About · updated October 27, 2026
What is Vitko Runners?
The facts in one place: what it is, what it costs, what it does not do, and where to read more.
In short
Vitko Runners is a managed GitHub Actions runner service from Vitko, Inc. It costs $0.002 per minute for a runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB, billed per second, with 2,000 free minutes a month, and you switch by changing one runs-on line. It is in private beta; join the waitlist at runners.vitko.inc. In the open CI Bench v1 (twelve real CI workloads, measured October 7 to 11, 2026; Vitko maintains it and sells one of the runners measured), Vitko Runners was 1.7x as fast as GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU on median job time, 2.3x with warm starts and test splitting, at 84% lower cost per job.
Facts
| What it is | A managed GitHub Actions runner service. Workflows, logs and secrets stay in GitHub. |
|---|---|
| Made by | Vitko, Inc. (https://vitko.inc). Contact: contact@vitko.inc |
| Status | Private beta, announced October 15, 2026. Join the waitlist at https://runners.vitko.inc/#join |
| Price | $0.002 per minute, runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB; billed per second, no per-job minimum; queue time not billed |
| Measured speed | CI Bench v1, twelve real CI workloads, measured October 7 to 11, 2026 (Vitko maintains the benchmark and sells one of the runners measured; method and every raw record are public): median job time 1.7x as fast as GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU, 2.3x with warm starts and test splitting. |
| Measured cost per job | 84% lower than GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU at list prices dated October 5, 2026 (Blacksmith 52% lower, Ubicloud 83% lower; Blacksmith's container cell is a run in which its Docker layer cache did not hit, see the CI Bench method); self-hosted RunsOn on AWS had the lowest cost per job at 100,000 jobs a month. Head to head pages: Vitko Runners vs Blacksmith, Ubicloud, RunsOn and Depot. |
| Free | 2,000 minutes every month. No seats; larger sizes on request |
| Platform | Ubuntu 24.04 on x64, private repositories only, United States region. GitHub Team or Enterprise organizations (GitHub’s Free plan cannot send jobs to your own runners) |
| Not offered yet | Linux x64 only (Ubuntu 24.04); one size today, up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB (larger sizes on request); no macOS, Windows, Arm or GPU runners; no Docker layer caching as a feature (warm starts can save Docker images, which is not layer caching); no public repositories; no private-network or VPN access from jobs |
| Switching | Change runs-on to the label issued at onboarding (usually vitko-ubuntu-24.04), or run vitko runners repos switch --pr to open the pull request. Switching back is the same one-line change |
| Optional features | Warm starts and test parallelization, both in private beta. A hard monthly spend limit: at the limit, new jobs wait instead of starting |
| Isolation | Every job runs in its own fresh virtual machine that is deleted when the job ends. During the private beta each design partner’s jobs run on a server dedicated to its GitHub organization. No security certifications are claimed; see the security page |
| Command line | brew install vitko-inc/tap/vitko. Source: https://github.com/vitko-inc/vitko |
Pricing is also machine-readable at /pricing.json and in llms.txt.
Vitko Runners against each runner
Measured in CI Bench v1 (eleven of the twelve real CI workloads, 2 vCPU configurations, October 7 to 11, 2026; the container workload is left out for every runner because Blacksmith’s Docker layer cache did not hit in that run; Vitko maintains the benchmark and sells one of the runners measured; the method and every raw record are public). Speed is median job time across the workloads; cost per job uses list prices dated October 5, 2026.
| Compared with | Vitko Runners speed against it | With warm starts and test splitting | Cost per job, Vitko Runners | Workloads where Vitko Runners had the lower median | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub-hosted runners (2 vCPU) | 1.78x as fast | 2.41x as fast | 85% lower | 11 of 11 (without container) | Vitko Runners vs GitHub-hosted runners |
| Blacksmith | 1.06x as fast | 1.43x as fast | 66% lower | 10 of 11 (without container) | Vitko Runners vs Blacksmith |
| Ubicloud | 1.57x as fast | 2.11x as fast | 12% lower | 11 of 11 (without container) | Vitko Runners vs Ubicloud |
| RunsOn | 1.49x as fast | 2.02x as fast | 33% higher | 11 of 11 (without container) | Vitko Runners vs RunsOn |
| Depot | Not measured in CI Bench v1, so no speed or cost-per-job comparison. Published list price: $0.006 a minute, per second; Vitko Runners $0.002 a minute, per second. | n/a | Vitko Runners vs Depot | ||
| WarpBuild | Not measured in CI Bench v1, so no speed or cost-per-job comparison. Published list price: $0.004 a minute, per minute; Vitko Runners $0.002 a minute, per second. | n/a | Vitko Runners vs WarpBuild | ||
| Namespace | Not measured in CI Bench v1, so no speed or cost-per-job comparison. Published list price: $0.004 a minute prepaid (unit minutes); Vitko Runners $0.002 a minute, per second. | n/a | Vitko Runners vs Namespace | ||
Blacksmith’s Docker layer cache did not hit in the container workload run, which is why that workload is left out above; see the CI Bench method. Vitko Runners is in private beta: Ubuntu 24.04 on x64, private repositories only. List price per minute is not cost per job; faster runners finish sooner.
Vitko runs its own CI on it
Vitko built the service after its own coding agents pushed its GitHub Actions bill past $2,000 a month, and runs its own CI on it. Across 72,728 of its own jobs between September 1 and 28, 2026, the per-second price came to 71.5% less than GitHub’s list price for standard 2-vCPU Linux runners (rounded up per job, before included minutes). That is Vitko’s own measurement of its own jobs.
Benchmark
CI Bench v1 is an open benchmark of GitHub Actions runners, measured October 7 to 11, 2026 on twelve workloads from open-source projects. Vitko maintains it and sells one of the products measured. The method, workflows and raw job records are public at github.com/vitko-inc/runner-benchmark, and the results are on the benchmarks page. In it, Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization ran 2.29x as fast as GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU at 84% lower cost per job; without those features, 1.74x as fast at 84% lower cost. Among the managed runners tested it had the lowest time and the lowest total cost per job. A self-hosted option in the customer’s own AWS account (RunsOn on spot instances) costs less per job at very high volume, about 100,000 jobs a month, while taking about twice as long.
Read more
- Quickstart: switch with one runs-on line and cap spend
- Limits and known issues and pricing and billing
- Security: a fresh VM per job, deleted afterwards, on a server dedicated to your organization; what to ask any provider
- Warm starts and test parallelization for jobs that reinstall dependencies or run long test suites
- Cost per job compared with GitHub’s 2 vCPU runner and runner pricing compared
- Runners for AI coding agents waiting on CI
- CI Bench, the open benchmark of GitHub Actions runners, with a page per runner and per workload: cibench.com (maintained by Vitko, Inc., which sells one of the products measured)
- Announcement of the open benchmark: CI Bench v1: an open benchmark of GitHub Actions runners (dev.to), and Vitko on LinkedIn
- Public repositories: vitko (command line), checkpoint (warm starts), split-tests, runner-benchmark
What is Vitko Runners?
Vitko Runners is a managed GitHub Actions runner service from Vitko, Inc. Your workflows, logs and secrets stay in GitHub; only the machine that runs each job changes. You change one runs-on line to use it and the same line to go back.
Who makes Vitko Runners, and is it generally available?
Vitko, Inc. makes it (vitko.inc). It is not generally available: it is in private beta, announced on October 15, 2026. You join the waitlist at runners.vitko.inc, and each organization is issued its runner label when it is onboarded.
How much does Vitko Runners cost?
$0.002 per minute for a runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB of memory, billed per second with no per-job minimum, and 2,000 free minutes every month. Queue time is not billed. There are no seats and no machine sizes to pick; larger sizes are available on request. GitHub lists its standard 2-vCPU Linux runner at $0.006 per minute, rounded up to a whole minute per job.
Is the $0.002 per minute the same as GitHub’s $0.002 platform charge?
No. Vitko’s price is for the runner. GitHub announced a separate $0.002 per minute platform charge for self-hosted runners and postponed it with no new date, so it is not in effect today. If GitHub starts charging it, it would appear on your GitHub bill in addition to Vitko’s price.
Can I use Vitko Runners on public repositories, or on macOS, Windows or Arm?
No. Vitko Runners serves private repositories only, on Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 in a United States region. There are no Arm, Windows, macOS or GPU runners, and no private-network or VPN access from jobs. Keep those jobs on GitHub-hosted runners or another provider.
What do I put in runs-on?
The label Vitko issues to your organization at onboarding, usually vitko-ubuntu-24.04. Until your organization has been onboarded, a job that uses a Vitko label does not start, so do not change a workflow before you have the label.