Self-serve on

Self-serve overview

Tue, 12 May 2026 01:00:01 +0000

Self-serve refers to the ways you can sign up for, use, and pay for Chainguard products on your own, without direct involvement from Chainguard employees.

Chainguard has two self-serve plans. Chainguard Starter is free, and Chainguard Team is a paid plan that a Starter organization upgrades to and pays for by card. This section covers the following:

Chainguard plans compares what Starter and Team include, with one table of their limits.
Sign up for Chainguard Starter creates a free organization with chainctl.
Upgrade to Chainguard Team moves a Starter organization to Team.
Usage, limits, and billing covers checking usage, responding to a plan limit, and buying Checks and Workspaces compute.
Chainguard Containers on Chainguard Starter covers choosing up to five container images and pulling them.
Self-serve Helm charts lets you provision Chainguard Helm charts, along with the container images they depend on.

Chainguard plans

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:30:40 +0000

Chainguard offers two self-serve plans, which you can sign up for, use, and upgrade without involving anyone at Chainguard:

Chainguard Starter is free. It gives a small team access to Chainguard Containers, Chainguard Libraries, Chainguard Checks, Chainguard Workspaces, and Guardener. To start, refer to Sign up for Chainguard Starter.
Chainguard Team is a paid plan for teams that outgrow Starter. It raises most Starter limits, removes the caps on members and CI identities, and includes ticket support. A Starter organization upgrades to Team with chainctl and pays by card.

Enterprise plans, which cover features such as FIPS images, SSO, and custom policies, are set by contract. To discuss one, contact Chainguard. For prices, refer to the Chainguard pricing page.

Sign up for Chainguard Starter

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:30:40 +0000

Chainguard Starter is Chainguard’s free self-serve plan. You sign up with chainctl starter init, which creates a Starter organization for you and, optionally, adds your first images. This page covers signing up, adding images, joining an organization that already exists, and signing up from a script or a coding agent.

Before you begin

You need the following:

Upgrade to Chainguard Team

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:40:38 +0000

Chainguard Team is Chainguard’s paid self-serve plan. You upgrade a Chainguard Starter organization to Team with chainctl and pay by card, and Team limits apply as soon as the first payment succeeds. This page covers upgrading, what changes afterward, how billing works, and how to change your card or cancel.

Before you begin

You need the following:

Usage, limits, and billing

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:40:38 +0000

Every Chainguard Starter and Chainguard Team organization has plan limits. This page covers checking your usage against them, what to do when a request is refused, and what Chainguard charges you for.

Check your usage

To see your organization’s plan, the products it can use, and any limits it’s close to, run chainctl plans describe:

Self-serve Helm charts

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:01 +0000

Catalog customers can provision Chainguard Helm charts, along with the container images each chart depends on, directly from the Chainguard Console. This replaces the previous manual request process, which required coordination with Chainguard sales, customer success, and support and could take 1 to 4 days.

Note: This capability is available to Catalog customers whose plan includes the APPLICATION tier. Chainguard Starter and Chainguard Team organizations add charts with chainctl, as described in Chainguard Starter and Chainguard Team organizations. Customers on per-image pricing can request charts through a support workflow, described in Per-image pricing customers.