Cheapest GitHub Actions runners in 2026: price per minute, per vCPU-hour and per month

What are the cheapest GitHub Actions runners in 2026?

Sengi runs GitHub Actions jobs for $0.003 a minute at 2 vCPU, $0.006 at 4 vCPU and $0.012 at 8 vCPU. GitHub charges $0.006, $0.012 and $0.022 for the same Linux sizes, so Sengi is half GitHub’s price at 2 and 4 vCPU and 45% less at 8 vCPU. Per vCPU-hour that is $0.09 on Sengi at every size, against $0.18 on GitHub at 2 and 4 vCPU and $0.165 at 8 vCPU. Teams running CI at high volume can ask for the Sengi partner rate: $0.0018 a minute at 2 vCPU, 70% less than GitHub. Switching is one runs-on line.

Last checked October 27, 2026. GitHub’s prices from its Actions runner pricing reference and Sengi’s from its published pricing, both read October 27, 2026. Linux x64, US dollars, list prices. We recheck and redate this page every month, and every number on it is in one JSON file.

GitHub Actions runner pricing per minute and per vCPU-hour

Matched Linux x64 sizes. On a private repository GitHub’s 2 vCPU runner is ubuntu-latest, and its 4 and 8 vCPU runners are larger runners you create for your organization.

The math: price per vCPU-hour is the price per minute × 60 ÷ vCPUs. GitHub at 2 vCPU: $0.006 × 60 ÷ 2 = $0.18. Sengi at 2 vCPU: $0.003 × 60 ÷ 2 = $0.09. Sengi’s price scales exactly with the cores, so 8 vCPU costs the same per core as 2 vCPU. At the partner rate, $0.0018 × 60 ÷ 2 = $0.054 per vCPU-hour.

Every Sengi runner is Ubuntu 24.04 on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D boosting past 5 GHz, on bare metal with local NVMe, with a fresh VM for every job. All three sizes work on personal repositories as well as organizations. Boot and teardown are never billed, and there is no subscription and no minimum.

What does a month of GitHub Actions minutes cost?

A month of 2 vCPU job-minutes at list price, before any included minutes:

Included minutes come off the top. GitHub’s plans include 2,000 to 50,000 standard-runner minutes a month on private repositories, depending on the plan, and none of them cover larger runners. Sengi includes 3,000 minutes every month at 2 vCPU (1,500 at 4 vCPU, 750 at 8 vCPU). Past those, every minute bills at the prices above. To price your own month, use the GitHub Actions cost calculator.

What kinds of GitHub Actions runner can you buy?

• GitHub’s standard runners. ubuntu-latest is 2 vCPU and 8 GB on a private repository, at $0.006 a minute once the plan’s included minutes are spent; standard runners on public repositories are not billed. GitHub also sells ubuntu-slim at $0.002 a minute: 1 vCPU and 5 GB, no Docker and a 15-minute job limit, built for light tasks. That is $0.12 per vCPU-hour.
• GitHub’s larger runners. 4 to 96 vCPU, from $0.012 a minute at 4 vCPU to $0.252 at 96 vCPU. You create them for an organization on the Team or Enterprise Cloud plan, they bill from the first minute even on public repositories, and included minutes never cover them. More in GitHub larger runners.
• Self-hosted runners. GitHub charges no minutes for them. The bill moves to the machines, including the hours they sit idle, plus the time to patch, secure, scale and update the runner image. GitHub announced a $0.002-a-minute platform charge for self-hosted runners on December 16, 2025 and postponed it before it took effect. In our worked model, self-hosting costs $474 a month at 12,000 minutes.
• Hosted runner services. A company runs the machines and you change runs-on; your workflows, secrets and logs stay in GitHub Actions. Pricing models vary: per minute, per second, a plan with included usage, or your own cloud account plus a licence. Compare them on price per minute and per build at matched vCPU and memory, and check what is included: cache, storage, concurrency and personal repositories. Sengi is this kind of runner, at the prices above.

Why does price per build matter as much as price per minute?

A runner bills the minutes a job runs, so hardware that finishes the job sooner bills fewer of them. Sengi runs every job on a 5 GHz desktop-class CPU with local NVMe, and measured against GitHub’s runner of the same size it has up to 3× the multi-core CPU at 2 vCPU and 15× the random-read disk speed at 4 vCPU. A production Docker image built 1.9× faster on Sengi at 74% less per build. The measurements are in faster GitHub Actions runners.

Is there a lower rate for high-volume teams?

Yes. The Sengi partner rate is $0.0018 a minute at 2 vCPU, $0.054 per vCPU-hour and 70% less than GitHub’s $0.006, for teams that run CI at volume, such as teams whose coding agents open hundreds of pull requests a month. One agent-heavy repository ran 370,650 job-minutes in the first 26 days of October 2026: $2,224 at GitHub’s 2 vCPU price, $1,112 at Sengi’s list price and $667 at the partner rate. The breakdown is in AI agents wrote 12× more PRs.

Write to ops@sengi.run with your monthly minutes to ask for it.

How do I move my jobs to a cheaper runner?

1. Connect your repository to Sengi.
2. Change runs-on: ubuntu-latest to runs-on: sengi-standard-2-ubuntu-2404, or the 4 or 8 vCPU label, in each job.
3. Merge. The next run bills at Sengi’s price.

Or give your coding agent one prompt: it changes every eligible job in the repository and opens the pull request for you to review. Cutting minutes as well as price? Start with how to reduce GitHub Actions costs.

Where is the data?

Every price on this page, per minute and per vCPU-hour, the monthly costs, the included minutes and the partner rate are in /data/cheapest-github-actions-runners.json.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a cheaper GitHub Actions runner than GitHub's own?

Yes. Sengi runs Linux jobs for $0.003 a minute at 2 vCPU, $0.006 at 4 vCPU and $0.012 at 8 vCPU, against GitHub's $0.006, $0.012 and $0.022 for the same sizes: half GitHub's price at 2 and 4 vCPU and 45% less at 8 vCPU. You change one runs-on line and keep your workflows in GitHub Actions.

How much does a GitHub Actions minute cost in 2026?

On GitHub, $0.006 a minute for the standard 2 vCPU Linux runner on a private repository once your plan's included minutes are spent, $0.012 at 4 vCPU and $0.022 at 8 vCPU. On Sengi, $0.003, $0.006 and $0.012. Prices checked October 27, 2026.

What does a GitHub Actions runner cost per vCPU-hour?

GitHub charges $0.18 per vCPU-hour at 2 and 4 vCPU and $0.165 at 8 vCPU. Sengi charges $0.09 per vCPU-hour at every size, and $0.054 at the partner rate. Per vCPU-hour is the price per minute times 60, divided by the number of vCPUs.

Are GitHub's larger runners cheaper per core?

Barely. GitHub's 8 vCPU runner works out at $0.165 per vCPU-hour against $0.18 at 2 vCPU, and larger runners are billed from the first minute, with no included minutes. Sengi's 8 vCPU runner is $0.09 per vCPU-hour, the same as its 2 vCPU runner.

Are self-hosted runners the cheapest option?

Only at high, steady volume. GitHub charges no minutes for them, but you pay for the machines, including the hours they sit idle, and for the time to patch, secure and scale them. In our worked model, self-hosting costs $474 a month at 12,000 minutes and undercuts Sengi only above about 289,000 minutes a month.

What is the Sengi partner rate?

$0.0018 a minute at 2 vCPU, $0.054 per vCPU-hour, 70% less than GitHub's $0.006, for teams running high volumes of CI, such as teams whose coding agents open hundreds of pull requests a month. Write to ops@sengi.run with your monthly minutes to ask for it.

Do included minutes change which runner is cheapest?

Only for small accounts. GitHub's plans include 2,000 to 50,000 standard-runner minutes a month on private repositories, and Sengi includes 3,000 minutes a month at 2 vCPU. Past those, every minute bills at the per-minute price, and GitHub's included minutes never cover its larger runners.

How do I switch to a cheaper runner?

Connect your repository to Sengi, change runs-on: ubuntu-latest to runs-on: sengi-standard-2-ubuntu-2404, or the 4 or 8 vCPU label, and merge. Or paste Sengi's one prompt into your coding agent and it opens the pull request for you.

How often is this page updated?

Every month. We recheck GitHub's and Sengi's prices, redate the page and update the JSON file with every number on it.