# 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 https://runners.vitko.inc/#join.

Last updated: 2026-10-15

> Runners for GitHub Actions from Vitko, Inc., at a third of GitHub's list price per minute. Private beta; join at https://runners.vitko.inc/#join

## Pricing
- $0.002 per minute for a runner with up to 2 vCPUs and 8 GB of memory.
- Billed per second, no minimum per job.
- 2,000 free minutes per month.
- No seats and no machine sizes to pick. Larger sizes on request.
- For comparison, GitHub's list price for a standard 2-vCPU Linux runner is $0.006 per minute, rounded up to a whole minute per job (checked 2026-09-27; https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing).

## How
- A new compute engine built for CI jobs.
- Warm starts (private beta): a job starts from a prepared copy of the repository's setup (code checked out, toolchains and dependencies installed), rebuilt from the default branch, never from pull-request code.
- Test parallelization (private beta): one optional workflow step splits the test suite across parallel copies of the job and reports back in the same job. Each part is billed for the time it runs, not the original job while it waits; lighter suites can cost somewhat more than running unsplit.

## Measured on our own CI
- 72,728 jobs, September 1-28, 2026: our per-second price came to 71.5% less than GitHub's list price for standard 2-vCPU Linux runners, rounded up per job and before included minutes. Our jobs ran on our own runners.

## Switching
- Install the Vitko GitHub App on the repositories you choose.
- Change `runs-on: ubuntu-latest` to `runs-on: vitko-ubuntu-24.04` in the workflow file, or run `vitko runners repos switch` (add `--pr` to open a pull request).
- Switching back is the same one-line change.

## CLI
- Source and install: https://github.com/vitko-inc/vitko (`brew install vitko-inc/tap/vitko`).
- `vitko runners estimate <usage-report.csv>`: what GitHub's usage report would cost on Vitko, computed locally. JSON output when not on a terminal.
- `vitko runners pricing`: the price list, dated.

## Private beta
- Ubuntu 24.04 on x64. No Arm, Windows, macOS or GPU runners. Private repositories only.
- FAQ, including security in the private beta: https://runners.vitko.inc/faq/
- Each design partner's jobs run on a server dedicated to its GitHub organization; every job runs in a fresh virtual machine that is deleted when the job ends.
- A hard monthly spend limit: at the limit, new jobs wait instead of starting.

## Waitlist
- Sign up: https://runners.vitko.inc/#join
- Signing up takes an email address; the address owner confirms by email. Optional questions follow confirmation.
- Contact: contact@vitko.inc

## Pages
- Pricing (machine-readable): https://runners.vitko.inc/pricing.json and https://runners.vitko.inc/pricing.md
- FAQ: https://runners.vitko.inc/faq/
- Calculator: https://runners.vitko.inc/calculator/
- Benchmarks (CI Bench v1): https://runners.vitko.inc/benchmarks/
- Docs: https://runners.vitko.inc/docs/ (quickstart: https://runners.vitko.inc/docs/quickstart/, pricing: https://runners.vitko.inc/docs/pricing/, labels: https://runners.vitko.inc/docs/labels/, limits: https://runners.vitko.inc/docs/limits/, security: https://runners.vitko.inc/docs/security/)

## Benchmark (CI Bench v1)
- Open benchmark of GitHub Actions runners, maintained by Vitko, which sells one of the products measured. Measured October 7–11, 2026; twelve workloads; nine configurations. Method, data and results: https://github.com/vitko-inc/runner-benchmark (results/v1) and https://runners.vitko.inc/benchmarks/.
- Lowest time and total cost per job among the managed runners in CI Bench v1. RunsOn, self-hosted in your AWS account, costs less per job at high volume.
- Vitko Runners with warm starts and test parallelization: 2.29x as fast as GitHub-hosted 2 vCPU at 84% lower cost per job; plain Vitko Runners: 1.74x as fast at 84% lower cost.

## Machine-readable
- https://runners.vitko.inc/pricing.json
- https://runners.vitko.inc/sitemap.xml