Best VPS for a Private Docker Registry

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Hosting your own registry is simple

The official registry:2 image is lightweight, so a 1–2GB VPS with enough disk is plenty. The real work is TLS, auth, and storage, not compute.

What you need

• Generous SSD storage for image layers
• Dedicated IPv4 plus a domain for clean TLS certs
• Full root access to run Docker and configure auth
• Offsite backups so images aren’t lost with the box

A secure start

docker run -d -p 5000:5000 --restart=always \
  --name registry -v /srv/registry:/var/lib/registry registry:2

Put it behind Nginx with Let’s Encrypt and add HTTP basic auth before exposing it. An unmanaged KVM VPS gives you a private, full-control registry at a fraction of cloud registry egress costs.