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Getting Started

Push your first image to Vercel Container Registry (VCR) with the Vercel CLI, then pull it back with your container tool.

Prerequisites

  1. Link your project and authenticate

    Every VCR repository belongs to a Vercel project. Link your project directory, then authenticate your container tool:

    terminal
    vercel link
vercel vcr login docker

    Vercel mints a short-lived, project-scoped OpenID Connect (OIDC) token and passes it to the container tool with the username oidc. The credentials are valid for 12 hours. Re-run the command to refresh them. Use --project to authenticate a different project.

    To authenticate with a long-lived Vercel token instead, see Authenticate with a Vercel token.

  2. Push an image

    Build the current directory and push it in one step:

    terminal
    vercel vcr build docker . --push

    You don't need to create a repository first. VCR creates one named after your project on the first push. To use a different repository name or tag, pass name[:tag], for example vercel vcr build docker . my-repository:1.2.3 --push.

    To build and push with your container tool instead of the Vercel CLI, see Use your container tool directly.

  3. Pull an image

    Print the full image reference for a tag, then pull that reference with your container tool. tag inspect reports the values to use in place of team-slug and project-name. With the default push, the repository is named after your project, so project-name appears twice in the reference. If you passed a name[:tag] when pushing, use that repository name in the tag inspect command and as the last segment of the reference instead:

    terminal
    vercel vcr tag inspect project-name latest
docker pull vcr.vercel.com/team-slug/project-name/project-name:latest

Next steps

Last updated August 13, 2026
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