GCP Artifact Registry Cleanup Policy Builder

About This Tool

The GCP Artifact Registry Cleanup Policy Builder helps you create cleanup policies that automatically delete old or unused container images and other artifacts from Google Artifact Registry repositories. Without cleanup policies, repositories grow indefinitely, increasing storage costs. This tool guides you through defining rules based on tag status, age, and version count, generating the policy configuration for deployment via gcloud or Terraform.

When to Use This Tool

• •Build cleanup policies to delete untagged container images older than a specified number of days to reclaim storage.
• •Create rules that retain only the most recent N tagged versions of each image for cost optimization.
• •Configure policies that keep production-tagged images indefinitely while cleaning up development and CI images on a schedule.
• •Design cleanup policies for multi-environment repositories with different retention requirements per tag prefix.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can cleanup policies accidentally delete images that are in use?

Cleanup policies evaluate based on image age and tag status, not active deployment status. Images currently deployed in GKE or Cloud Run could be deleted if they match a cleanup rule. Use tag-based keep rules to protect images with specific tags like 'production' or 'stable' from deletion.

How is this different from GCR cleanup?

Artifact Registry is Google's next-generation artifact management service replacing Container Registry (GCR). Artifact Registry cleanup policies are a built-in feature with native support for keep and delete rules. GCR required custom scripts or third-party tools like gcr-cleaner for image cleanup.