Pricing
How does the cost per job of third-party GitHub Actions runners compare with GitHub’s 2 vCPU runner?
On twelve open-source workloads, cost per job against GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU (1.00) was 0.12 for RunsOn, 0.16 for Vitko Runners, 0.17 for Ubicloud and 0.48 for Blacksmith, at 100,000 jobs a month (CI Bench v1, October 7 to 11, 2026). Vitko maintains CI Bench and sells Vitko Runners, which is in private beta.
Updated October 17, 2026
Measured cost per job
| Runner | Cost per job (GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU = 1.00) | Against GitHub-hosted | Median job time (GitHub-hosted = 1.00) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RunsOn (self-hosted in your AWS account, defaults: spot) | 0.12 | 88% lower cost per job | 0.83 |
| Vitko Runners (private beta) | 0.16 | 84% lower cost per job | 0.57 |
| Vitko Runners with warm starts and test splitting | 0.16 | 84% lower cost per job | 0.44 |
| Ubicloud | 0.17 | 83% lower cost per job | 0.88 |
| Blacksmith† | 0.48 | 52% lower cost per job | 0.64 |
| GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU (the baseline) | 1.00 | baseline | 1.00 |
| GitHub-hosted 4 vCPU | 1.39 | 39% higher cost per job | 0.64 |
Twelve real CI workloads, each run on every configuration, October 7 to 11, 2026. Lower is cheaper and faster. RunsOn is priced all-in (compute in your own AWS account) at 100,000 jobs a month; its cost depends on volume. † Blacksmith’s container workload: its Docker layer cache did not hit in that run; a re-run is planned (method note). Every run, price source and the method: cost per job by workload and cibench.com; the open data is in vitko-inc/runner-benchmark.
List price per minute and for a 10-minute job
| Runner | Per minute | 10-minute job at list price |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub-hosted 2-core Linux | $0.006 | $0.060 |
| Depot | $0.006 | $0.060 |
| Blacksmith | $0.004 | $0.040 |
| WarpBuild | $0.004 | $0.040 |
| Vitko Runners (private beta) | $0.002 | $0.020 |
| Ubicloud (standard tier) | $0.0012 | $0.012 |
Each is the provider’s own page for its entry-level 2 vCPU Linux x64 runner, read October 22, 2026, with sources and plan terms in runner pricing compared. GitHub rounds each job up to a whole minute (GitHub’s price list). Free minutes, plan fees and add-ons are not included.
Use it on your own jobs
Price your usage with the calculator, or run vitko runners estimate on GitHub’s usage report (see the CLI). Vitko Runners covers Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 for private repositories, up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB: limits. List-price examples by job length: pricing and billing.
Questions this page answers
How does the cost per job of third-party GitHub Actions runners compare with GitHub’s 2 vCPU runner?
At list price a 10-minute job on a 2 vCPU Linux runner costs $0.060 on GitHub-hosted, $0.040 on Blacksmith and WarpBuild, $0.060 on Depot, $0.020 on Vitko Runners and $0.012 on Ubicloud (each provider’s own pricing page, read October 22, 2026, before free minutes and plan fees). Measured on twelve open-source workloads in CI Bench v1 (October 7 to 11, 2026; Vitko maintains it and sells one of the runners), cost per job against GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU was 0.12 for RunsOn, 0.16 for Vitko Runners, 0.17 for Ubicloud and 0.48 for Blacksmith.
Is the list price per minute the same as the cost per job?
No. Cost per job is the price per minute times the minutes a job takes on that runner, plus how the provider rounds. GitHub rounds each job up to a whole minute; Vitko Runners bills per second. A faster runner needs fewer minutes, which is why CI Bench measures both time and cost on the same jobs.
Which providers were measured, and which only have list prices?
Measured in CI Bench v1: GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU and 4 vCPU, Blacksmith, Ubicloud, RunsOn, Vitko Runners and two self-hosted configurations. Depot and WarpBuild were not measured, so only their published list prices are given here.