Guide · GitHub prices checked October 19, 2026
GitHub Actions cost and pricing explained: what a minute costs and how to pay less
The per-minute rates, how rounding and included minutes work, what changed in 2026, and the ways to pay less.
In short
GitHub-hosted runners are billed by the minute: $0.006 for a standard 2-core Linux runner, with every job rounded up to a whole minute, after the minutes your plan includes each month for private repositories (2,000 on Free, 3,000 on Team, 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud). Public repositories are free on standard GitHub-hosted runners (Vitko Runners itself serves private repositories only), and self-hosted runners are free on GitHub today. To pay less, stay inside your included minutes, run your own machines, or use a managed runner: Vitko Runners costs $0.002 a minute billed per second, a third of GitHub’s 2-core rate. Vitko sells that runner, in private beta, so check its figures against GitHub’s.
Per-minute rates for GitHub-hosted runners
| Runner | Price per minute |
|---|---|
| Linux x64, 1-core | $0.002 |
| Linux x64, 2-core | $0.006 |
| Linux arm64, 2-core | $0.005 |
| Windows, 2-core | $0.010 |
| macOS, 3-core or 4-core | $0.062 |
| Larger Linux runners | From $0.012 (4-core) up to $0.252 (96-core) |
“GitHub rounds the minutes and partial minutes each job uses up to the nearest whole minute.” Source: GitHub Actions runner pricing (checked October 19, 2026).
Included minutes, free usage and storage
- Included minutes each month, for private repositories: 2,000 on GitHub Free, 3,000 on Team, 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud. Usage resets to zero at the start of each month.
- Standard GitHub-hosted runners are free for public repositories. Larger runners are always charged.
- Self-hosted runners are free on GitHub: you pay for your own machines.
- Artifacts and GitHub Packages share one storage allowance, billed at $0.25 per GB-month beyond it. Cache storage is 10 GB per repository, then $0.07 per GB-month.
Source: About billing for GitHub Actions (checked October 19, 2026).
What changed in 2026
GitHub cut hosted-runner prices by up to 39% from January 1, 2026. It had also announced a $0.002 per minute platform charge for self-hosted runners starting March 1, 2026, then postponed it on December 15, 2025 “to take time to re-evaluate our approach”, with no new date. Source: GitHub: 2026 pricing changes for GitHub Actions (checked October 19, 2026).
A worked example
5,000 jobs a month of 3 minutes each, on 2-core Linux, at list price with no included minutes on either side:
| GitHub-hosted 2-core Linux ($0.006 a minute) | Vitko Runners ($0.002 a minute, per second) | |
|---|---|---|
| 15,000 minutes of use | $90.00 | $30.00 |
Rounding matters for short jobs: a 30-second job is billed as a full minute on GitHub ($0.0060) and as 30 seconds on Vitko Runners ($0.0010). Vitko Runners offers Ubuntu 24.04 on x64, up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB, for private repositories; Arm, Windows, macOS and GPU jobs stay on GitHub. More cases: a cheaper alternative to GitHub-hosted runners.
Ways to pay less
- Stay inside your plan’s included minutes, if your usage allows.
- Combine very short jobs: each job is rounded up to a whole minute, so ten 10-second jobs are billed as ten minutes.
- Run your own runners if you can operate and secure them. GitHub postponed its announced platform charge for self-hosted runners and has given no new date.
- Use a managed runner and compare its per-minute rate and rounding with GitHub’s. How to choose
- Set a budget so spend can’t surprise you. How to cap GitHub Actions spend
To price your own usage: the calculator, or vitko runners estimate from the CLI, which prices a GitHub usage report on your computer.
How much does GitHub Actions cost per minute?
For GitHub-hosted standard runners, $0.006 a minute for a 2-core Linux runner, $0.002 for a 1-core Linux runner, $0.010 for a 2-core Windows runner and $0.062 for a 3- or 4-core macOS runner (GitHub’s price list, checked October 19, 2026). GitHub rounds each job up to the nearest whole minute.
How many free minutes does GitHub Actions include?
For private repositories, 2,000 minutes a month on GitHub Free, 3,000 on Team and 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud. Standard GitHub-hosted runners are free for public repositories.
Do self-hosted runners cost anything on GitHub?
Not today. GitHub announced a $0.002 per minute platform charge that would have applied to self-hosted runners from March 1, 2026, and postponed it on December 15, 2025 with no new date. You still pay for the machines you run.
What is a cheaper way to run GitHub Actions jobs?
Keep usage inside your included minutes, combine very short jobs because each job is rounded up to a whole minute, run your own runners if you can operate them, or use a managed runner. Vitko Runners is a managed option at $0.002 a minute, billed per second, with 2,000 free minutes a month; it is in private beta.
Can I use Vitko Runners on public repositories?
No. Vitko Runners serves private repositories only, because a runner on a public repository would run code from anyone’s pull request. Public repositories already run free on standard GitHub-hosted runners.
How do I estimate what my jobs would cost on Vitko Runners?
Use the calculator on this site, or the vitko runners estimate command, which prices a GitHub usage report on your own computer.
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.