Are GitHub Actions free for private repositories? (2026)

Yes, up to a monthly amount. For private repositories, GitHub Free includes $12 of Actions compute a month, and Pro and Team $18: 2,000 and 3,000 minutes on ubuntu-latest. It resets on the 1st at 00:00 UTC. Public repositories and self-hosted runners, such as Skipbox, don't use it.

Fluxenic, the company behind Convika, makes Skipbox, so one of the options at the end of this page is our own product. Every GitHub figure below comes from GitHub's own pages, read November 11, 2026 (Japan time) and linked under Sources.

• Included each month: GitHub Free has $12, for personal accounts and organizations alike. GitHub Pro and GitHub Team have $18. GitHub Enterprise Cloud has $300.
• In minutes: 2,000, 3,000, and 50,000 on ubuntu-latest. Fewer on Windows and macOS.
• Reset: the 1st of each month at 00:00 UTC. Nothing rolls over.
• When it runs out: jobs stop, or GitHub bills each minute, depending on your payment method and budgets.
• To keep running: raise the budget, make the repository public, run your own runner, or use a flat-price runner such as Skipbox.

How many minutes each plan includes

GitHub no longer states minutes. Its billing page, read November 11, 2026: "The included compute usage is expressed as a monetary amount, not a fixed number of minutes or other usage units." Each job's cost comes off that amount at its runner's per-minute rate.

The minutes each plan's dollars buy, if every job ran on one runner:

How to read it:

• One amount for every runner. A month of Linux and macOS jobs draws each job's cost from the same dollars.
• Each job rounds up. "GitHub rounds the minutes and partial minutes each job uses up to the nearest whole minute." Thirty 10-second jobs use 30 minutes.
• The owner's amount is used. "Usage is charged to the repository owner, not the person who triggered the workflow runs." A job in an organization's repository draws on the organization's amount, not yours.
• ubuntu-latest in a private repository is 2 cores and 8 GB. ubuntu-slim is 1 core and 5 GB, at a third of the rate.

Is it still 2,000 minutes on GitHub Free?

On ubuntu-latest, yes: $12 ÷ $0.006 is 2,000 minutes. GitHub changed the unit on October 28, 2026. Its changelog that day: "Your included Actions compute entitlement is now one shared, dollar-based pool instead of a fixed number of standard runner minutes."

Before that, GitHub's page listed 2,000 minutes on Free and 3,000 on Pro and Team, and until December 16, 2025 it counted Windows and macOS minutes "at 2 and 10 times the rate" of Linux. Both tables are gone. An answer that says "2,000 minutes, macOS counts 10×" describes the old page. Today $12 buys 193 macOS minutes at $0.062, where the multiplier gave 200.

What doesn't use the included amount

GitHub's billing page lists usage that "remains free independently and does not reduce the included compute usage":

• Standard GitHub-hosted runners in public repositories.
• Self-hosted runners. GitHub's docs: they "are free to use with GitHub Actions, but you are responsible for the cost of maintaining your runner machines."

Standard runners are also free "For GitHub Pages" and "For Dependabot."

What does use it, and gets missed:

• Failed jobs, for the minutes they ran. GitHub's example: a run that fails after 5 minutes and succeeds on a 10-minute re-run costs 15.
• Copilot code review in private repositories. "The runner cost draws from your account or organization's included compute usage."
• Larger runners, which only GitHub Team and Enterprise Cloud organizations have. "Larger runners are billed for public repositories" too.

When GitHub Actions minutes reset

On the 1st of every month at 00:00:00 UTC. GitHub's billing-cycles page: metered products have "a fixed billing period that starts at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each month and ends at 23:59:59 UTC on the last day of the month." The included usage "resets to the full amount at the start of each billing cycle."

Two things people expect, and don't get:

• No rollover. It resets to the full amount. What is left on the last day is gone.
• Not your billing date. A paid plan's billing date is "typically the day you started a paid plan." The Actions amount resets on the 1st whatever that day is.

What happens when the free minutes run out

It depends on the account:

A stopped job fails with a message such as "The job was not started because an Actions budget is preventing further use." The causes and fixes are in an Actions budget is preventing further use.

GitHub can warn you first. On Budgets and alerts, select Receive alerts when my included usage reaches 90% and 100%.

How to check what's left

• A personal account: open github.com/settings/billing.
• An organization: open its Settings, then Billing & Licensing under Access, then Usage. Owners and billing managers can see it.
• One run: GitHub's docs point to the run's own page for "the billable job execution minutes for an individual workflow run."

The page shows dollars. Subtract the month's Actions spend from your plan's amount, then divide by your runner's rate to get minutes.

Four ways to keep running when they run out

Raising the budget changes nothing in your workflows, and every extra minute is billed at its runner's rate. The rates for every runner are in GitHub Actions pricing in November 2026.

A self-hosted runner takes the minutes off GitHub's bill entirely. The work moves to you: GitHub says self-hosted runners "should almost never be used for public repositories," and on private ones you keep the machine updated and clean between jobs.

Skipbox is a self-hosted runner that Skipbox operates, for organizations and personal accounts. Its minutes don't draw on the included amount, so the amount stays for your other jobs. Skipbox S is $39 a month however many minutes you run. On GitHub Team, above 9,500 job-minutes a month that is cheaper than the same minutes on ubuntu-latest: ($39 + $18) ÷ $0.006. And S gives each job 4 vCPU where ubuntu-latest gives 2 cores.

To try it on one job:

1. Sign in at skipbox.dev with GitHub. Install the Skipbox CI app on your organization, or Skipbox (personal) on your personal account.
2. Change one job's runs-on: line to skipbox and push.
3. The trial runs one 4 vCPU job at a time, for 7 days or 3,000 job-minutes from your first job, whichever comes first.

Start a free Skipbox trial on skipbox.dev

Skipbox runs Linux x64 jobs. macOS, Windows, and Arm jobs stay on GitHub's runners and keep drawing on the included amount. Other fixed-price runners are in flat-rate GitHub Actions runners.

Related reading

• Are GitHub self-hosted runners free? Yes, in 2026
• GitHub Actions runner prices compared: GitHub, faster runners, and self-hosting
• Claude Code on GitHub Actions: what the minutes cost and how to cap them
• How to speed up GitHub Actions: 6 fixes, in order

Frequently asked questions

Are GitHub Actions free for private repositories?

Yes, up to a monthly amount. GitHub Free includes $12 of Actions compute a month for private repositories, GitHub Pro and GitHub Team $18, and GitHub Enterprise Cloud $300 (read November 11, 2026). On ubuntu-latest that is 2,000, 3,000, and 50,000 minutes. Past it, GitHub bills per minute or stops the jobs. Self-hosted runners, such as Skipbox, don't use the amount. Fluxenic, the company behind Convika, makes Skipbox.

How many GitHub Actions minutes do I get for free?

GitHub includes dollars, not minutes. Each month GitHub Free has $12 and GitHub Pro has $18. At ubuntu-latest's $0.006 a minute, that is 2,000 and 3,000 minutes. On Windows 2-core at $0.010 it is 1,200 and 1,800, and on macOS at $0.062 it is 193 and 290. Public repositories on standard runners are free and don't use it.

When do GitHub Actions minutes reset?

On the 1st of each month at 00:00:00 UTC, whatever day your plan bills. That is 7 pm on the last day of the month in New York in standard time, and 9 am on the 1st in Tokyo. The included usage "resets to the full amount at the start of each billing cycle," so unused minutes don't roll over.

What happens when I run out of GitHub Actions minutes?

With no payment method on file, "usage is blocked once you consume the included compute usage": jobs on GitHub-hosted runners stop starting until the 1st. With a payment method, jobs keep running and GitHub bills each minute at the runner's rate, up to any budget set to stop usage.

How can I get more GitHub Actions minutes without paying per minute?

Run the jobs on a runner GitHub doesn't bill. A self-hosted runner's minutes are free on GitHub's side. Skipbox is a managed one at a fixed monthly price: $39, $79, or $149 a month for 4, 8, or 16 vCPU, with unlimited minutes, so there is no allowance to run out. Changing a job's runs-on: line to skipbox moves it. It runs Linux x64 jobs from public and private repositories.

Do self-hosted runners use my free minutes?

No. 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 supply and maintain the machine, or use a service that does.

Are GitHub Actions free for public repositories?

On standard GitHub-hosted runners, yes. GitHub: "The use of standard GitHub-hosted runners is free" in public repositories, and it doesn't reduce the included amount. Larger runners are billed in public repositories too.

Sources

Read 2026-11-11 (Japan time).

• GitHub Docs: GitHub Actions billing: included compute by plan, the monetary-amount sentence, usage that remains free, Copilot code review, blocking without a payment method (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Docs: Actions runner pricing: per-minute rates, rounding (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Docs: Billing cycles: the billing period, the reset, the billing date (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Docs: GitHub-hosted runners reference: ubuntu-latest and ubuntu-slim in private repositories (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Docs: Budgets and alerts and Setting up budgets: stopping usage, included usage alerts (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Docs: Viewing your usage of metered products and licenses (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Docs: Self-hosted runners and Secure use reference (checked 2026-11-11)
• GitHub Changelog: Work from anywhere with a new, connected Copilot cloud experience: the dollar-based Actions entitlement (2026-10-28, checked 2026-11-11)
• github/docs commit 8e7396e5e: the minutes column (2,000, 3,000, 50,000) replaced by dollars (2026-10-28, checked 2026-11-11)
• github/docs commit ce33310e: the minute multipliers removed (2025-12-16, checked 2026-11-11)
• Skipbox: plans, sizes, unlimited minutes, the trial, private repositories (checked 2026-11-11)