# AWS ECR

> Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) is a managed registry to store, scan and share Docker and OCI container images with ECS, EKS and Lambda.

- Source: https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-ecr/
- Published: 2026-10-05
- Updated: 2026-10-05
- Author: Javier Ruiz Jiménez (https://www.javierruizjimenez.com/)
- Site: IT Wonder Lab (https://www.itwonderlab.com/)

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**Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)** is a fully managed registry for container images and other OCI artifacts such as Helm charts. It integrates with [ECS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-ecs/), [Fargate](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-fargate/), [EKS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-eks/) and [Lambda](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-lambda/), and uses [IAM](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-iam/) for authentication.

### Key concepts

- **Repository**: holds the images of an application, identified by tags and digests. A **private** registry belongs to your account and Region; **ECR Public** shares images with everyone.
- **Authentication**: `aws ecr get-login-password | docker login ...` gets a temporary token. Docker clients, CI/CD pipelines and AWS services authenticate with IAM roles, not with long-lived passwords.
- **Image scanning**: basic scanning on push, or enhanced scanning with Amazon Inspector for OS and programming language vulnerabilities.
- **Lifecycle policies** delete old or untagged images automatically to control the cost.
- **Tag immutability** prevents overwriting a tag such as `1.4.2`.
- **Replication** copies images to other Regions or accounts, and **pull through cache** caches images from public registries.
- Images are encrypted at rest, with [KMS](https://www.itwonderlab.com/aws-kms/) if required.

### Pricing

Per GB of images stored per month, plus data transfer out of the Region. See the [ECR pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ecr/pricing/).

### With Terraform

The resources are `aws_ecr_repository`, `aws_ecr_lifecycle_policy`, `aws_ecr_repository_policy` and `aws_ecr_replication_configuration`.

See tutorials:

-   [Terraform AWS ECS Fargate Cluster Deployment & Docker Container Publishing](https://www.itwonderlab.com/containers-aws-ecs-terraform-fargate/)