We define a theory of étale motives over a noetherian scheme. This provides a system of categories of complexes of motivic sheaves with integral coefficients which is closed under the six operations of Grothendieck. The rational part of these categories coincides with the triangulated categories of Beilinson motives (and is thus strongly related to algebraic$K$-theory). We extend the rigidity theorem of Suslin and Voevodsky over a general base scheme. This can be reformulated by saying that torsion étale motives essentially coincide with the usual complexes of torsion étale sheaves (at least if we restrict ourselves to torsion prime to the residue characteristics). As a consequence, we obtain the expected results of absolute purity, of finiteness, and of Grothendieck duality for étale motives with integral coefficients, by putting together their counterparts for Beilinson motives and for torsion étale sheaves. Following Thomason’s insights, this also provides a conceptual and convenient construction of the$\ell$-adic realization of motives, as the homotopy$\ell$-completion functor.