What's the Difference Between Amazon ECR and Amazon ECS?

Compare Amazon ECR and Amazon ECS side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Compare side-by-side

Comparisons	Amazon ECR	Amazon ECS
Category	Containers, Registry	Containers, Orchestration
Description	Fully managed container registry for storing, managing, and deploying Docker container images.	Fully managed AWS native container orchestration service
Best for	Container image storage CI/CD pipelines Vulnerability scanning Image lifecycle management	Microservices Batch jobs Application migration Hybrid deployments
Key features	Image scanning Cross-region replication Lifecycle policies OCI support Private & public registries	AWS Fargate integration Service auto scaling Service mesh Capacity providers Spot instances
Pricing model	Pay for storage and data transfer	No additional charge for EC2 launch type; Fargate pricing for Fargate launch type
Free tier	Yes	No
Expert take	“ECR is the natural home for container images when you deploy to ECS, EKS, or Fargate. Image scanning catches vulnerabilities before they reach production, and lifecycle policies automatically clean up old tags so storage costs stay predictable.” — Giovanni Lauria, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]	“ECS is the fastest path to running containers on AWS. Deep integration with IAM, CloudWatch, and VPC means less glue code, and flexible compute options (EC2, Fargate, or ECS Managed Instances) let you match infrastructure to your workload without managing orchestration overhead.” — Aditya Ramakrishnan, AWS Product Marketing Manager
Product page	Learn more about Amazon ECR »	Learn more about Amazon ECS »

When to use Amazon ECR or Amazon ECS

Use Amazon ECR when:

Container image storage
CI/CD pipelines
Vulnerability scanning
Image lifecycle management

Learn more about Amazon ECR »

Use Amazon ECS when:

Microservices
Batch jobs
Application migration
Hybrid deployments

Learn more about Amazon ECS »

Next steps with AWS for Containers

Create a free account

Start building with Amazon ECR and Amazon ECS on the AWS Free Tier.

Get started with Amazon ECR

Fully managed container registry for storing, managing, and deploying Docker container images.

Go to Amazon ECR

Get started with Amazon ECS

Fully managed AWS native container orchestration service

Go to Amazon ECS

AWS product comparisons

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon RDS?

DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database for applications with well-defined access patterns that need consistent single-digit millisecond performance. RDS is a managed relational database for applications that need SQL, joins, and transactional integrity across multiple engines.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces?

Both are fully managed, serverless-capable NoSQL databases on AWS. DynamoDB is AWS-native with its own API and data model; Keyspaces is Apache Cassandra-compatible, letting you use existing Cassandra drivers, tools, and expertise.

What are the differences between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon DocumentDB?

Both are fully managed NoSQL databases on AWS, but they serve different data models. DynamoDB is a key-value store optimized for known access patterns at massive scale; DocumentDB is a document database for flexible JSON schemas with MongoDB compatibility.

What's the difference between Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Neptune?

Both handle semi-structured data, but they're optimized for different query patterns. DocumentDB stores and queries JSON documents; Neptune stores and traverses relationships between entities.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Neptune?

Both are purpose-built, fully managed AWS databases, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Aurora handles structured relational data with SQL; Neptune handles highly connected data where relationships between entities are the primary query pattern.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB?

Both are fully managed AWS database services, but they serve fundamentally different data models and access patterns. Aurora is a relational database for structured data with relationships; DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store built for single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

What's the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?

Both run SQL queries, but they're optimized for fundamentally different workloads. RDS handles transactional operations (inserts, updates, lookups) for your application. Redshift handles analytical queries (aggregations, scans, joins across billions of rows) for your data team.

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