Container registry platforms: AI search visibility ranking (2026)
How AI search engines rank container registry platforms by visibility and citations. 20 brands measured monthly across Google AI Mode: which brands the AI names in answers, which domains it cites as sources, and how the leaders compare. Container registry platforms used to store, distribute, and govern container images across cloud-native software delivery pipelines. Composite score: 70% visibility (% of AI answers naming the brand) + 30% citation rate (% citing the brand's domain). Full methodology →
Refreshed Jun 18, 2026Download this ranking as a PDF
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At a glance
What we observed in this categoryauto-generated
Docker Hub leads the container registry category with a visibility score of 37.5%, more than double the second-ranked Quay at 25.0%. The category average sits at just 4.4%, which means Docker Hub outperforms the average by over eight times. This gap is significant because it suggests Google AI Mode is defaulting heavily to a single brand when answering container registry queries, leaving most competitors with near-zero or zero visibility scores.
A clear divergence exists between named visibility and citation trust in this category. JFrog Artifactory holds zero visibility but carries a 25.0% citation rate, the highest in the dataset. Azure Container Registry mirrors this pattern with 0.0% visibility but 12.5% citations. Meanwhile, Docker Hub, Quay, Harbor, and GitHub Container Registry all carry 0.0% citation rates despite appearing frequently in AI-generated responses, meaning they are named but not linked as trusted sources.
The top cited sources for this category are almost entirely third-party platforms: shipyard.build, distr.sh, reddit.com, peerspot.com, octopus.com, daily.dev, and blog.railway.com. The only vendor domain appearing in the citation source list is jfrog.com. This indicates Google AI Mode is anchoring its citations on community content, review platforms, and independent technical blogs rather than on the official domains of the most prominently named brands.
Movers & shakers since last refresh
Biggest visibility risers
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Docker Hub 12% → 38% · rank #2 → #1+25pp
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Quay 0% → 25% · rank #9 → #2+25pp
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Harbor 0% → 12% · rank #8 → #3+12pp
Biggest visibility fallers
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Azure Container Registry 12% → 0% · rank #1 → #6-12pp
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Amazon ECR 12% → 0% · rank #3 → #7-12pp
The ranking
| # | Brand | Visibility | Citation | Top engine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
docker.com
|
38% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
Docker Hub leads with 37.5% visibility, nearly nine times the 4.4% category average, but holds a 0.0% citation rate, meaning AI names it without linking it. |
||||
| 2 |
quay.io
|
25% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
Quay climbed from rank 9 to rank 2 with a visibility delta of plus 25.0 percentage points, yet retains 0.0% citation rate, identical to Docker Hub and Harbor. |
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| 3 |
goharbor.io
|
12% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
Harbor rose from rank 8 to rank 3 with current visibility at 12.5%, matching GitHub Container Registry exactly but carrying zero citations across both brands. |
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| 4 |
github.com
|
12% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
GitHub Container Registry ties Harbor at 12.5% visibility and 0.0% citations, notable given github.com's domain authority relative to the other brands present. |
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| 5 |
jfrog.com
|
0% | 25% | Google AI Mode |
JFrog Artifactory is the only top-5 brand with zero visibility but a 25.0% citation rate, making it the most trusted cited source while being entirely absent from AI-named responses. |
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| 6 |
azure.microsoft.com
|
0% | 12% | Google AI Mode |
| 7 |
aws.amazon.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 8 |
cloud.google.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 9 |
gitlab.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 10 |
redhat.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 11 |
cloudsmith.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 12 |
sonatype.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 13 |
oracle.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 14 |
digitalocean.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 15 |
ibm.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 16 |
chainguard.dev
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 17 |
alibabacloud.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 18 |
scaleway.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 19 |
aiven.io
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 20 |
vmware.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
Sources AI engines trust in this category
Across the 8 buyer-intent queries we ran on container registry platforms, these are the domains Google AI Mode cited most often. If you're not on this list — or if your competitors are — that's a concrete PR / linkbuilding target.
How to read this ranking
Four things worth knowing before you act on the numbers above. These are the same definitions across every industry page — for category-specific observations, see the What we observed section above (where available) and the per-brand insights inline in the ranking.
Visibility = being named
A brand's visibility % is the share of AI answers that mention it by name in the response prose. This is who AI engines actively recommend to the buyer.
Citation rate = being trusted
Citation rate is the share of AI answers that include the brand's domain as a clickable source link. This is what the AI treats as authoritative evidence — different from being named.
Top engine differs by brand
The "top engine" column shows which AI surface each brand performs best on. Big gaps between a brand's score across engines usually points to specific content or schema gaps.
Rankings move month to month
AI engines re-crawl and re-rank on shorter cycles than classical search. We re-audit every brand on this list at least every 30 days and refresh this page automatically.
Get your own container registry platforms brand audited
The brands above were curated from public market-leader lists. Want the same measurement against your own brand — including the queries you appear on, which competitors get named instead, and a prioritised fix list? Run a free preview.
Frequently asked about container registry platforms AI visibility
Who leads AI visibility in the container registry platforms category?
Docker Hub leads with 37.5% visibility and a composite score of 26.2, placing it well above Quay at 25.0% and all other competitors. The category average is only 4.4%, making Docker Hub's position especially dominant.
Which container registry brand is most cited by Google AI Mode even without high visibility?
JFrog Artifactory carries a 25.0% citation rate despite 0.0% visibility, making it the highest-cited brand in the category. This suggests AI sources treat jfrog.com as a reference point without surfacing it as a named recommendation.
What sources does Google AI Mode anchor on when answering container registry questions?
The top cited sources are third-party platforms including shipyard.build, distr.sh, reddit.com, peerspot.com, and octopus.com. Only jfrog.com appears as a vendor-owned domain in the citation source list.
Which major cloud provider registries have lost AI visibility recently?
Azure Container Registry fell from rank 1 to rank 6 with a visibility delta of minus 12.5 percentage points, and Amazon ECR dropped from rank 3 to rank 7 with the same decline. Both now sit at 0.0% visibility.
Is there a brand in this category that is named frequently by AI but never cited as a source?
Docker Hub, Quay, Harbor, and GitHub Container Registry all show 0.0% citation rates despite holding the top four visibility positions. They appear in AI responses but are not linked as trusted reference sources.
How concentrated is AI visibility in the container registry category?
The top two brands, Docker Hub and Quay, account for 62.5% of total visibility between them, while 6 of the top 10 brands hold 0.0% visibility. The category average of 4.4% reflects how unevenly attention is distributed.