or in some cases billions — of downloads for many commonly used images, you can count on a reliable base image when you use Docker hub. While that’s great from the user perspective, it also benefits publishers as hosting an image in Docker Hub can give your project more exposure.
• A free tier – Currently, Docker’s free plan offers unlimited public repositories and 1 private repository with up to 3 collaborators. This is useful for basic testing to get you familiar with the platform. However, recent changes to the terms of service make it unsuitable for serious development.
• Built-in security features – All accounts can benefit from local image vulnerability scans. “Team” accounts also gain access to audit-logs and multifactor authentication (MFA) to further secure repositories.
• Integrations & features that enable CI/CD — Docker Hub also supports GitHub & Bitbucket integrations, automated tests, build triggers, and webhooks to help automate development pipelines and enable CI/CD .

That said, there’s never a one-size-fits-all solution, so Docker Hub won’t be the right answer for every use case. For example, if you need to store images on-premises to reduce latency or comply with industry standards, a cloud-based solution like Docker Hub isn’t the ideal choice.

However, if you do decide to go with Docker Hub despite these constraints, you may need to cache images locally to reduce latency and bandwidth consumption. No matter what your environment requires, following best practices helps ensure that you get the most out of your Docker Hub implementation.

What are Best Practices for Using Docker Hub?

Docker Hub makes it simple to share and consume container images, but without clear standards, it’s easy to introduce inefficiencies or even security risks. Following a few best practices helps ensure that your images remain secure, consistent, and efficient.

Security Considerations

Security begins with the origin of your images. It is always preferable to work with official images and verified publishers, since they undergo extra quality and security reviews. Pulling from unverified sources might seem like a good way to increase efficiency but not when it exposes your environment to serious vulnerabilities.

Another common risk is relying on the floating latest tag which may not actually be the version you want. Pinning explicit versions or immutable digests guarantees that the image you deploy is the same one you tested, preventing unexpected changes in production. For additional guidance, see Aqua Security’s overview on using Docker Hub responsibly, which emphasizes signed images, MFA for accounts, and ongoing vulnerability scanning.

Private repositories should also be secured with multifactor authentication and role-based access controls. For enterprises, solutions like JFrog Container Registry can add governance, auditing, and automated scanning to further strengthen the security of your pipeline.

Versioning and Tagging

Clear versioning practices are the backbone of reproducibility. Instead of relying on the shifting latest tag, you should establish a consistent tagging strategy that fits your workflow. Teams often adopt semantic versioning (v1.2.0) to track incremental changes, or use environment-specific tags like staging and prod to align images with deployments.

The goal is consistency: When developers and pipelines apply the same tagging rules, it’s much easier to identify which build is running in production or roll back to the previous working image. The Docker Hub documentation explains how repositories and tags work in detail, providing a baseline for building your strategy.

Monitoring and Optimizing Image Size

Image size directly impacts performance and security. Smaller images download faster, consume less bandwidth, and reduce the attack surface. One way to keep images lean is by starting with minimal base images and layering only what’s necessary on top of that.

Another key step is maintaining a .dockerignore file to exclude logs, test data, or other unnecessary artifacts from the build context. Over time, auditing your images for outdated libraries and unused packages prevents silent bloat. For practical guidance, Docker’s workshop on image-building best practices covers how layering and context management can improve efficiency.

By weaving security checks into your workflow, adopting clear tagging strategies, and trimming unnecessary weight from images, you ensure Docker Hub remains a reliable foundation for your containerized applications. The result isn’t just cleaner builds but greater confidence that every deployment is reproducible,  reliable and secure.

How to use Docker Hub: A Crash Course

Now that you understand what Docker Hub is, let’s walk through basic usage. Here, we’ll demonstrate how to pull an image from Docker Hub to your local machine, and then push a version with a tag back to your own repository.

If you want to follow the instructions, then you’ll need a Docker Hub account. If you don’t have an account, you can sign-up here. After that you will also need to install Docker.

Step 1: Create your repository

Once you have a Docker Hub account, you can create a repository in just a few clicks at https://hub.docker.com/repositories.

First, click Create Repository. Then give your repository a name and description, select if you want it to be public or private, and then click Create.

Step 2: Pull a Docker image from Docker Hub

You could create your own image if you prefer, but for the sake of this tutorial, we’ll pull the “Hello World” image.

We’ll start by logging into our Docker account from our terminal with the pseudo docker login -u <username>command.

Next, we’ll pull the “Hello World” Docker image with the docker pull hello-world command.

Step 3: Push an image to your private repository

Now that we have the “Hello World” image, let’s copy it with a new name before we send it to our private repository. We’ll do that with the command docker tag <current image name>  <our user name>/<new image name>[:tag]. We’ll use the docker images command to list our images before and after so we can see the change.

Now, we can push the image to our private repository with the command docker push <our user name>/<new image name>[:tag].

The push refers to repository [docker.io/ ourusername /johnnyodemo].
Going back to our Docker Hub account, we can see the new tag is stored in our private repository.

How to proxy Docker Hub with the JFrog Container Registry

We mentioned earlier that the Docker Hub free tier can limit development efforts. One of the main reasons for this is rate limiting on pushes and pulls. Caching images outside of Docker Hub can allow you to overcome these limits. As a result, finding the right Docker Hub proxy and caching solution can go a long way. Using this technique allows you to benefit from the advantages of Docker Hub, such as a wealth of trusted images, while avoiding the rate limiting that can hamstring CI/CD workflows.

Here, we will show how to set up the JFrog Container Registry to proxy Docker Hub, allowing you to cache frequently accessed images. We’ll use the cloud-platform for this example, but you can use JFrog on-prem for free as well.

Pro-tip: For a deeper dive on configuration of JFrog Container Registry or any other JFrog platform topic, we recommend reading the documentation.

Step 1: Create your free trial

Navigate to this link  to create your free trial with no credit card required. Just input your credentials and you will be sent an email to validate your account. Click the link to complete your registration. Once you get to the confirmation screen, login, and proceed to step 2.

Note: We recommend picking a server location that is geographically close to your location.

Step 2: Navigate to the remote repositories section

Once you’re logged into your new account, click Administration → Repositories → Repositories

Step 3: Create a new remote repository

Click Remote → + New Remote Repository

Click on the Docker icon in the SELECT PACKAGE TYPE popup.

On the Basic tab input your Repository Key and for the URL use this for Docker Hub: https://registry-1.docker.io/

For this basic example, we can leave everything else as defaults. If you would like to associate your Docker Hub account so your push/pull requests to Docker Hub will be authenticated, you can do so on the Advanced tab.

When you’re done, click Save & Finish.

Step 4: Login to your newly created account and pull an image

From your Docker CLI, execute the command docker login.

Next, pull an image like you would from Docker hub, but prepend it with a URL in the format of <your_server>.jfrog.io/your_repository/. We will pull the current Ubuntu image here, so we’ll use: <your_server>.jfrog.io/your_repository/ubuntu.

More importantly, we can also look back in our JFrog account and see the image is also cached there! We’ve successfully cached the image for future use.

Beyond proxying Docker Hub, some teams also set up their own local registry for even more control.

Setting Up a Local Docker Registry

While Docker Hub is the default registry for most developers, there are situations where running your own local registry makes more sense. A self-hosted registry gives teams more control over security, compliance, and performance – especially in enterprise or regulated environments.

Steps to Install and Configure a Local Registry

Docker provides an open-source registry image that you can deploy quickly. By running this image, you create a private service where you can push and pull images just like you would with Docker Hub. For example:

docker run -d -p 5000:5000 --name registry registry:2

This command launches a registry on port 5000. To use it, tag an image with the local address and push it into the registry:

docker tag ubuntu:22.04 localhost:5000/ubuntu:22.04

docker push localhost:5000/ubuntu:22.04

You can then pull the same image from your local registry:

docker pull localhost:5000/ubuntu:22.04

Securing and Managing Access

Because container images may include sensitive code or dependencies, securing your local registry is critical. Best practices include enabling HTTPS with a trusted TLS certificate, requiring authentication for pushes and pulls, and restricting access to trusted users or internal networks. Larger organizations often extend these controls with enterprise solutions like JFrog Container Registry, which adds role-based access, auditing, and replication.

Use Cases and Benefits

A local Docker registry is valuable in several scenarios including:

• Reduced latency – images can be pulled faster across internal networks than from a cloud service.
• Compliance and data security – regulated industries may require artifacts to remain on-premises.
• Air-gapped environments – servers without internet access still need access to a trusted catalog of images.
• Caching frequently used images – teams can avoid Docker Hub pull limits and reduce bandwidth usage.

By setting up a local registry, organizations gain more control over their container supply chain while keeping the familiar workflows developers already use with Docker Hub.

Next steps with Docker Hub

To summarize what we’ve covered here:

• Docker registries are used to host and distribute Docker Images
• Docker Hub is Docker’s official cloud-based registry
• To get started with Docker Hub you can pull (download) an image or push (upload) one of your local images
• Finding the right on-premises or cloud-based Docker registry — like JFrog Container Registry – can help optimize how Docker Hub fits into your development pipeline

Of course, these are just the basics. Where containerization gets interesting is in the projects you build and development pipelines you create to support them. With Docker Hub you have an excellent resource to help you source useful base images to build from and a variety of tools to streamline your collaboration, testing, and CI/CD processes.

Enterprise-Grade Registries with JFrog

Docker Hub is a great starting point for learning how to store and share container images, but when your development pipeline scales, you’ll quickly need more control, security, and reliability than a public cloud registry can provide.

JFrog Artifactory and the JFrog Container Registry extend the familiar Docker Hub experience with enterprise-grade features like fine-grained access controls, replication across sites, vulnerability scanning, and integration into CI/CD workflows. By caching Docker Hub images while securing and governing your own, JFrog helps teams eliminate rate limits, improve compliance, and streamline delivery. With JFrog, you can take Docker Hub’s convenience and evolve it into a trusted, production-ready container supply chain.

For more information, please visit our website, take a virtual tour, or set up a one-on-one demo at your convenience.