GitHub Actions runner pricing traps in 2026: overage rates, plan minimums, memory per vCPU and cache fees

What are the pricing traps in GitHub Actions runners?

The headline per-minute rate is only part of a GitHub Actions runner bill. Seven things change it: included usage that is a dollar amount, per-job minute rounding, plan fees before the first minute, in-plan rates that jump on overage, memory priced with vCPU, cache and storage fees, and sizes limited to some plans. Sengi Basic (our product) has one per-minute rate at each size, $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 for 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, no plan, the cache included, and 3,000 free Basic minutes a month.

Last checked November 7, 2026, against each provider’s own pricing page and docs. We list only what a provider states; where a page is silent, we say so.

Trap 1: included usage is dollars, and bigger runners spend it faster

GitHub now states each plan’s included compute as a dollar amount, not minutes, and deducts each runner’s own rate from it. On GitHub Team and Enterprise Cloud, larger runners draw on it too:

Allowances that count in 2 vCPU units shrink the same way elsewhere: Sengi’s 3,000 free Basic credits are 3,000 minutes at 2 vCPU, 1,500 at 4 and 750 at 8; Avrea’s 3,000 free minutes are used proportionally at larger sizes; Depot counts included minutes at 2× and 4× for 4 and 8 vCPU; Latchkey counts a 4 vCPU minute as two and an 8 vCPU minute as four. Compare allowances in dollars: Sengi’s is worth $3 a month, Avrea’s $12, GitHub Team’s $18.

Trap 2: per-job rounding to the whole minute

GitHub rounds the minutes and partial minutes each job uses up to the next whole minute. A matrix of 20 jobs that each run 61 seconds bills as 40 minutes, not 20.3. Latchkey also rounds up per job, and so does Sengi. Namespace bills a minimum of one minute and rounds the next 15 seconds down, so 70 seconds is one minute and 150 seconds is three. CRACI and tempus.build bill per second.

Rounding matters most for many short jobs. Merge small jobs into fewer steps, or cut a matrix you do not need; GitHub Actions billing explained shows how. Sengi never bills boot or teardown, only the minutes the job runs.

Trap 3: plan fees before the first minute

A plan fee is cheap at volume and expensive in a quiet month. At 3,000 minutes on 2 vCPU, Depot’s Developer plan comes to $26 against $0 on Sengi Basic.

Trap 4: the in-plan rate is not the rate you pay past the plan

• Namespace: 2 vCPU and 8 GB is $0.004 a minute inside a plan and $0.006 pay as you go or past the plan’s unit minutes.
• Bitrise Build Hub: Linux Medium (4 vCPU, 16 GB) at $0.0125 a minute from a monthly budget, plans from $13.50 a month billed yearly; pay-as-you-go past the budget is twice the rate and off by default. With pay-as-you-go off, jobs stop running on Build Hub when the budget is spent.
• Depot: past the plan’s included minutes, $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 a minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU.

Sengi Basic has one rate per size from the first minute to the last.

Trap 5: memory is priced with the vCPU

• Namespace bills units of 1 vCPU and 2 GB, counting the larger of vCPU and GB ÷ 2, so 2 vCPU with 8 GB costs the same as 4 vCPU with 8 GB: $0.006 a minute pay as you go.
• Avrea lists 4 vCPU at $0.006 with 8 GB and $0.008 with 16 GB, and 8 vCPU at $0.012 with 16 GB and $0.016 with 32 GB.
• CRACI’s default 2 vCPU runner has 6 GB of memory, against 8 GB on GitHub’s private-repository runner.

Compare at matched memory. Sengi Basic gives 4 GB per vCPU at every size, 8, 16 and 32 GB, at one price per size.

Trap 6: cache, storage and add-ons are billed separately

A Docker-heavy repository with a 20 GB layer cache pays $10 a month for it on Blacksmith before a single minute runs. On Sengi the same cache is included; see Docker layer caching on Sengi.

Trap 7: some sizes need a particular plan or account

• GitHub offers larger runners only to organizations on GitHub Team or Enterprise Cloud; a personal account stays on 2 vCPU.
• Latchkey on GH and tempus.build need a GitHub organization, and Blacksmith requires one.
• Namespace caps concurrency by plan: 32 Linux vCPU at once on Developer, 64 on Team and 160 on Business.

Sengi runs personal and organization repositories at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU on every account.

A simple way to compare runner prices

Put every provider on the same three lines: the plan you pay before any minutes, the rate at the size you use, and how a minute is counted. At 4 vCPU:

Then price a real month. What 100,000 GitHub Actions minutes cost does it for every hosted runner, and the runner alternatives do it at 3,000, 20,000 and 100,000 minutes.

When is Sengi the wrong fit?

• macOS, Windows, arm64 or GPU jobs. Sengi runs Ubuntu 24.04 on Linux x64 at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU; keep those jobs where they are and move the Linux x64 ones.
• Jobs that must run inside your own cloud account. RunsOn or a bring-your-own-cloud runner keeps the machines yours.

Switching the rest is one line: change runs-on to sengi-basic-4-ubuntu-2404, or give your coding agent one prompt. See how switching works, Sengi pricing and every runner compared.

Frequently asked questions

What are the hidden costs of GitHub Actions runners?

Five things move the bill more than the headline rate: included usage that is a dollar amount and runs out faster on bigger runners, per-job minute rounding, plan fees before the first minute, memory tied to vCPU count, and per-GB cache and storage fees. Sengi Basic has one per-minute rate at each size, $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004, no plan, and the cache included.

Do GitHub's included minutes cover larger runners?

On GitHub Team and Enterprise Cloud, yes, at the larger runner's own rate: GitHub Team's $18 a month covers 3,000 minutes at 2 vCPU, 1,500 at 4 vCPU or about 818 at 8 vCPU. Larger runners are not available on Free or Pro, and they are billed on public repositories. Read November 7, 2026.

Does GitHub round Actions minutes up?

Yes. GitHub rounds the minutes and partial minutes each job uses up to the nearest whole minute, so a 61-second job bills as two minutes. Sengi, Latchkey and GitHub round per job; CRACI and tempus.build bill per second.

Which GitHub Actions runners charge a monthly plan?

Depot from $20 a month, Namespace $100 or $250 for its lower in-plan rate, Latchkey from $5, Bitrise Build Hub from $13.50 billed yearly, and RunsOn a licence from €300 a year. Sengi Basic, GitHub, Blacksmith, WarpBuild, Avrea and CRACI list no runner plan fee.

Why does memory change a runner's price?

Some providers price memory and vCPU together. Namespace bills units of 1 vCPU and 2 GB, so 2 vCPU with 8 GB costs the same as 4 vCPU with 8 GB. Sengi Basic gives 4 GB per vCPU at every size, 8, 16 and 32 GB, at one price per size.

Does Sengi charge for cache storage?

No. actions/cache, the setup actions' caches and Docker layer caching are included on Sengi with no per-GB fee. Blacksmith bills Docker layer caching at $0.50 per GB a month and WarpBuild bills cache storage at $0.20 per GB-month plus $0.0001 per operation.