Comparison · list prices checked October 18, 2026
A cheaper alternative to GitHub-hosted runners
What the same GitHub Actions jobs cost on GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU runners and on Vitko Runners, what stays the same when you switch, and what does not.
In short
Vitko Runners costs $0.002 a minute for a runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB, against GitHub’s $0.006 for a standard 2-vCPU Linux runner: a third of the price, billed per second instead of rounded up to the minute, with 2,000 free minutes every month. You switch a job by changing one runs-on line, and back the same way. It is in private beta, on Ubuntu 24.04 x64 only.
Cost of one job
List price for a 2 vCPU runner, before any free or plan-included minutes on either side. GitHub rounds each job up to a whole minute.
| Job length | GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU ($0.006 a minute, rounded up) | Vitko Runners (up to 2 vCPU, 8 GB; $0.002 a minute, per second) |
|---|---|---|
| 30 seconds | $0.0060 | $0.0010 |
| 1.5 minutes | $0.0120 | $0.0030 |
| 5 minutes | $0.0300 | $0.0100 |
| 20 minutes | $0.1200 | $0.0400 |
An example month
5,000 jobs of 3 minutes each is 15,000 minutes of 2 vCPU Linux runner time, compared like with like:
| GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU | Vitko Runners (up to 2 vCPU, 8 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| List price, no free minutes on either side | $90.00 | $30.00 |
| After each side’s 2,000 free minutes (GitHub Free plan) | $78.00 | $26.00 |
GitHub’s included minutes depend on your plan: 2,000 on GitHub Free, 3,000 on Pro and Team, 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud, for private repositories. Your own numbers will differ: the calculator takes your usage, and the CLI can price a GitHub usage report locally.
Other managed runners, per job
In the open CI Bench v1 (twelve open-source CI workloads, measured October 7–11, 2026), cost per job at each provider’s list price against GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU: Vitko Runners 84% lower; Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization 84% lower; Ubicloud standard, 2 vCPU 83% lower; Blacksmith, 2 vCPU 52% lower. Vitko sells one of the products measured. Method, limits and every raw record are public. Every configuration, with speed
What stays the same, and what does not
- Same workflows, and the same GitHub UI and logs. Only the
runs-online changes. - A hard monthly spend limit: at the limit, new jobs wait instead of starting. Spend controls
- Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 only: Arm, Windows, macOS and GPU jobs stay on GitHub. Limits
- Our price is for the runner. GitHub announced a $0.002 a minute platform charge for self-hosted runners and postponed it with no new date; it would appear on your GitHub bill if it starts.
- If you need to go back during the beta: fall back to GitHub-hosted.
Is there a cheaper alternative to GitHub-hosted runners?
Yes. Vitko Runners is a managed GitHub Actions runner service at $0.002 a minute, a third of GitHub's $0.006 list price for a standard 2-vCPU Linux runner, billed per second with 2,000 free minutes a month. You switch a job by changing one runs-on line. It is in private beta.
Why is the per-job difference larger than the per-minute difference?
GitHub rounds every job up to a whole minute; Vitko Runners bills per second with no per-job minimum. A 30-second job costs GitHub list price for 60 seconds.
What does a switch change in my workflows?
One line: runs-on changes from ubuntu-latest to your Vitko label. Vitko Runners is in private beta; join the waitlist and your organization is issued its label at onboarding (usually vitko-ubuntu-24.04). Switching back is the same one-line change.
What do I give up?
Vitko Runners offers Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB per job, for private repositories, in private beta. There are no Arm, Windows, macOS or GPU runners; those jobs stay on GitHub.
Are there cheaper options than Vitko Runners?
In CI Bench v1, the self-hosted RunsOn on AWS had a lower cost per job at 100,000 jobs a month, but you operate it and pay for fixed costs. See the comparison page for every configuration measured.
Sources
- GitHub’s per-minute rates, including the Linux 2-core x64 rate of $0.006 and rounding each job up to the nearest whole minute: GitHub Actions runner pricing (checked October 18, 2026). GitHub also lists a 1-core Linux runner at $0.002 a minute; this page compares 2-core runners. Our per-minute price equals GitHub’s 1-core rate; the differences are per-second billing and the larger runner, with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB.
- GitHub’s included minutes by plan: About billing for GitHub Actions (checked October 18, 2026)
- Choosing between kinds of runner: GitHub-hosted, self-hosted or managed runners
- Speed of the same runners: CI Bench v1 speed by workload and runner
- Every runner, workload and list price measured: cibench.com
- Vitko Runners pricing: Pricing and billing