Blacksmith alternatives by billing model, with prices (2026)
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Blacksmith bills GitHub Actions runners per minute: $0.004 at 2 vCPU and $0.016 at 8 vCPU, with 3,000 free minutes a month. Its alternatives bill 5 ways: per minute, a plan with minutes, a licence on your cloud, flat per server, and flat managed. Skipbox is flat managed: $79 a month at 8 vCPU, unlimited minutes.
Fluxenic, the company behind Convika, makes Skipbox, so one of these alternatives is our own product. Every price and quote below comes from the service's own page, read November 11, 2026 (Japan time) and linked under Sources. The alternatives aren't ranked.
- Per minute, like Blacksmith: GitHub's larger runners, WarpBuild, and Ubicloud. The bill is minutes × a rate.
- A plan with included minutes: Depot and Namespace. A monthly fee covers a set of minutes, and more minutes cost more.
- A licence on your cloud: RunsOn. A flat annual licence, and AWS bills you for the machines.
- Flat per server: Actuated. A flat monthly rate for each server you supply.
- Flat managed: Skipbox and OpenRelay. A flat monthly price, unlimited minutes, and the vendor runs the machines.
Blacksmith's pricing, as published
Blacksmith's pricing page, read November 11, 2026, lists one rate per size:
| Blacksmith runner | Per minute |
|---|---|
| Ubuntu x64, 2 vCPU | $0.004 |
| Ubuntu x64, 4 vCPU | $0.008 |
| Ubuntu x64, 8 vCPU | $0.016 |
| Ubuntu x64, 16 vCPU | $0.032 |
| Ubuntu x64, 32 vCPU | $0.064 |
| Ubuntu ARM, 2 vCPU | $0.0025 |
| Windows x64, 2 vCPU | $0.008 |
| macOS M4, 6 vCPU | $0.08 |
Each card adds "3,000 free min/mo." and the add-ons "Docker layer caching (+$0.50/GB/mo.)," "Sticky disks (+$0.50/GB/mo.)," and "Static IPs (+$100/IP/mo.)."
The free minutes are counted at the smallest size. Blacksmith's docs: "Blacksmith provides 3000 x64 2vCPU minutes for free per month per organization. These minutes can be used on runners with higher vCPU counts, but the minutes will be consumed at a higher rate proportional to the vCPU count." Their example: "a job taking 10 minutes on an 8vCPU runner would consume the equivalent of 40 2vCPU minutes." So each month's free tier is worth 3,000 × $0.004 = $12 of usage: 3,000 minutes at 2 vCPU, or 750 minutes at 8 vCPU.
Blacksmith doesn't cap jobs at once. Its docs answer "What are the concurrency limits?" with: "None. Blacksmith doesn't limit how many jobs or vCPUs you run at once."
After the free minutes: the Forestwalk invoice
A per-minute bill has no ceiling of its own. Forestwalk, a startup that builds with coding agents, wrote up what that looked like on June 8, 2026, in a post titled "Surprise! Pay $1000."
The team tried Blacksmith without a card, kept coding past the free minutes, and received an invoice: "The total amount due is $1,081.45." Blacksmith's support explained the policy in a reply the post quotes: "We don't cut workflows when the free tier is exceeded; they continue running and accrue usage at the published rates."
The author, Allen Pike, is fair to Blacksmith. He writes "our agents run a lot of CI jobs, so we did expect to hit the limits of the free plan," and that the team will probably keep using it: "Blacksmith helps us build faster." His postscript says Blacksmith "offered to credit us for the surprise overage" and shared changes to its pricing and overage copy.
The post is a case of the billing model, not of one vendor: on any per-minute runner, a busier month is a bigger invoice.
Blacksmith alternatives, by billing model
Read November 11, 2026. Prices are for Linux x64.
| Billing model | Service | Price, as published | Trial or free tier | Who runs the machines | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per minute | Blacksmith | $0.004 a minute at 2 vCPU, $0.016 at 8 vCPU | "3,000 free min/mo." counted at 2 vCPU | Blacksmith | Blacksmith |
| Per minute | GitHub larger runners | $0.012 a minute at 4 cores, $0.022 at 8 cores | GitHub Team includes $18 of compute a month | GitHub | GitHub Docs |
| Per minute | WarpBuild | $0.004 a minute at 2 vCPU, $0.016 at 8 vCPU | Sign up without a card; a payment method is needed "when you hit the free usage or credit limits" | WarpBuild, or your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account | WarpBuild |
| Per minute | Ubicloud | "$0.00500/min" at 8 vCPU on standard runners, "$0.008/min" on premium | "Every account gets a $2.5/month credit" | Ubicloud, in "data centers in Germany" | Ubicloud |
| A plan with included minutes | Depot | Developer "$20 per month" with "2,000 GitHub Actions minutes"; Startup "$200 per month" with 20,000. More minutes: "$0.006 / minute Base 2-vCPU Linux runner" | A 7-day trial | Depot | Depot |
| A plan with included minutes | Namespace | Team "$100 per month" with "100,000 unit minutes." A unit minute is "1 vCPU and 2GB of RAM for a minute," so an 8 vCPU job uses 8 or more a minute | A pay-as-you-go Developer plan: "No monthly commitment." | Namespace | Namespace |
| A licence on your cloud | RunsOn | "Starter < 50k jobs/mo €300 / yr," Growth €900, Scale €1,800. The machines: "AWS bills you for the instances at spot prices, with no markup" | "15 days free on Starter, Growth and Scale" | You, in your AWS account | RunsOn |
| Flat per server | Actuated | "Flat rate per server: $150 for the first, $125 for each additional," plus what the servers cost you. "Unlimited build minutes" | Not stated on its pricing page | You supply the servers | Actuated |
| Flat managed | OpenRelay | "$25 /mo" for a pool of "16 concurrent 2 GB runners," up to $200 for 128. "Unlimited build minutes, no per-minute billing." | "2-day free trial," and "A card is required to start" | OpenRelay | OpenRelay |
| Flat managed | Skipbox (made by Fluxenic, the company that publishes this site) | $39 a month for 4 vCPU, $79 for 8 vCPU, $149 for 16 vCPU. "Unlimited minutes," "No usage charges." | 7 days or 3,000 job-minutes, whichever comes first, no card | Skipbox | skipbox.dev |
Cirrus Runners also sold a flat monthly price per runner, but Cirrus Labs says: "We are no longer accepting new customers for Cirrus Runners."
To GitHub, every service in the table except its own is a self-hosted runner. GitHub's billing page lists "Self-hosted runners" under usage that "remains free independently and does not reduce the included compute usage," so you pay the runner's vendor and nothing to GitHub for those minutes.
A flat-rate alternative to Blacksmith: Skipbox and OpenRelay
Two services in the table run the machines for you, charge a flat monthly price with unlimited minutes, and take new customers: Skipbox and OpenRelay.
- Skipbox sells VM sizes. Skipbox S is $39 a month for 4 vCPU and 8 GB, M is $79 for 8 vCPU and 16 GB, and L is $149 for 16 vCPU and 32 GB. A plan runs jobs up to its vCPU at once, and the rest wait.
- OpenRelay sells a pool of memory that its runners share: "16 concurrent 2 GB runners" for "$25 /mo," 32 for $50, 64 for $100, and 128 for $200. A job asks for
openrelay-4cpu, "or 2cpu / 8cpu."
A flat price is the same at any volume, and a per-minute price grows with every job. Skipbox against Blacksmith's runner of the same vCPU, with Blacksmith's free minutes counted as the $12 they are worth:
| Skipbox plan | Blacksmith's rate at that size | The arithmetic | Skipbox is cheaper above |
|---|---|---|---|
| S, $39 a month, 4 vCPU | $0.008 a minute | ($39 + $12) ÷ $0.008 | 6,375 job-minutes a month |
| M, $79 a month, 8 vCPU | $0.016 a minute | ($79 + $12) ÷ $0.016 | 5,688 job-minutes a month |
| L, $149 a month, 16 vCPU | $0.032 a minute | ($149 + $12) ÷ $0.032 | 5,032 job-minutes a month |
One 8 vCPU runner that is busy all month runs 30 × 24 × 60 = 43,200 job-minutes:
| Runner, 8 vCPU | The arithmetic | A month |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub 8-core | 43,200 × $0.022 | $950.40 |
| Blacksmith | 43,200 × $0.016 − $12 free | $679.20 |
| Skipbox M | flat | $79 |
Skipbox M is cheaper than both: $679.20 ÷ $79 is 8.6 times its price, and $950.40 ÷ $79 is 12 times. Against GitHub's runner of the same size on GitHub Team, Skipbox S is cheaper above 4,750 job-minutes a month, M above 4,410, and L above 3,977.
What Blacksmith has that Skipbox doesn't
From Blacksmith's own pages, read November 11, 2026:
- Arm, Windows, and macOS. Blacksmith lists all three. Skipbox runs Linux x64 only.
- More memory per vCPU. Blacksmith's 8 vCPU runner has 32 GB. Skipbox M has 16 GB.
- 32 vCPU. Skipbox's largest job is 16 vCPU and 32 GB.
- No limit on jobs at once. A Skipbox plan runs jobs up to its vCPU, and the next job waits or you add a plan. Waiting adds nothing to the bill.
- Add-ons. Static IPs, sticky disks, and a Docker layer cache billed by the GB. Skipbox keeps your VM between jobs, so Docker layers and package caches stay on its disk, and it sells no static IPs.
- An OSS program. Blacksmith has one for public repositories. Skipbox runs public repositories on the same plans as private ones. Code from people without write access (such as pull requests from forks) runs on a fresh VM that reads your caches but can't change them; your own machine runs only your team's code.
No benchmark of Skipbox has been published, so this post claims no speed for it. Blacksmith's page says its runners are "2x faster than GitHub's runners"; that is Blacksmith's own figure.
Try a flat price on one job
- Sign in at skipbox.dev with GitHub. Install the Skipbox CI app on your organization, or Skipbox (personal) on your personal account.
- Change one job's
runs-on:line toskipboxand push. On plans with the larger VMs,skipbox-8x16andskipbox-16x32ask for them. - Watch it through the Skipbox trial: one 4 vCPU job at a time, for 7 days or 3,000 job-minutes from your first job, whichever comes first. It takes no card, and when it ends nothing is billed.
To go back, change the line back.
Start a free Skipbox trial on skipbox.dev
Every flat-price runner, closed ones included, is in flat-rate GitHub Actions runners. What agents do to a per-minute bill is in AI coding agents and your CI bill, and the agent's own job is in what Claude Code's GitHub Action costs.
Related reading
- GitHub Actions runner prices compared: GitHub, faster runners, and self-hosting
- GitHub Actions pricing in November 2026: per-minute rates, what each plan includes, and a month's math
- How to speed up GitHub Actions: 6 fixes, in order
- What a self-hosted runner really costs to build and run
Frequently asked questions
Is there a flat-rate alternative to Blacksmith?
Yes: Skipbox and OpenRelay. Blacksmith bills per minute, $0.016 at 8 vCPU. Skipbox M runs 8 vCPU jobs for a flat $79 a month with unlimited minutes, and OpenRelay sells pools at $25 to $200 a month. One 8 vCPU runner busy all month is 43,200 job-minutes: $679.20 on Blacksmith after its free minutes, $79 on Skipbox M. Skipbox runs Linux x64 jobs from public and private repositories. Fluxenic, the company behind Convika, makes Skipbox.
How much does Blacksmith cost per minute?
On November 11, 2026, Blacksmith's pricing page lists Ubuntu x64 runners at $0.004 a minute for 2 vCPU, $0.008 for 4, $0.016 for 8, $0.032 for 16, and $0.064 for 32. Ubuntu ARM is $0.0025 at 2 vCPU, Windows x64 is $0.008 at 2 vCPU, and macOS M4 is $0.08. Docker layer caching and sticky disks are $0.50 a GB a month each.
What happens when Blacksmith's free minutes run out?
Jobs keep running and are billed. Blacksmith's support told Forestwalk: "We don't cut workflows when the free tier is exceeded; they continue running and accrue usage at the published rates." Forestwalk's invoice was $1,081.45, and Blacksmith later offered a credit for it. On a flat-price runner such as Skipbox, a busier month costs the same.
How do Blacksmith's 3,000 free minutes count on larger runners?
As 2 vCPU minutes. Blacksmith's docs: the minutes "will be consumed at a higher rate proportional to the vCPU count," and "a job taking 10 minutes on an 8vCPU runner would consume the equivalent of 40 2vCPU minutes." So 3,000 free minutes cover 1,500 minutes at 4 vCPU or 750 at 8 vCPU, $12 of usage either way.
Does GitHub bill minutes on Blacksmith or another third-party runner?
No. A third-party runner connects to your account as a self-hosted runner, and GitHub's billing page lists self-hosted runners as usage that "remains free independently and does not reduce the included compute usage" (read November 11, 2026). You pay the runner's vendor for those jobs.
Which Blacksmith alternatives run in your own cloud account?
RunsOn starts the runners in your AWS account for a flat annual licence, €300 a year on Starter, and AWS bills the instances. Actuated runs on servers you supply, at $150 a month for the first. WarpBuild lists a bring-your-own-cloud option on AWS, GCP, or Azure. Blacksmith, Depot, Namespace, Ubicloud, OpenRelay, and Skipbox run the machines on theirs.
Sources
Read 2026-11-11 (Japan time).
- Blacksmith pricing and Blacksmith Docs: runners: rates, sizes, the free tier, concurrency (checked 2026-11-11)
- Forestwalk: Surprise! Pay $1000 (published 2026-06-08, checked 2026-11-11)
- GitHub Docs: Actions runner pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- GitHub Docs: GitHub Actions billing (checked 2026-11-11)
- WarpBuild pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- Ubicloud pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- Depot pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- Namespace pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- RunsOn pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- Actuated pricing (checked 2026-11-11)
- OpenRelay: GitHub Actions runners at a flat monthly price (checked 2026-11-11)
- Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI (published 2026-04-07, checked 2026-11-11)
- Skipbox: plans, sizes, unlimited minutes, the trial, private repositories (checked 2026-11-11)
Related articles
- Flat-rate GitHub Actions runners: unlimited minutes (2026)Every GitHub Actions runner with a fixed monthly price and unlimited minutes, in each vendor's own words, read November 11, 2026, with the break-even.
- How much do GitHub Actions runners cost? Which is cheapest?GitHub's per-minute prices, 7 runner vendors, and a Hetzner server, priced at 5,000, 20,000, and 100,000 minutes, with the arithmetic. Read November 8, 2026.
- AI coding agents and your CI bill: the GitHub Actions mathCoding agents open more pull requests and every push runs CI. The per-minute arithmetic at 10, 30, and 100 pull requests a day, the fixes, and a flat price.