Frequently asked questions

Runners for GitHub Actions that we operate for you. Your workflows, logs and secrets stay in GitHub; only the machine that runs each job changes.

In CI Bench v1, measured October 7–11, 2026, Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization was 2.29x faster than GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU at 84% lower cost per job. Without those features it was 1.74x faster at 84% lower cost. One self-hosted configuration, RunsOn on AWS, has a lower cost index at high volume. The method, workflows and every raw job record are public. Read the benchmark.

Add the Vitko GitHub App to the repositories you choose and change runs-on: ubuntu-latest to runs-on: vitko-ubuntu-24.04. The vitko CLI can open that pull request for you: vitko runners repos switch --pr. Switching back is the same one line.

Jobs run on Ubuntu 24.04 (x64) with Docker, Node.js, Python and common build tools; actions/setup-* installs anything else. It is not a copy of GitHub’s image, so tell us what you rely on and we will check before you move. Arm, Windows, macOS and GPU runners are not offered.

No. Runners on public repositories run code from anyone’s pull request, so Vitko Runners serves private repositories only.

Your job starts from a prepared copy of your repository’s setup: code checked out, toolchains and dependencies installed, so it begins where setup would have finished. The copy is rebuilt from your default branch as it moves, never from pull-request code, so a pull request can’t change what other jobs start from. Each job gets its own copy; what one job writes is never seen by another.

One optional step splits your test suite across parallel copies of your job and reports the results back in the original job. You pay for the time each part runs, not for the original job while it waits. CPU-heavy suites cost about the same as running unsplit; lighter suites cost somewhat more, because each part pays for a full runner. Very short suites gain little. Works with pytest, cargo nextest, Go test, Jest and Vitest, and any test command that can run its own share of a suite.

A runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB of memory, billed per second with no minimum per job, and 2,000 free minutes a month. The price is the same whatever the job uses. Larger sizes are available on request.

Our price is for the runner. It is separate from any charge GitHub applies to Actions itself. GitHub announced a $0.002 a minute platform charge for self-hosted runners and has postponed it with no new date (GitHub’s update note of December 15, 2025; checked October 13, 2026). It is not in effect today. If GitHub starts charging it, it would appear on your GitHub bill, in addition to our price.

A hard monthly spend limit that you set. At the limit, new jobs wait instead of starting.

Yes. Install the vitko CLI (brew install vitko-inc/tap/vitko) and run vitko runners estimate on GitHub’s usage report. It runs on your machine and uploads nothing.

No. Your jobs run on a server dedicated to your GitHub organization, and nothing on it is shared with anyone else.

Yes. Every job runs in its own fresh virtual machine, registered for exactly one job and deleted when the job ends. Job machines have no public address and accept no inbound connections.

A GitHub App on the repositories you choose, with permission to manage self-hosted runners and read job status, and read access to those repositories so warm starts can prepare them from your default branch. We never ask for a personal access token or for write access to your code. Your secrets stay in GitHub, which sends them only to the job that needs them.

We don’t have a SOC 2 report. We will answer your security questionnaire truthfully, including what is still in progress.