Our view · CI Bench v1, measured October 7 to 11, 2026
Best GitHub Actions runners in 2026: twelve options, our view
Nine options measured on twelve real CI workloads and three with published facts only, ranked by measured speed. Vitko sells one of them.
In short
We make Vitko Runners, so read this as our view and check the independent list: every option, with its price and source, is on cibench.com. By the CI Bench v1 data, Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization had the highest speed (2.3x GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU) and RunsOn on AWS, self-hosted, 2 vCPU the lowest cost per job at 100,000 jobs a month. Self-hosted setups cost less at high volume and take operations work.
The nine measured options, ranked by speed
| Rank | Option | Speed vs GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU | Cost per job vs GitHub-hosted (100,000 jobs a month) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization | 2.3x faster | 84% lower |
| 2 | Vitko Runners | 1.7x faster | 84% lower |
| 3 | GitHub-hosted, 4 vCPU | 1.6x faster | 39% higher |
| 4 | Blacksmith, 2 vCPU | 1.6x faster | 52% lower |
| 5 | Google Cloud pool, self-hosted | 1.5x faster | 59% lower |
| 6 | RunsOn on AWS, self-hosted, 2 vCPU | 1.2x faster | 88% lower |
| 7 | AWS EC2, self-hosted, one VM per job | 1.2x faster | 62% lower |
| 8 | Ubicloud standard, 2 vCPU | 1.1x faster | 83% lower |
| 9 | GitHub-hosted, 2 vCPU | baseline | baseline |
Geometric mean over twelve workloads against GitHub-hosted (ubuntu-latest), from the open CI Bench v1; every raw record is public. Self-hosted options were run by us and priced all-in. Where another option leads is shown by the table: it is not always Vitko Runners.
Three more, not measured in v1
Depot, Namespace and WarpBuild were not measured in CI Bench v1, so there are no speed or cost-per-job figures for them here. Their published prices, with sources and the date each was read, are on cibench.com/prices.
What to know about Vitko Runners
Private beta; Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 only, private repositories only, United States region; no Arm, Windows, macOS or GPU runners. Limits. Pricing: $0.002 a minute, billed per second.
What are the best GitHub Actions runners in 2026?
It depends on what you need, and we sell one of them. By CI Bench v1 measurements, ranked by speed: 1. Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization; 2. Vitko Runners; 3. GitHub-hosted, 4 vCPU; 4. Blacksmith, 2 vCPU; 5. Google Cloud pool, self-hosted; 6. RunsOn on AWS, self-hosted, 2 vCPU; 7. AWS EC2, self-hosted, one VM per job; 8. Ubicloud standard, 2 vCPU; 9. GitHub-hosted, 2 vCPU. Depot, Namespace and WarpBuild were not measured in v1. The full list, with a verdict, best use, pricing with its source and limits for each option, is on cibench.com.
Who wins on cost?
At 100,000 jobs a month the lowest cost per job measured was RunsOn on AWS, self-hosted, 2 vCPU (88% lower than GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU), a self-hosted setup you run yourself. Among the managed runners measured, Vitko Runners had the lowest.
About Vitko Runners
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. Vitko Runners serves private repositories only, not public repositories, on Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 in a United States region, with no Arm, Windows, macOS or GPU runners. Facts, price and limits.