Is there a way to have multiple Docker Registry Entries with the same URL but different credentials?

[baltermia]

I have a self-hosted GitLab instance with multiple groups. I create a deploy token for each repository. The problem comes up when I add these credentials to the dokploy Docker Registry configurations; I have to enter the same URL for all of them (kinda obvious, since it's the same GitLab instance).

Now, when I try to deploy my 2 applications (with a compose file), and dokploy tries to pull the images, it uses the same credentials for both applications, even though one repository has other credentials than the other. This leads to one app deploying successfully and the other failing. I have to manually edit the Docker registry configs each time I want to deploy both apps.

Is there any way to fix this?

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @baltermia! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the dokploy team.

This is a known limitation with how Docker itself (and by extension Dokploy) handles registry credentials. While Dokploy's schema has no unique constraint on registryUrl — so you can create multiple registry entries with the same URL — the underlying issue is that docker login writes credentials to ~/.docker/config.json keyed by hostname. The second docker login to the same host simply overwrites the first, so only one set of credentials survives at a time [1].

For Compose/Stack deployments specifically, there is no per-service registry assignment [2]. Dokploy passes --with-registry-auth to docker stack deploy [3], which distributes whatever credentials are cached in the daemon's config to all nodes — but since only one credential per hostname can exist there, the last docker login wins.

Possible workarounds:

1. Use a single deploy token with access to both repositories. If your GitLab instance allows creating a group-level deploy token (at a parent group level) that has read access to both repos, you'd only need one registry entry.

2. Use separate Dokploy Applications instead of a single Compose file. Regular Applications support per-application registry assignment via the registryId foreign key [4], and the auth is passed directly to the Docker API rather than relying on the daemon credential store [5]. This would let each app use its own credentials for the same registry URL.

3. Pre-pull images manually. You could add a build command or script that does docker login + docker pull for each image with the right credentials before the compose deploy runs, so the images are already available locally.

There's no open issue tracking this specific use case (multiple credentials for the same registry URL in Compose), so filing a feature request might be worthwhile if the workarounds don't fit your setup.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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