depmedic · scan a repo · ask AI · cost calculator · leaderboard

Cheaper GitHub Actions runners 2026 edition

GitHub-hosted Linux runners are billed at $0.008/min for 2 vCPU, $0.016/min for 4 vCPU, and so on - private repos only; public repos are free. Once your team starts pushing past ~50,000 minutes/month, third-party runner providers can drop the per-minute cost by 50-90% with a one-line runs-on: change. This page compares six of them. Pricing was pulled from each provider's public docs as of April 2026; always verify on the provider's site before signing.

Affiliate disclosure: some links below pass through /r/<provider> redirects. If you sign up after clicking, depmedic may receive a small referral fee at no cost to you. Pricing rows below are objective and not influenced by referral terms; runner picks are based on what genuinely cuts your bill the most for the workload type. We do not list providers we have not personally audited the docs of.

Side-by-side

Provider 2-vCPU/min 4-vCPU/min vs GH-hosted OIDC Cache Self-host needed? Notes
BuildJet
Sign up		 ~$0.004 ~$0.008 ~50% cheaper Yes Faster cache No - their cloud Drop-in runs-on: buildjet-2vcpu-ubuntu-2204. AWS-backed. Most mature alt.
Namespace
Sign up		 ~$0.005 ~$0.010 ~40% cheaper Yes Snapshot cache (very fast) No - their cloud Best for cold starts and very fast caching. Used by Linear, Vercel, others.
Ubicloud
Sign up		 ~$0.0008 ~$0.0016 ~10x cheaper Yes Standard No - open-source cloud Lowest sticker price. Open-source control plane. Drop-in runs-on: ubicloud-standard-2.
RunsOn
Sign up		 your AWS your AWS ~10x cheaper Yes S3-backed Runs in your AWS EC2 Spot in your AWS account; you pay AWS directly. Best for >200k min/mo.
WarpBuild
Sign up		 ~$0.004 ~$0.008 ~50% cheaper Yes Distributed (very fast) No - their cloud Distributed cache layer is the standout. Good Docker layer reuse.
Blacksmith
Sign up		 ~$0.004 ~$0.008 ~50% cheaper Yes Standard, fast No - their cloud Y Combinator-backed. "2x faster, 50% cheaper" is their claim. Drop-in.
GitHub-hosted baseline $0.008 $0.016 baseline Yes 10 GB free / repo No Free for public repos. ubuntu-latest, windows-latest ($0.016+), macos-latest ($0.08+, 10x).

Quick savings calculator

What would you save?

How to switch (the one-line change)

Most third-party runners are drop-in: change runs-on: in your workflow file, sign up for the provider, install their GitHub App on your repo or org, and you're done. No code changes, no Dockerfile, no scripts.

Show example: BuildJet 
# before
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

# after (BuildJet)
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: buildjet-2vcpu-ubuntu-2204
Show example: Ubicloud 
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubicloud-standard-2  # 2 vCPU
    # or: ubicloud-standard-4, ubicloud-standard-8, etc.
Show example: Namespace 
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: namespace-profile-default
    # profile defined in your Namespace dashboard

Which one for which workload?

Pair this with the rest of depmedic