Introducing Chainguard Catalog Starter: Your Choice of Free Trusted Images for Modern Application Development

The industry's largest catalog of trusted container images now offers free, production-ready images to accelerate secure software development

KIRKLAND, Wash., March 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Chainguard, the trusted source for open source, today announced Chainguard Catalog Starter, providing developers with free access to a starter pack of Chainguard base, application, and AI images of their choice from the industry's most comprehensive container image catalog. Catalog Starter provides developers on teams of any size with access to Chainguard's minimal, continuously rebuilt container images. As open source usage continues to grow, and teams of all sizes access it, from individual hobbyists to large engineering organizations, Catalog Starter empowers every builder to build with open source software they can trust.

AI-assisted development demands production-ready open source software

AI-assisted development is dramatically accelerating code production, increasing the volume of open source software consumed in modern applications, and expanding the overall attack surface. At the same time, attackers are using AI to discover and exploit vulnerabilities faster than teams can scan and patch. As a result, engineering teams are looking to start with secure-by-default open source components from the outset, simplifying adoption and reducing risk without slowing down innovation. Builders need direct access to production-ready artifacts they can trust whenever they are ready to build.

"Developers are moving faster than ever, and AI is amplifying both productivity and risk. In this new era of software development, engineering teams need to be able to standardize on open source components they can trust," said Dan Lorenc, CEO and Co-founder, Chainguard. "With Chainguard Catalog Starter, we're opening the world's largest trusted image catalog to everyone, removing friction and redefining how teams adopt secure-by-default software from day one. This sets a new standard for how modern applications are built."

Empowering every builder with trusted open source artifacts

Chainguard Catalog Starter is designed to empower developers on teams of any size with the trusted open source they use in production. Whether building modern AI-driven applications or deploying foundational services, teams can choose the exact software artifacts that align with their architecture and compliance requirements.

With Chainguard Catalog Starter, developers will have access to:

• Five free images of their choice, spanning every available version of the base, application, and AI images in Chainguard's catalog.
• Digital support resources, such as documentation, courses, and Chainguard's Slack community.

Unlike free tiers that restrict access to production-grade artifacts, Catalog Starter provides the same trusted images teams deploy in production environments. Developers can standardize on trusted, minimal images, reduce exposure to known vulnerabilities through continuously rebuilt artifacts, and align development and production environments. This makes it easy for everyone, from a developer at a large company who needs to start building now and expand usage over time, to a developer on a small team working on a single project with one image, to get the same level of ease and security that Fortune 100 companies get today.

"As AI accelerates software development, modern applications face growing exposure to vulnerabilities," said Jean Atelsek, Senior Research Analyst, 451 Research, part of S&P Global Energy. "Expanding developer access to hardened images reduces downstream work and raises the security baseline across the container ecosystem. Broad availability of trusted artifacts ultimately benefits not just individual teams but the software supply chain as a whole."¹

The industry's most comprehensive trusted image catalog

Today, the Chainguard Factory powers the breadth and depth of the company's container image catalog. Chainguard recently rebuilt its software factory, with AI at its center, to continue delivering on industry-leading scale, speed, and quality. Over the past year, the catalog has more than doubled in size to include over 2,200 open source projects for which a container image is available, 400,000 architecture-specific image versions, 30,000 unique Chainguard OS packages, and hundreds of thousands of package versions, ensuring broad platform coverage as upstream projects and architectures evolve.

The company continues to expand its container image offering, recently introducing Community Helm Charts and enhancements to help customers adopt and manage charts more easily. It has also enhanced depth and transparency with upgraded SBOMs, deepened its toolset around customization, including Custom Certificate support for Custom Assembly, and expanded Private APK Repositories, giving customers more options and eliminating more hurdles to offload their own toil without curtailing developer flexibility.

Chainguard Catalog Starter is available today. To get started, visit https://get.chainguard.dev/signup.

About Chainguard

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. Its customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital. For more information, visit: https://www.chainguard.dev/

¹  451 Research, part of S&P Global Energy, Coverage Initiation: Chainguard provides proactive security for open-source containers, August 14, 2025

SOURCE Chainguard