Starting March 11, Docker Hub rate limits may cause image pull failures for clusters pulling Okteto images without authentication.
This can affect installations running Okteto versions earlier than 1.40, which still use Docker Hub as the default registry.
Syntoms
Your deployments or Okteto components may fail with errors similar to:
You have reached your pull rate limit. You may increase the limit by authenticating and upgrading:
https://www.docker.com/increase-rate-limits
In Kubernetes, this typically appears as:
ImagePullBackOff
ErrImagePull
Why this happens
Docker Hub enforces anonymous pull rate limits.
If your Kubernetes cluster pulls Okteto images without authentication, these limits can be reached quickly, especially in shared clusters.
How to fix it
You have two options depending on your setup.
Option 1 — Upgrade Okteto to 1.40+ (Recommended)
Starting with Okteto 1.40, container images are pulled from GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) instead of Docker Hub.
This avoids Docker Hub rate limits entirely.
Upgrade instructions and details:
https://community.okteto.com/t/okteto-container-images-moving-to-github-container-registry-in-1-40/1446
Option 2 — Configure Docker credentials in your cluster
If you cannot upgrade immediately, you should configure Kubernetes to authenticate to Docker Hub.
The easiest way is using Okteto’s registry credentials feature, which ensures all workloads in your cluster can pull images.
Documentation:
https://www.okteto.com/docs/admin/registry-credentials/
This allows your cluster to authenticate to Docker Hub and avoid anonymous rate limits.