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Flat-rate GitHub Actions runners: unlimited minutes (2026)

Convika Team14 min read

  • ci
  • github-actions
  • self-managed
  • comparison
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Yes. Skipbox ($39, $79, or $149 a month) and OpenRelay run GitHub Actions jobs at a flat monthly price with unlimited minutes and take new customers. Actuated and RunsOn charge flat fees on machines you supply. Cirrus Runners and Manzanita are closed to new customers. A server you rent and run is flat too.

Fluxenic, the company behind Convika, makes Skipbox, so one of these options 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 options aren't ranked.

  • Skipbox runs the machines for you: $39 a month for 4 vCPU, $79 for 8 vCPU, and $149 for 16 vCPU, with "Unlimited minutes" and "No usage charges." It takes new customers, and its trial needs no card.
  • OpenRelay runs the machines too and sells pools: "Flat monthly price per pool. Unlimited build minutes, no per-minute billing." Its smallest pool is "16 concurrent 2 GB runners" at $25 a month.
  • Actuated charges a flat price per server you supply: "Flat rate per server: $150 for the first, $125 for each additional," with "Unlimited build minutes."
  • RunsOn charges a flat annual licence, €300 a year on its Starter step, and the runners start in your own AWS account: "AWS bills you for the instances at spot prices, with no markup."
  • Cirrus Runners is flat per runner, "$150 a month and there is no limit on the amount of minutes," but Cirrus Labs says: "We are no longer accepting new customers for Cirrus Runners."
  • Manzanita sells macOS runners at "$149 / mo per runner, no per-minute billing," and its page says: "New registrations and pilot requests are closed."
  • A dedicated server you run yourself costs its rent and nothing else: GitHub lists self-hosted runners as usage that "remains free." Hetzner's AX42 is "€ 99.00 per month, excl. VAT."

Every flat-price runner, as its own page states it

Read November 11, 2026.

ServiceWho runs the machinesFlat price, as publishedUnlimited, and what is cappedOS and architectureOpen to new customersSource
Skipbox, our own product, made by FluxenicSkipbox, in Finland or Germany (EU), or Japan$39 a month (S), $79 (M), $149 (L)"Unlimited minutes," "No usage charges." Capped: the vCPU running at once, 4 on S, 8 on M, 16 on L. A plan's largest job is its own size. A job runs for up to 6 hoursUbuntu 24.04 on x64. Public and private repositoriesYes. A 7-day trial, no cardskipbox.dev
OpenRelayOpenRelay: "Jobs start on OpenRelay VMs""$25 /mo" for "16 concurrent 2 GB runners," $50 for 32, $100 for 64, $200 for 128"Unlimited build minutes, no per-minute billing." Capped: the pool's memory, 32 GB to 256 GB. A job asks for openrelay-4cpu, "or 2cpu / 8cpu"Ubuntu 24.04. The page doesn't name an architectureYes. "2-day free trial," and "A card is required to start"OpenRelay
ActuatedYou supply the servers. Actuated: "Fully managed control-plane, just add servers""Flat rate per server: $150 for the first, $125 for each additional," plus what the servers cost you"Unlimited build minutes," "Unlimited RAM/CPUs," "Unlimited concurrency." Capped by the servers you supply"Linux x86_64 & Arm supported"Yes. Its pricing page has a Checkout buttonActuated
RunsOnYou, in your AWS accountA licence: "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"The licence has "no seats, no minute-metering." AWS bills every instance by use, so the machines aren't flatx64, arm64, Windows, and GPU instancesYes. "15 days free on Starter, Growth and Scale"RunsOn
Cirrus RunnersCirrus Labs"Each Cirrus Runner costs $150 a month and there is no limit on the amount of minutes for your actions."Minutes are unlimited. Capped: 1 job at a time per runner, "$150 per month per concurrent Cirrus Runner""macOS M4 Pro, Linux arm64, Linux x64 and GPU runners"No. "We are no longer accepting new customers for Cirrus Runners"Cirrus Runners, Cirrus Labs
ManzanitaManzanita"$149 / mo per runner, no per-minute billing." Its XL runner is $299"Unlimited builds, flat rate." Capped: "1 concurrent job per runner," "2-hour maximum per job"macOS on Apple M4 Pro: 6 vCPU and 22 GB, or 12 vCPU and 44 GB on XLNo. "New registrations and pilot requests are closed. Existing customer service continues."Manzanita
A dedicated server you run, such as Hetzner's AX42You"€ 99.00 per month, excl. VAT," plus "€ 49.00 one-time setup fee"GitHub bills no minutes on it. Capped by the machine: an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8700GE and 64 GBWhatever you installYesHetzner

Three things the table shows:

  • Managed, flat, and open to new customers: Skipbox and OpenRelay. Skipbox sells VM sizes, 4, 8, or 16 vCPU. OpenRelay sells a pool of memory that its runners share.
  • Flat, on machines you supply: Actuated, RunsOn, and your own server. You pay for the machines as well, and with RunsOn that part is AWS's bill by use.
  • Flat, but closed: Cirrus Runners and Manzanita. Both keep serving existing customers.

A monthly fee isn't a flat price

Some runners charge a monthly plan fee and still meter minutes. They aren't in the table:

  • Namespace: its Team plan is "$100 per month" and includes "100,000 unit minutes." Past them, it bills overage.
  • Depot: its Startup plan is "$200 per month" with "20,000 GitHub Actions minutes" included each month.
  • Sengi: per minute. Its home page lists "$0.001 /min" for its Basic 2 vCPU runner.
  • Vitko: "$0.002 a minute," and "Billed per second."
  • Blacksmith: per minute, "$0.004 /min" at 2 vCPU, with "3,000 free min/mo."

Argent Cloud is flat, "$299 per Runner / month" with "Unlimited simulator time," but it isn't a GitHub Actions runner. Its own FAQ calls it "a pool of network-accessible iOS Simulators."

If you were on Cirrus Runners

Cirrus Runners takes no new customers. On April 7, 2026, Cirrus Labs announced that it is joining OpenAI, and the announcement says: "We are no longer accepting new customers for Cirrus Runners but will continue supporting the service for existing customers through their existing contract periods." It gives no date on which Cirrus Runners stops.

Cirrus Runners was a flat $150 a month per runner with unlimited minutes. Its pricing page still says: "Each Cirrus Runner costs $150 a month and there is no limit on the amount of minutes for your actions."

Skipbox continues that model for new customers: a flat monthly price per plan, with "Unlimited minutes" and "No usage charges." As on Cirrus Runners, you buy jobs at once, not minutes. A plan adds 4, 8, or 16 vCPU, you hold any number of plans, and your jobs run at once up to the plans' total vCPU. Skipbox runs the machines.

Skipbox runs Linux x64 jobs from public and private repositories. A job on one of Cirrus's ubuntu-runner-amd64 labels moves by changing its runs-on: line to a Skipbox label.

Skipbox's page of Cirrus Runners alternatives on skipbox.dev has the Skipbox label for each Cirrus Linux x86 label and the steps of the move.

When a flat price costs less than per-minute, and when it doesn't decide

A flat price costs the same at any volume. A per-minute price grows with every job. The flat price is lower past this point:

break-even job-minutes a month = flat monthly price ÷ per-minute price

When your GitHub plan includes compute, add it to the flat price first. GitHub Team includes $18 a month.

Skipbox against GitHub's runner of the same size on GitHub Team, at GitHub's rates read November 11, 2026:

Skipbox planGitHub's runner of that sizeThe arithmeticSkipbox is cheaper above
S, $39 a month, 4 vCPU4-core, $0.012 a minute($39 + $18) ÷ $0.0124,750 job-minutes a month
M, $79 a month, 8 vCPU8-core, $0.022 a minute($79 + $18) ÷ $0.0224,410 job-minutes a month
L, $149 a month, 16 vCPU16-core, $0.042 a minute($149 + $18) ÷ $0.0423,977 job-minutes a month

Skipbox M is $79 a month however many minutes you run. Above 4,410 job-minutes a month, that is less than the same minutes on GitHub's 8-core runner, and every minute past it adds nothing.

One runner busy all month

A 30-day month has 30 × 24 × 60 = 43,200 minutes. One 8 vCPU runner that is never idle runs 43,200 job-minutes:

Runner, 8 vCPUThe arithmeticA month
GitHub 8-core43,200 × $0.022$950.40
Blacksmith43,200 × $0.016$691.20
Skipbox Mflat$79

Skipbox M is cheaper than both: $950.40 ÷ $79 is 12 times its price, and $691.20 ÷ $79 is 8.7 times. Allowances barely move it. GitHub Team's $18 leaves $932.40. Blacksmith's pricing page offers "3,000 free min/mo." without saying how they count at 8 vCPU; at most they are worth 3,000 × $0.016 = $48, which leaves $643.20.

Busy only in working hours, 8 hours a day for 22 days, the same runner does 10,560 job-minutes: $232.32 on GitHub's 8-core runner, $168.96 on Blacksmith, $79 on Skipbox M.

When price doesn't decide

  • You need macOS, Windows, or Arm. Skipbox runs Linux x64 only. Of the flat options open to new customers, Actuated and RunsOn run Arm, and RunsOn runs Windows. Both flat macOS services in the table are closed.
  • Your jobs arrive in bursts. A flat plan runs a set number of jobs at once. The next section has the arithmetic.
  • Your jobs need memory more than cores. GitHub's 8-core runner has 32 GB. Skipbox M has 16 GB.
  • You want the machines in your own account. Actuated, RunsOn, and your own server keep code and secrets on hardware you control. Skipbox and OpenRelay run them on theirs.

What a flat price doesn't buy

More jobs at once. A flat plan sells capacity, not minutes. Jobs past the capacity wait.

Say an agent opens 10 pull requests at once, and each starts a 10-minute, 8 vCPU job:

Skipbox plans8 vCPU jobs at onceJobs start at (minutes)Average waitLast result
1 × M, $7910, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 9045 minutesafter 100 minutes
1 × L, $14920, 0, 10, 10, 20, 20, 30, 30, 40, 4020 minutesafter 50 minutes
5 × L, $74510all at 00after 10 minutes

The job-minutes are the same 100 in every row. Waiting adds nothing to the bill, and Skipbox's account page shows how many jobs are waiting and how long the oldest has waited. GitHub's limit still applies: "A job can be in the queue for 24 hours before it is automatically cancelled."

The other flat services cap the same thing in their own units: OpenRelay by the pool's memory, Cirrus Runners and Manzanita at 1 job per runner, and Actuated and your own server by the hardware.

Every size and OS. Skipbox doesn't have these:

  • macOS, Windows, or Arm runners. Its VMs are Ubuntu 24.04 on x64.
  • A job larger than 16 vCPU and 32 GB, or longer than 6 hours.
  • A job larger than your largest plan. S plans alone never run an 8 vCPU job, however many you hold.
  • GitHub's memory per core. S has 8 GB, M 16 GB, and L 32 GB, half of what GitHub's 4-, 8-, and 16-core runners have.

No benchmark of Skipbox has been published, so this page claims no speed for it.

Does GitHub charge for minutes on a third-party runner?

No. GitHub has two kinds of runners, GitHub-hosted and self-hosted, so a runner from any other company connects to your account as a self-hosted runner. GitHub's billing page, read November 11, 2026, lists "Self-hosted runners" under usage that "remains free independently and does not reduce the included compute usage."

GitHub announced a charge for self-hosted runners on December 16, 2025 and shelved it the next day; nothing has been charged since. So on a flat-price runner, the flat price is the whole bill for those jobs.

Try a flat price on one job

On Skipbox, moving a job is one line:

  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. On plans with the larger VMs, skipbox-8x16 and skipbox-16x32 ask for them.
  3. Watch it through the 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.

To go back, change the line back.

Start a free Skipbox trial on skipbox.dev

For per-minute prices across GitHub and 7 runner vendors, see how much GitHub Actions runners cost.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a GitHub Actions runner with unlimited minutes?

Yes. On November 11, 2026, Skipbox and OpenRelay sell managed runners at a flat monthly price with unlimited minutes and take new customers. Skipbox is $39, $79, or $149 a month for 4, 8, or 16 vCPU. OpenRelay's pools are $25 to $200 a month. Actuated lists "Unlimited build minutes" on servers you supply, at $150 a month for the first server. Fluxenic, the company behind Convika, makes Skipbox.

Is there a flat-rate alternative to Blacksmith?

Yes. Blacksmith bills per minute: $0.016 at 8 vCPU. Skipbox M runs 8 vCPU jobs for a flat $79 a month with unlimited minutes. One 8 vCPU runner busy all month is 43,200 job-minutes: $691.20 on Blacksmith, $79 on Skipbox M. OpenRelay is flat too, at $25 to $200 a month per pool. Skipbox runs Linux x64 jobs, from public and private repositories.

What happened to Cirrus Runners?

Cirrus Runners stopped taking new customers. Cirrus Labs announced on April 7, 2026 that it is joining OpenAI, and wrote: "We are no longer accepting new customers for Cirrus Runners but will continue supporting the service for existing customers through their existing contract periods." Cirrus Runners was a flat $150 a month per runner with unlimited minutes. Skipbox sells the same model to new customers: a flat monthly price per plan with unlimited minutes, for Linux x64 jobs. A job on a Cirrus Linux x86 label moves by changing its runs-on: line.

Does GitHub charge for minutes on a 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, not GitHub, for those jobs.

What happens when more jobs arrive than a flat plan can run?

They wait, and the bill stays the same. On Skipbox, a job that doesn't fit your plans' vCPU waits in your account's queue and starts when a running job ends. Ten 10-minute, 8 vCPU jobs on one M plan finish after 100 minutes; on 5 L plans, after 10. GitHub cancels a job that has been queued for 24 hours.

Sources

Read 2026-11-11 (Japan time).

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