CI runners pricing compared
A cheaper build minute doesn’t always mean a cheaper build. Test job times, caching and runner sizes.
11 services · sources last checked 2026-10-06 to 2026-10-08 · how we compare
What the most-compared services cost
Estimated yearly bill at 50,000 Linux build minutes / month. Enter your own usage below.
- GitLab CI (GitLab.com hosted runners)$5,952/yrFree · $0.01/min · Published rates
- CircleCI$3,384/yrPerformance · $0.006/min · Published rates
- GitHub Actions (hosted runners)$2,520/yrEnterprise Cloud (10 seats) · $0.006/min · Modeled rates
- Blacksmith$2,256/yr$0.004/min · Published rates
- Ubicloud (GitHub Actions runners)$720/yr$0.00125/min · Published rates
Enter your usage to estimate each bill. Services differ in what they include; check the rates, assumptions and extra charges below.
The estimates below use the default usage. Choose your current provider to compare costs.
| Provider | Parent jurisdiction | Features / pricing source | Est. monthly | Est. yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubicloud (GitHub Actions runners)Open-source cloud running managed GitHub Actions runners on bare metal in Germany, at a fraction of GitHub's per-minute price. | 🇺🇸 United States | EU residencyGDPR DPAopen sourcePublished rates | $60$0.00125/min | $720 |
| NamespaceManaged GitHub Actions, GitLab and Buildkite runners on own hardware; billed per unit-minute, with monthly plans including bulk minutes. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAEstimated ratesDeveloper uses the overage rate because a separate pay-as-you-go rate is not published. Memory-heavy runners cost more. | $100Team · $0.003/min | $1,200 |
| BlacksmithDrop-in GitHub Actions runners on bare-metal gaming CPUs; per-minute billing with 3,000 free minutes a month. | 🇺🇸 United States | EU residencyGDPR DPAPublished rates | $188$0.004/min | $2,256 |
| WarpBuildHosted GitHub Actions runners billed per minute, plus a bring-your-own-cloud option that runs runners in your AWS/GCP/Azure account. | 🇺🇸 United States | Published rates | $200$0.004/min | $2,400 |
| GitHub Actions (hosted runners)GitHub's built-in CI/CD with GitHub-hosted runners; minutes included per plan, then billed per minute by runner size. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAModeled ratesAssumes ten platform seats. Existing seats are not an incremental runner cost; included minutes depend on the plan. | $210Enterprise Cloud (10 seats) · $0.006/min | $2,520 |
| CircleCIHosted CI/CD billed in credits; a free monthly credit allowance, then credit packs consumed per minute by resource class. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $282Performance · $0.006/min | $3,384 |
| Depot (GitHub Actions runners)Faster GitHub Actions runners and Docker builds on AWS; monthly plans with included minutes, then per-minute billing. | 🇺🇸 United States | EU residencyPublished rates | $308Developer · $0.006/min | $3,696 |
| GitLab CI (GitLab.com hosted runners)GitLab.com's built-in CI with hosted runners; compute minutes included per tier, extra minutes sold in packs. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAPublished rates | $496Free · $0.01/min | $5,952 |
| Bitbucket PipelinesAtlassian Bitbucket's built-in CI; build minutes included per plan, extra minutes bought in 1,000-minute blocks. | 🇺🇸 United States | GDPR DPAModeled ratesAssumes ten platform seats and averages minute-block charges. Platform seats may already be paid for outside the runner budget. | $512Standard (10 seats) · $0.01/min | $6,138 |
| Buildkite (hosted agents)Australian CI/CD platform, mostly self-hosted agents, with Buildkite-hosted Linux and macOS agents billed per vCPU-minute. | 🇦🇺 Australia | GDPR DPAModeled ratesAssumes ten active users and a 2 vCPU Linux agent. Existing platform-seat costs may not be incremental runner costs. | $684Pro (10 users) · $0.008/min | $8,208 |
Linux x64, 2 vCPU equivalent. Faster runners finish jobs sooner, so cost per build can beat cost per minute.
Need EU residency? Turn on the EU filter to pick a plan that includes it, which may cost more. “EU plan available” alone does not mean the price shown includes residency. Shared links save your inputs and filters, but prices can change.
Self-hosted options
Operating cost not estimated · servers, licenses and engineering time are yours. We list these separately because there’s no calculated bill to compare with managed services.
- RunsOn — Self-hosted GitHub Actions runners deployed in your own AWS account; flat yearly licence plus AWS compute at cost (spot).
No self-hosted options match these filters.
Head-to-head comparisons
CI runners pricing explained
What drives the bill
You pay per build minute, and rates for a 2-vCPU runner vary widely. Hosted runners cost more than the underlying VM because the vendor also manages images, scheduling and cleanup. Some third-party runners work with existing GitHub Actions workflows. Changing the runs-on: label is the main code change, but check images, caching, networking and security too.
Costs the calculator leaves out
- macOS and Windows minutes, which cost several times more than Linux on most platforms.
- Larger runners (8, 16, 32+ vCPUs), whose per-minute price scales with size.
- Cache, artifact and container registry storage.
- Seat fees on platforms that charge per user as well as per minute.
- Concurrency limits, which can mean paying for a higher tier just to run jobs in parallel.
When paying more makes sense
Faster hardware can make a pricier runner cheaper per build because jobs finish sooner. Measure cost per build, not just per minute. Stay with first-party runners if your security policy requires them or free minutes cover your usage. At higher volumes, run the same commits on both providers for a week to compare costs and failure rates.