Namespace alternatives (2026): 10 GitHub Actions runners priced at 3,000, 20,000 and 100,000 minutes

What are the best Namespace alternatives in 2026?

The cheapest hosted x64 Namespace alternative is Sengi Basic (our product): $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, with 3,000 free Basic minutes a month. Namespace lists $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 at the same sizes. 100,000 minutes at 8 vCPU cost $397 on Sengi Basic and $2,275 on Namespace. Below are 10 options priced at 3,000, 20,000 and 100,000 minutes, each with what it is best for and what to watch out for. Switching to Sengi is one runs-on line.

Last checked November 7, 2026, against each provider’s own public pricing page. Linux x64, US dollars, list prices. The same rows are in every runner compared and one JSON file.

Quick answer: which Namespace alternative fits which job?

• Lowest bill on hosted Linux x64: Sengi Basic (our product), $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU.
• CPU-bound builds that need to finish sooner: Sengi Premium (our product), from $0.003 a minute; it built a production Docker image in 7m34s against 14m36s on GitHub’s 4 vCPU runner.
• Runners inside your own AWS account: RunsOn, at AWS’s spot price plus a licence from €300 a year.
• macOS and Windows beside Linux: GitHub-hosted, Blacksmith or WarpBuild.
• arm64 at the lowest list price: FlameWill, $0.0009 a minute for 2 vCPU and 8 GB, in the EU.
• Tooling for coding agents: Latchkey or StarSling.

Why do teams look for Namespace alternatives?

• Namespace is $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 a minute pay as you go for 2, 4 and 8 vCPU with 4 GB per vCPU: six times Sengi Basic.
• The lower in-plan rate, $0.004 at 2 vCPU and 8 GB, needs a $100 or $250 monthly plan.
• Namespace bills units of 1 vCPU and 2 GB, so the 8, 16 and 32 GB shapes cost twice its 2 GB-per-vCPU shapes.

Namespace alternatives: price per minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU

Linux x64 list prices in USD per minute, each read from the provider’s own pricing page on November 7, 2026.

Sengi Basic is the lowest hosted x64 price in this table at every size. RunsOn’s row is what AWS bills at spot prices in your own account, before its licence. Namespace’s rows are its pay-as-you-go rates for 4 GB per vCPU.

What does a month cost on each Namespace alternative?

Three workloads: 3,000 minutes at 2 vCPU, 20,000 minutes at 4 vCPU and 100,000 minutes at 8 vCPU. Each cell is minutes × list price, less the provider’s free or included usage, plus its plan fee, on its cheapest published plan:

Sengi Basic’s 3,000 free credits are worth $3 at every size. GitHub’s row uses GitHub Team’s $18 of included usage, not its per-seat price. Depot’s cheapest plan is Developer, for one user; Namespace’s is pay as you go, Team or Business, whichever costs least; Latchkey’s is Developer, for one repository. Blacksmith’s 3,000 free minutes are applied at 2 vCPU only, because its pricing page does not say how they count at larger sizes. Price your own month in the GitHub Actions cost calculator, or see what 100,000 minutes cost on every hosted runner.

The 10 Namespace alternatives

Sengi first, because it is ours; the rest in the order teams most often compare them. BuildJet is not on the list: it stopped running jobs on March 31, 2026 (see the BuildJet alternative).

1. Sengi Basic and Sengi Premium (our product)

Best for: The lowest per-minute price on hosted Linux x64: Sengi Basic is $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU with 8, 16 and 32 GB, with 3,000 free Basic minutes a month, on personal and organization repositories, with actions/cache and Docker layer caching included. Sengi Premium, from $0.003 a minute, when CPU-bound builds need to finish faster: it built a production Docker image in 7m34s against 14m36s on GitHub’s 4 vCPU runner.

Watch out for: Ubuntu 24.04 on Linux x64 only, at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU: no macOS, Windows, arm64 or GPU runners, and jobs run on Sengi’s machines rather than in your own cloud account.

2. GitHub-hosted

Best for: Nothing to install: Linux, Windows and macOS, arm64, a GPU runner and sizes up to 96 vCPU, with standard runners free on public repositories and $12 to $300 a month of included usage on private ones.

Watch out for: $0.006 a minute at 2 vCPU and $0.022 at 8, six times Sengi Basic at 2 vCPU. Larger runners are only for organizations on GitHub Team or Enterprise Cloud, and every job is rounded up to a whole minute.

Head to head: GitHub larger runners vs third-party runners.

3. Blacksmith

Best for: One provider for Linux x64, arm64 ($0.0025 a minute), Windows ($0.008) and macOS ($0.08), with 3,000 free minutes a month and add-ons for sticky disks and static IPs.

Watch out for: Linux x64 is $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, four times Sengi Basic. Docker layer caching and sticky disks are billed at $0.50 per GB a month, static IPs at $100 each a month, and it needs a GitHub organization.

Head to head: Sengi vs Blacksmith.

4. WarpBuild

Best for: A wide catalog: Linux x64 and arm64, Windows and macOS, sizes up to 32 vCPU, remote Docker builders, and a bring-your-own-cloud option at $0.002 a minute in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account.

Watch out for: Hosted Linux x64 is $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016 a minute, four times Sengi Basic. Cache storage is $0.20 per GB-month plus $0.0001 per cache write or restore, and SAML SSO ($250 a month) and audit logs ($400) are add-ons.

Head to head: Sengi vs WarpBuild.

5. Depot

Best for: Teams that also want Depot’s remote container builds, registry and sandboxes on the same plan, with Intel and Arm runners up to 64 vCPU.

Watch out for: A plan before the first minute: Developer is $20 a month with 2,000 included runner minutes and one user, Startup $200 with 20,000. Beyond that, $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, and larger sizes use the included minutes at 2× and 4×.

Head to head: Sengi vs Depot.

6. RunsOn

Best for: AWS teams that want runners in their own account at AWS’s spot price, about $0.0009 a minute at 2 vCPU, on the EC2 instance types you choose, with nothing leaving their account.

Watch out for: A licence on top of the AWS bill: €300 a year under 50,000 jobs a month, up to €1,800 under 500,000, plus EC2, EBS and a control plane RunsOn puts at about $7 a month. You run the AWS account and its CloudFormation stack.

Head to head: Sengi vs RunsOn.

7. compiler.dev

Best for: Per-minute Linux x64 at $0.002, $0.004 and $0.008 at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, up to 16 vCPU, paid from prepaid credit.

Watch out for: Twice Sengi Basic’s rate at every size, paid in advance from prepaid credit, and its 200 free minutes are a 14-day trial rather than a monthly allowance.

8. Latchkey

Best for: Agent-driven CI: a CLI and MCP server for coding agents, and self-heal that fixes transient failures mid-run, at $0.0025, $0.005 and $0.010 a minute.

Watch out for: A plan fee of $5 to $49 a month (the $5 Developer plan covers one repository and one seat), minutes rounded up per job, Latchkey on GH needs a GitHub organization, and there are no Windows, macOS, arm64 or GPU runners today.

9. Avrea

Best for: Linux, macOS and Windows from one provider, with 3,000 free minutes a month per organization, 25 GB of cache storage included and SSH into running jobs.

Watch out for: $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU with matched memory, four times Sengi Basic, and static IPs are $100 a month each.

10. StarSling

Best for: Optimization agents that open pull requests to shard suites and fix caches, GPU runners, sizes up to 64 vCPU and unlimited concurrency.

Watch out for: $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, four times Sengi Basic, and its pricing page states no monthly free allowance.

How do I switch from Namespace to Sengi?

Change each job’s runs-on to the Sengi label of the same size and merge. Your workflows, required checks, secrets and logs stay in GitHub.

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: sengi-basic-2-ubuntu-2404   # was: nscloud-ubuntu-22.04-amd64-2x8

actions/cache, the setup actions’ caches and Docker layer caching with type=gha work unchanged and are included. Or give your coding agent one prompt and it opens the pull request. See how switching works and Sengi pricing.

When should you stay with Namespace?

• You run macOS, Windows or Linux on Apple Silicon beside Linux.
• You use its Devboxes or Docker builds on the same plan.
• Your monthly volume uses most of a plan’s unit minutes, so the in-plan rate applies.

When is Sengi the wrong fit?

• macOS, Windows, arm64 or GPU jobs. Sengi runs Ubuntu 24.04 on Linux x64 only. Keep those jobs on Namespace or another provider; the runner is chosen job by job, so the Linux x64 jobs can still move.
• More than 8 vCPU. Sengi’s sizes are 2, 4 and 8 vCPU with 8, 16 and 32 GB.
• Jobs that must run inside your own cloud account or network. Sengi is hosted; RunsOn or a bring-your-own-cloud runner keeps the machines in your account.

More runner alternatives and comparisons

• GitHub-hosted runner alternatives
• Blacksmith alternatives
• WarpBuild alternatives
• Depot alternatives
• RunsOn alternatives
• Actuated alternatives
• Every GitHub Actions runner alternative, priced
• Sengi vs Namespace, head to head
• GitHub Actions runner pricing traps: overage rates, plan minimums, memory per vCPU and cache fees

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest Namespace alternative?

Sengi Basic, at $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 a minute for 2, 4 and 8 vCPU. Namespace lists $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 at the same sizes. 100,000 minutes at 8 vCPU cost $397 on Sengi Basic and $2,275 on Namespace. Prices read November 7, 2026.

How much does Namespace cost?

Namespace lists $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU on Linux x64. Pay as you go. $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016 inside the $100-a-month Team plan. Read from its own pricing page on November 7, 2026.

Is Sengi cheaper than Namespace?

Yes, at every size: Sengi Basic is $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, against $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 on Namespace. A month of 20,000 minutes at 4 vCPU costs $37 on Sengi Basic and $190 on Namespace.

How do I switch from Namespace to Sengi?

Connect the repository, change each job’s runs-on to sengi-basic-2-ubuntu-2404, sengi-basic-4-ubuntu-2404 or sengi-basic-8-ubuntu-2404 at the same size, and merge. Use the sengi-premium labels for faster builds. Your workflows stay GitHub Actions workflows, and a coding agent can open the pull request from the Sengi prompt.

When should I stay on Namespace?

Stay on Namespace if you run macOS, Windows or Linux on Apple Silicon beside Linux; or if you use its Devboxes or Docker builds on the same plan; or if your monthly volume uses most of a plan’s unit minutes, so the in-plan rate applies.

Does Sengi run macOS, Windows or arm64 jobs?

No. Sengi runs Ubuntu 24.04 on Linux x64 at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU. Keep macOS, Windows, arm64 and GPU jobs where they are and move the Linux x64 jobs; the runner is chosen job by job.