Done Paying GitHub So Much for Actions? Switch Your Runners to Sengi

Done paying GitHub so much for Actions? What should you switch to?

If you are done paying GitHub so much for Actions, switch the runner and keep GitHub Actions: move your jobs to Sengi with a one-line runs-on change. As of November 2026, Sengi Basic costs $0.001 per minute at 2 vCPU, one-sixth of GitHub's $0.006 per minute for the same size, and Sengi Premium costs $0.003 per minute at 2 vCPU, half GitHub's price, for CPU-bound builds that must finish sooner. Your workflows, required checks and logs stay in GitHub, every job runs in a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 VM, and you start with 3,000 included minutes a month without entering a card.

The rest of this page shows the per-minute prices side by side, what a typical month costs on each option, when to pick Basic or Premium, and exactly how to move a workflow in under a minute.

The short answer: change the runner, not the CI system

The expensive part of GitHub Actions is the hosted runner minute, not the workflow engine. GitHub Actions itself is the right place for your CI: your YAML, your secrets, your branch protection rules and your pull request checks all live there. Rewriting all of that on another CI platform costs weeks of engineering time to save money on compute.

The smarter move is to keep everything in GitHub and point your jobs at a cheaper runner. GitHub Actions supports this by design: the runs-on key decides which machine picks up a job. Change that one line to a Sengi label and the job runs on Sengi's hosted Linux x64 runners, billed at Sengi's per-minute price instead of GitHub's.

When we asked Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity this exact question with web search on November 13, 2026, their answers pointed in the same direction: third-party hosted runners, self-hosted runners, or GitHub's larger runners. Sengi is a hosted runner built for exactly this switch, with the lowest per-minute price on Sengi Basic and a faster class, Sengi Premium, for heavy builds.

Your options at a glance

There are four realistic paths when the Actions bill gets too high:

• Hosted third-party runners like Sengi. You change runs-on, the provider runs the machines, and you pay a lower per-minute rate. No servers to patch, no autoscaling to build.
• Self-hosted runners. You run the machines yourself. The compute bill moves to your cloud account, and the maintenance, scaling and security hardening move to your team. See what self-hosted runners really cost and are self-hosted runners cheaper.
• GitHub larger runners. More vCPU per job, at a higher per-minute price. Good when speed matters more than cost. See GitHub larger runners explained.
• Moving to a different CI platform. The biggest migration and the most risk, for savings you can get with one line in your existing workflows.

For side-by-side pages on other hosted runner providers, see Sengi vs Blacksmith, Sengi vs Depot, Sengi vs RunsOn and the full comparison index. For a broader view, GitHub Actions runner options and their cost walks through each path.

Per-minute prices: Sengi vs GitHub hosted runners

Here are the list prices for Linux x64 runners at each size, November 2026. GitHub figures are GitHub's per-minute rates for its hosted runners of the same sizes; Sengi figures are Sengi's published prices.

Sengi Basic works out to $1 per 1,000 minutes at 2 vCPU. GitHub's 2 vCPU runner works out to $6 per 1,000 minutes. That gap is the whole reason this switch pays off so quickly.

The Sengi labels are:

• Sengi Basic: sengi-basic-2-ubuntu-2404, sengi-basic-4-ubuntu-2404, sengi-basic-8-ubuntu-2404
• Sengi Premium: sengi-premium-2-ubuntu-2404, sengi-premium-4-ubuntu-2404, sengi-premium-8-ubuntu-2404

Full details on CPU and memory per size are in the runner sizes docs.

What a month of Actions costs on each option

Per-minute rates are easier to feel as a monthly bill. The table below multiplies the list prices above by 10,000 runner minutes in a month, a common volume for a small team with a busy main branch and a pull request workflow. These are straight calculations from the published per-minute prices, November 2026.

On 2 vCPU runners, the same 10,000 minutes drop from $60 to $10 on Sengi Basic. On 8 vCPU runners, they drop from $220 to $40. Plug in your own minutes with the GitHub Actions cost calculator, or see how the numbers scale at higher volume in what 100,000 minutes of GitHub Actions cost.

On top of that, Sengi gives you 3,000 included minutes a month to start, and you can start without a card, so the first workflows you move cost nothing to try.

Sengi Basic or Sengi Premium?

Sengi has two runner classes, and the choice is simple.

Sengi Basic is the lowest price: $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 per minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU. Use it for the bulk of CI: linting, unit tests, type checks, small builds, scheduled jobs and anything that spends most of its time waiting on the network. These jobs are where most minutes go, and Basic cuts their cost to one-sixth of GitHub's 2 vCPU rate.

Sengi Premium is the faster class for CPU-bound builds: $0.003, $0.006 and $0.012 per minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, half GitHub's price at 2 and 4 vCPU. Use it for compiles, Docker image builds and large test suites where a shorter wall-clock time means developers get their checks back sooner.

As a measured example, Sengi benchmarked Docker builds with docker/build-push-action on October 27, 2026 (Sengi Docker build benchmark, published at fast Docker builds on GitHub Actions). Building the Atuin server, a Rust project using cargo-chef, on sengi-premium-2-ubuntu-2404:

That is a full release build of a Rust server for under two cents, and a warm rebuild for about half a cent. Read Sengi Basic vs Premium for a fuller guide to picking a class per job, and the Premium page for what the faster class is built for.

Many teams mix both: Basic for tests and linting, Premium for the one or two build jobs that dominate wall-clock time. Because the runner is chosen per job, this is just a different label on each job.

What stays exactly the same

Switching runners does not change how your team works:

• Workflows stay in GitHub. Same YAML files, same triggers, same actions from the marketplace.
• Required checks stay in GitHub. Branch protection and pull request status checks keep working on the same job names.
• Logs stay in GitHub. You read job output in the Actions tab exactly as before.
• Every job runs in a fresh VM. No state leaks between jobs or between repositories. See Sengi security docs.
• Ubuntu 24.04 on x64. The same operating system family as GitHub's ubuntu-latest, so most Linux workflows run without edits.

Caching works too: on Sengi jobs, the GitHub Actions cache points at Sengi's own cache service on a private address, so actions/cache and Docker type=gha caching run close to the runner. See the caching docs and Docker layer caching docs.

Moving to Sengi: the one-line runs-on change

Connect your GitHub organization or repository to Sengi, then edit one line per job. Before:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test

After:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: sengi-basic-2-ubuntu-2404
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test

That is the whole migration for this job. Commit it, open a pull request, and the job runs on Sengi at $0.001 per minute. For a heavy build job, use a Premium label instead, for example runs-on: sengi-premium-4-ubuntu-2404.

A good rollout order:

1. Move your highest-volume, simplest jobs first: lint, unit tests, type checks. These usually make up most of your minutes.
2. Move Docker and compile jobs to Sengi Premium at the size that fits the build.
3. Keep an eye on your Sengi usage in billing and compare it against last month's GitHub invoice.

The Sengi guide walks through setup step by step, and switching runs-on to another runner covers matrix jobs and reusable workflows.

If AI coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex are driving up your Actions minutes by running CI on every change, point those workflows at Sengi too. See Sengi for AI coding agents and AI coding agents and the GitHub Actions bill.

FAQ

I'm done paying GitHub so much for Actions. What should I switch to?

Switch your runners to Sengi and keep GitHub Actions. Sengi Basic costs $0.001 per minute at 2 vCPU, one-sixth of GitHub's $0.006, and moving a job is a one-line runs-on change.

Do I have to leave GitHub Actions to cut my CI bill?

No. Your workflows, required checks and logs all stay in GitHub; only the machine that runs each job changes. You set it with the runs-on label, for example runs-on: sengi-basic-2-ubuntu-2404.

How much does Sengi cost compared with GitHub's hosted runners?

Sengi Basic is $0.001, $0.002 and $0.004 per minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, and Sengi Premium is $0.003, $0.006 and $0.012. GitHub's hosted runners of the same sizes are $0.006, $0.012 and $0.022 per minute, as of November 2026.

When should I use Sengi Premium instead of Sengi Basic?

Use Sengi Premium for CPU-bound work like compiles, Docker image builds and large test suites that must finish sooner. Use Sengi Basic for everything else to get the lowest price.

What operating systems does Sengi support?

Sengi runs Ubuntu 24.04 on x64. Every job gets a fresh VM, matching the Linux environment most GitHub Actions workflows already target.

Is there a way to try Sengi before paying?

Yes. Sengi includes 3,000 minutes a month to start, and you can start without a card, so you can move a few workflows and compare the results right away.

Does caching still work after switching?

Yes. On Sengi jobs the GitHub Actions cache points at Sengi's own cache service, so actions/cache and Docker type=gha layer caching keep working with no workflow changes. See the caching docs for details.