Django-OCI vs Zot Registry

Django-OCI is free, open-source software for Python developers building registries that follow the OpenContainers Distribution Specification. The Django module exposes API endpoints for pushing, pulling, and interacting with container images, and can run in a virtual environment or within a container-orchestrated registry. Installation is available through pip or a GitHub checkout and includes Django Rest Framework. Filesystem storage is the default option, intended for smaller registries without external cloud storage. Authentication uses a Docker-style OAuth 2.0 flow with username and account-token credentials plus JWT access tokens. Configuration covers URL prefixes, specification version, content types, storage, authentication, token and session expiry, request limits, and manifest-tag deletion. There is no frontend for viewing containers. Private repositories and repository ownership or contributors are not implemented. The project is described as early development, with most goals still under development. Python tests and distribution-spec conformance testing are documented. Developers are asked to consider GDPR compliance, open an issue for help, and review the project license before use.

Zot Registry is an OCI-native container image registry that follows OCI Distribution Specification APIs and uses OCI Image Layout for storage. The project provides full and minimal single-binary builds and says Zot does not need root privileges. The full container image includes extensions for search, vulnerability scanning, synchronization, scrubbing, metrics, a user interface, management, and image trust; search, UI, and management are enabled by default. Storage can use local filesystems or AWS S3, with layer deduplication, garbage collection, background scrubbing, and multiple storage paths and backends. Authentication options include TLS and mTLS, htpasswd, LDAP, bearer tokens, and OpenID/OAuth2. Identity-based policies can control repository or path actions by user or group. Zot also supports cosign and notation signatures, Helm charts, skopeo, cri-o, Prometheus metrics, logging, profiling, and benchmarking with zb. The project describes it as suitable for on-premises deployments, including alongside Kubernetes. Zot is free under Apache License 2.0 and identified by its project homepage as a CNCF Sandbox Project. Native Windows binaries for amd64 and arm64 are distributed. Release notes state that ORAS artifact support was removed starting with the listed version.