Chainguard Catalog Starter

Chainguard Catalog Starter is a way to try production-grade Chainguard Containers for free, without committing to a full subscription. It lets you choose a set of five container images from the broader Chainguard catalog so you can validate security, performance, and operational fit in your own environment before you buy.

Note: As of this writing, Chainguard Catalog Starter is in beta. Some of the details included in this guide may change over time.

What is Catalog Starter?

With Chainguard Catalog Starter, users can choose any five non-FIPS images from our catalog of secure-by-default containers. Any Helm charts that depend on those images are included and count toward the five-image limit.

Catalog Starter is designed as a standalone free plan, separate from paid Catalog or per-image subscriptions. It’s meant for teams who want to try Chainguard Containers in real workloads before committing to a larger rollout, giving them a better understanding of how Chainguard’s hardened images and CVE posture behave in practice.

Note: Catalog Starter is best suited for small teams to get you started right away. When you are ready to standardize on Chainguard and deploy organization-wide, we have several paid plans that provide unlimited user access to the Chainguard Containers and additional features like Custom Assembly, FIPS images, EOL/EmeritOSS image versions, a contractual CVE-remediation SLA, and dedicated support.

How Catalog Starter works

1. Sign up with your organization

Catalog Starter is designed for business use. Sign-ups are limited to corporate email domains (for example, @company.com) rather than personal email addresses.

After you submit the request form, our team will quickly review and enable access for qualified organizations.

2. Choose your five images

Once your organization is enabled, you can browse the Chainguard catalog and select up to five non-FIPS images to be provisioned to your organization.

3. Integrate with your registry and pipelines

After selecting your five container images, you’re free to use them however you like. For example, you can pull them into your CI/CD pipelines and runtime environments, or pull them through a third-party registry like JFrog Artifactory. These container images are the same as those provided to Chainguard’s paying customers, and are covered by Chainguard’s standard hardening, rebuild, and CVE-remediation processes, although they are not covered by Chainguard’s CVE SLA.

4. Upgrade when you’re ready

After trying out Chainguard Containers with Catalog Starter, you can reach out to our sales team to upgrade to one of Chainguard’s paid plans:

• Catalog Pricing — a subscription that grants broad access to the full Chainguard Containers catalog with self-service provisioning through the Console.
• Per-image pricing — a scoped set of images licensed individually, often used for tightly defined image deployments.

Moving to a paid plan means moving off of Catalog Starter; the free five-image entitlement is not stacked on top of a paid subscription.

Plan limitations and terms

Catalog Starter allows users to try out Chainguard Containers, but it comes with certain limitations, including the following:

• You can select up to five non-FIPS images. Once chosen, these images cannot be swapped or replaced during the lifetime of the free plan.
• The following types of Chainguard Containers are not included in the Catalog Starter plan:
  • FIPS-validated images
  • Images that fall under the EOL Grace Period
  • Images whose software is part of Chainguard EmeritOSS
• Teams using Chainguard Catalog Starter will not have access to the support services available to paying customers: they will not be added to Chainguard’s support platform, be able to create support tickets, or have access to root cause analysis (RCA) or phone escalations.
  • Catalog Starter users will still have access to Chainguard resources like our documentation, courses, the Community Slack channel, and the public support knowledge base.
• Chainguard’s CVE SLA does not apply to container images obtained through Catalog Starter.
• The free plan does not support user management or role-based access control (RBAC). Chainguard can add newer users from the same company to your organization after they sign up for Catalog Starter, but you cannot add them yourself. Any additional users in your organization will have access to the five images selected by the first user and cannot change them after the fact.
• Neither Custom Assembly nor Commercial Builds, Chainguard’s bespoke paid build services, are included in the Catalog Starter plan.
• Catalog Starter cannot be combined with an existing Chainguard Containers license. Existing customers remain on their current paid plans; this free offering can’t be used to subsidize or partially offset paid image counts.

Frequently asked questions

Can I change my five images after I select them?

No. Once you’ve selected your five images under Catalog Starter, that selection is fixed for the life of the free plan and cannot be swapped or replaced.

If you anticipate needing different images over time, we recommend talking to our team about Catalog Pricing or per-image licensing.

Does Catalog Starter include FIPS images or Chainguard Commercial Builds?

No. FIPS images and Chainguard Commercial Builds are not included in the Catalog Starter plan.

If you require FIPS-validated images or dedicated commercial build work, you’ll need a paid plan that includes those capabilities.

Can my colleagues and I use the same Catalog Starter images?

Yes. If one user signs up for Catalog Starter and selects the five images, then another user from the same company signs up, Chainguard can add the newer user to the organization started by the first user. Both will have access to the five images selected by the first user, and neither user will be able to change them later on.

Note that Catalog Starter does not include user management or RBAC, meaning users cannot add others to their Chainguard organization themselves.

I’m already a Chainguard Containers customer. Can I add Catalog Starter to my account?

No. Catalog Starter is a distinct, standalone free plan meant for new organizations. It can’t be combined with existing licenses or used to “carve out” a subset of images from a current subscription.

Can I use Catalog Starter to pay for only some of the images I need?

No. Catalog Starter is not a discount instrument for larger deployments. You can’t, for example, license 10 images but expect to pay for only five by applying this plan to the rest.

If you know you’ll need more than five images, it’s usually better to start with Catalog Pricing or per-image licensing so you can scale cleanly.

What happens if I decide to upgrade to a paid plan?

When you upgrade:

• Your organization moves off the free Catalog Starter plan.
• You gain access to the broader capabilities of your chosen paid tier (for example, full Catalog Pricing with self-service provisioning and, optionally, FIPS access), as well as Chainguard’s full support services and CVE SLA.
• Pricing is based on the paid plan’s terms (such as developer bands for Catalog Pricing or image counts for per-image plans).

Our team will work with you to map your existing Catalog Starter images into the right long-term structure.

Get started

To sign up for Catalog Starter, fill out this form and our team will review the request and enable access if your organization qualifies. Once enabled, you can begin piloting up to five secure container images from the Chainguard catalog.