Docker Hub Pull Rate Limits: Impact on CI/CD Pipelines and Mitigation Strategies

Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

Overview

Starting April 1, 2025, Docker will enforce new pull rate limits on Docker Hub, which may significantly affect CI/CD pipelines across various platforms, including Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, and Jenkins. The most impactful change is the limit of 10 pulls per hour for unauthenticated users.

What’s Changing?

Docker will impose stricter pull rate limits on unauthenticated users while providing higher limits for authenticated users with personal or paid accounts.

Why This Matters

• CI/CD pipelines that pull images directly from Docker Hub without authentication will be subject to strict rate limits.
• Most CI/CD pipelines that don’t use a caching mechanism pull directly from Docker Hub as unauthenticated users.
• On hosted runners in cloud-based CI/CD solutions, multiple users might share the same IP address or subnet, making them collectively subject to these limitations.
• Some self-hosted CI/CD systems without proper authentication will also be affected.

How to Prepare