GitHub Actions runners compared: price per minute at 2, 4 and 8 vCPU

Which GitHub Actions runner costs the least per minute?

Sengi beats every runner on this page at every size. $0.003 a minute for 2 vCPU, against $0.006 on GitHub and Depot and $0.004 on Blacksmith and WarpBuild. Then $0.006 for 4 vCPU and $0.012 for 8 vCPU. Against GitHub that is up to half the price per minute, and every job runs on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D bare metal, so builds finish faster too: Docker builds 1.9× faster than GitHub's runner at 74% less per build, and the smallest total bill for the same builds in the table below. Cache included, no subscription.

Last checked October 9, 2026, against each provider's public pricing page. Linux x64, USD, list prices per minute.

Managed GitHub Actions runners, per minute

Matched sizes: 2 vCPU with 8 GB, 4 vCPU with 16 GB and 8 vCPU with 32 GB, Ubuntu x64. Every provider here runs the machines for you.

Sengi is the lowest at every size. Sources, each checked October 9, 2026: GitHub's Actions runner pricing reference; Blacksmith's pricing page; Depot's pricing page and runner-type docs; Namespace's pricing page; WarpBuild's pricing page and cloud-runner docs.

What do the same builds cost on each runner?

The same three builds on every runner at 4 vCPU: a Rust build, a TypeScript typecheck and a production Docker image. Cost is each build's run time at the provider's list price per minute.

The smallest bill in the table: $0.069 for all three builds on Sengi, against $0.073 on Blacksmith and $0.249 on GitHub.

How much faster than GitHub-hosted runners?

Sengi also reads from disk at 15× the random-read speed of GitHub's 4 vCPU runner (296k against 19.6k IOPS) and writes at 3× (37.9k against 11.7k). Source: RunsOn's open benchmark harness, run on Sengi October 9, 2026; every other provider's figures are RunsOn's published results from the same harness.

What else comes with each runner?

Why do teams switch to Sengi?

• Up to half GitHub's price per minute. Up to 74% less per build. $0.003 against $0.006 at 2 vCPU, $0.006 against $0.012 at 4 vCPU and $0.012 against $0.022 at 8 vCPU. Builds finish up to 1.9× faster too, so together each build costs up to 74% less.
• Up to 1.9× faster builds. Docker builds 1.9× faster than GitHub's runner at 74% less per build, and Rust, TypeScript and Docker together 1.8× faster at 72% less, on RunsOn's open benchmark harness at 4 vCPU, with 15× the random-read disk speed. Up to 2.75× the multi-core and 1.6× the single-core CPU of GitHub's 2 vCPU runner, on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D.
• Dedicated bare metal with local NVMe. Not network storage like AWS EBS.
• A smaller build bill. The same Rust, TypeScript and Docker builds cost $0.069 on Sengi, $0.073 on Blacksmith, $0.097 on WarpBuild and $0.098 on Namespace.
• Cache included. Your cache steps work unchanged, and Docker builds keep their layers between runs through type=gha, with no per-GB fee.
• No plan to buy. No subscription, no minimum and no AWS account to run. Pay for the minutes your jobs use.
• Every size on personal repositories. 4 and 8 vCPU runners work on a personal repository as well as an organization.
• A fresh VM for every job, with 2 vCPU runners pre-booted and ready in 2 seconds.

Head to head: Sengi vs Blacksmith, and the BuildJet alternative for teams whose BuildJet runners stopped on March 31, 2026.

How do I switch to Sengi?

Change runs-on and merge. Your workflows stay GitHub Actions workflows.

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: sengi-standard-2-ubuntu-2404   # or sengi-standard-4-ubuntu-2404, sengi-standard-8-ubuntu-2404

Or give your coding agent one prompt: it finds every job Sengi can run, changes the label and opens the pull request. See how switching works, Sengi runner pricing, or work out your own month with the GitHub Actions cost calculator.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest GitHub Actions runner?

Sengi beats every runner on this page at every size. It charges $0.003 a minute for 2 vCPU and 8 GB, $0.006 for 4 vCPU and 16 GB and $0.012 for 8 vCPU and 32 GB. That is half GitHub's $0.006 and $0.012 per minute at 2 and 4 vCPU, and 45% under its $0.022 at 8 vCPU. Builds also finish up to 1.9× faster, so together you save up to 74% a build. It is 25% under Blacksmith's and WarpBuild's $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016. No subscription, no minimum, and 3,000 free minutes a month with no card.

How much do GitHub-hosted runners cost per minute?

GitHub lists $0.006 a minute for the standard 2 vCPU Linux runner, $0.012 for the 4 vCPU larger runner and $0.022 for the 8 vCPU larger runner. Larger runners are available only to organizations on GitHub Team or Enterprise Cloud, and included minutes never apply to them. Sengi runs the same sizes for $0.003, $0.006 and $0.012.

How does Sengi compare with Blacksmith and WarpBuild?

Both list $0.004 a minute for 2 vCPU, $0.008 for 4 vCPU and $0.016 for 8 vCPU. Sengi is $0.003, $0.006 and $0.012: 25% less at every size. On RunsOn's open benchmark harness, the same Rust, TypeScript and Docker builds at 4 vCPU cost $0.069 in total on Sengi, $0.073 on Blacksmith and $0.097 on WarpBuild. Sengi also includes Docker layer caching, which Blacksmith sells at $0.50 per GB per month and WarpBuild meters at $0.20 per GB-month of cache storage.

How does Sengi compare with Depot and Namespace?

Depot lists $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 a minute for 2, 4 and 8 vCPU, on a plan from $20 a month. Namespace lists the same $0.006, $0.012 and $0.024 beyond a plan's prepaid minutes, and $0.004, $0.008 and $0.016 inside a plan from $100 a month. Sengi is $0.003, $0.006 and $0.012 with no plan at all.

What about running runners in my own AWS account?

Self-run tools such as RunsOn put the runners in your own AWS account, so you take on that account and its bill, spot interruptions at the cheapest rates, a yearly licence and the ops work of keeping it all running. Sengi is one line in runs-on with nothing to run: no AWS account, no licence, no control plane, and the cache included.

Are Sengi runners faster than GitHub's?

Yes. On RunsOn's open benchmark harness, run October 9, 2026 at 4 vCPU, Sengi builds a production Docker image 1.9× faster than GitHub's runner at 74% less per build, and runs Rust, TypeScript and Docker builds together 1.8× faster at 72% less. It has 15× the random-read disk speed and 3× the random writes. On an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, it gets up to 2.75× the multi-core and 1.6× the single-core CPU throughput of GitHub's 2 vCPU runner. A job that finishes sooner bills fewer minutes, so real builds cost up to 74% less.

What happened to BuildJet?

BuildJet shut down. It announced the shutdown on February 6, 2026 and stopped running jobs on March 31, 2026, so any workflow still on a buildjet label no longer runs. Sengi is a drop-in replacement for its x64 runners at 25% less than BuildJet charged.

How do I switch GitHub Actions to Sengi?

Change one line. Set runs-on to sengi-standard-2-ubuntu-2404, sengi-standard-4-ubuntu-2404 or sengi-standard-8-ubuntu-2404 and merge. Your workflows stay GitHub Actions workflows, and your coding agent can open the pull request for you from the Sengi prompt.