Broadcom to discontinue free Bitnami Helm charts

📢 Overview

As of August 28th, 2025, the Bitnami public catalog will undergo the following changes:

• Community catalog

  • Disable images generation for Debian-based images and gradually move existing ones to a Bitnami Legacy repository.
  • A focused set of more hardened, more secure images. These free images are intended for development and are only available on the “latest” tag. You can find them at https://hub.docker.com/u/bitnamisecure.
  • Helm charts and container images' open-source code will continue to be maintained up-to-date and accessible on GitHub under the Apache 2 license.

• Bitnami Secure Images

  • Production-ready, enterprise-grade containers and Helm charts will move under the Bitnami Secure Images offering.
  • Benefits include:
    • Hardened, low-attack-surface operating system
    • Continuous rebuilds with the latest security patches (SLSA Level 3)
    • Industry-standard CVE transparency (VEX, KEV)
    • SBOMs and compliance artifacts
    • Enterprise support and LTS branches
    • Access to the entire catalog of applications (over 280)
    • Minimal distroless runtime images

• Legacy repository migration

  • All existing container images, including older or versioned tags (e.g., 2.50.0, 10.6), will be moved from the public catalog (docker.io/bitnami) to the Bitnami Legacy repository (docker.io/bitnamilegacy). This legacy catalog will receive no further updates or support and should only be used for temporary migration purposes.
  • Suppose your deployed Helm chart is failing to pull images from docker.io/bitnami. In that case, you can resolve this by subscribing to Bitnami Secure Images, ensuring that the Helm charts receive continued support and security updates. As a temporary workaround, you can upgrade to the same version and update the repository parameter for each container image to the Bitnami Legacy repository.

🗓️ Timeline

• Now – August 28th, 2025

  • You will see deprecation notices in READMEs and documentation.
  • Plan your migration: Update CI/CD pipelines, Helm repos, and image references.
  • Start trying out the new hardened images available to the community today at https://hub.docker.com/u/bitnamisecure.

• August 28th, 2025

  • The public catalog switches to the limited community-tier subset of container images (the same images that are initially available at https://hub.docker.com/u/bitnamisecure).
  • Legacy assets are archived in the Bitnami Legacy repository.

• Post-August 28th, 2025

  • For development purposes, community-tier users are restricted to pulling only the most recent ‘latest’ tags of the limited community-tier subset of container images.
  • Production users should subscribe to Bitnami Secure Images for full version support at https://www.arrow.com/globalecs/uk/products/bitnami-secure-images/#CTA.

FAQ

Q: What is the Bitnami Legacy repository?

Q: How is Bitnami Legacy repository different than Bitnami Mainline repository?

• The Bitnami Mainline repository (docker.io/bitnami) currently hosts regularly updated and supported container images, including free and enterprise-grade offerings.
• The Bitnami Legacy repository will contain archived versions that will no longer receive updates. It is provided solely to help with migration during the transition.

After August 28th, 2025, only a limited set of hardened images will remain in the Bitnami Mainline repository. All others will be moved to the Bitnami Legacy repository.

Q: What do users of Bitnami Mainline repository need to do before August 28th, 2025?

1. Review and update CI/CD pipelines to avoid relying on deprecated images.
2. Consider subscribing to Bitnami Secure Images if they need continued support, security updates, or access to full version history at https://www.arrow.com/globalecs/uk/products/bitnami-secure-images/#CTA.
3. Upgrade their deployments
4. If the deployed application belongs to the limited set of hardened images available under the new free community tier, double-check that the used tags are still updated.
5. Otherwise, point to the Bitnami Legacy repository as a temporary workaround.

Q: Are Bitnami’s free images going away?

Q: How can I get continued support for an application no longer available for free?

• Long-term support (LTS) branches
• Distroless and hardened images
• SBOMs, CVE transparency (VEX/KEV), and compliance artifacts
• SLSA Level 3 build processes

The Bitnami project continues to make its source available at bitnami/containers under the Apache 2 license; images can be built from source.

Q: How can I get continued support for Helm charts?

• List container images: grep 'repository.*REPOSITORY_NAME/' postgresql/README.md | awk -F'\`' '{print $2, $(NF-1)}'
• Upgrade modifying repositories: helm upgrade RELEASE_NAME oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/CHART_NAME --version SAME_VERSION --set REPOSITORY_REFERENCE=bitnamilegacy
• REPOSITORY_REFERENCE is the path to the repository parameter as it is in the values.yaml for each container image.
• Example:

$ grep 'repository.*REPOSITORY_NAME/' postgresql/README.md | awk -F'\`' '{print $2, $(NF-1)}'
image.repository REPOSITORY_NAME/postgresql
volumePermissions.image.repository REPOSITORY_NAME/os-shell
metrics.image.repository REPOSITORY_NAME/postgres-exporter

$ helm upgrade mypostgres oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/postgresql \
--version 16.7.0 \
--set image.repository=bitnamilegacy/postgresql \
--set volumePermissions.image.repository=bitnamilegacy/os-shell \
--set metrics.image.repository=bitnamilegacy/postgres-exporter \
--set global.security.allowInsecureImages=true