GitHub Actions: Postponed Billing Changes, Reduced Hosted Runner Prices, and Future Investments

GitHub is revising its approach to GitHub Actions pricing. While previously announced billing changes for self-hosted runners have been postponed to allow for re-evaluation and stakeholder feedback, significant price reductions for GitHub-hosted runners will proceed as planned.

Postponement & Immediate Changes

We have heard your feedback regarding the proposed billing changes for self-hosted GitHub Actions and are postponing their implementation to re-evaluate our strategy. This allows us to engage more closely with developers, customers, and partners to ensure our future plans align with community needs. A discussion forum has been opened to collect direct feedback and will inform the GitHub Actions roadmap.

Meanwhile, we are proceeding with a reduction in GitHub-hosted runner prices by up to 39%, effective January 1, 2026. This adjustment aims to make high-performance compute more accessible for various CI workloads and agent jobs.

Background and Motivation for Pricing Updates

Historically, self-hosted runner users could leverage much of GitHub Actions' infrastructure at no cost, leading to GitHub-hosted runner prices subsidizing these essential services. The updated pricing model seeks to align costs more closely with usage and delivered value, while fostering continued innovation and investment across the platform. The vast majority of users, particularly individuals and small teams, will not experience a price increase.

In 2025, GitHub Actions facilitated 11.5 billion free minutes for public projects, demonstrating a substantial investment in the community. The platform's rapid growth since its 2018 launch, reaching about 23 million jobs per day by early 2024, necessitated a re-architecture of its core backend services. This modernization effort has significantly improved uptime, resilience, and performance, enabling the platform to handle over 71 million jobs per day (a more than threefold increase). This architectural enhancement strengthens the core experience and positions GitHub Actions to power GitHub’s open, secure platform for agentic workloads.

Key Pricing Changes and New Offerings

1. Lower Prices for GitHub-Hosted Runners: Effective January 1, 2026, the net cost of GitHub-hosted runners will be reduced by up to 39%, depending on the machine type. This includes an approximate 40% price reduction across all runner sizes, coupled with a new $0.002 per-minute GitHub Actions cloud platform charge already integrated into the reduced meter price for GitHub-hosted runners. Usage on public repositories and GitHub Enterprise Server pricing remain unaffected. For detailed pricing, refer to the updated Actions runner prices documentation. You can estimate future costs using the Actions pricing calculator.

2. Introduction of the GitHub Actions Cloud Platform Charge: A new $0.002 per-minute Actions cloud platform charge is being introduced for all Actions workflows across both GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners. This charge is already included in the new GitHub-hosted runner rates. It will not impact Actions usage in public repositories or GitHub Enterprise Server customers. This charge for self-hosted runners will apply starting March 1, 2026. This change aims to align pricing with consumption patterns and ensure consistent service quality as usage scales.

Deepened Investment in the Self-Hosted Experience

GitHub is increasing investment in the self-hosted experience to enhance autoscaling solutions beyond Linux containers, with plans for new scaling approaches, platform support, and Windows support over the next 12 months. Upcoming features include:

• GitHub Scale Set Client: A new lightweight Go SDK for enterprises to build custom autoscaling solutions without Kubernetes complexity or reliance on ARC. It integrates with existing infrastructure and manages job queuing, secure configuration, and intelligent scaling, supporting scenarios like self-hosted Dependabot and Copilot Coding Agent.
• Multi-label Support: Reintroduction of multi-label functionality for both GitHub-hosted larger runners and self-hosted runners, including those managed by Actions Runner Controller (ARC) and the new Scale Set Client.
• Actions Runner Controller 0.14.0: This upcoming release brings major quality-of-life improvements, including refined Helm charts for Docker configuration, enhanced logging, updated metrics, and formalized versioning. It also deprecates legacy ARC, providing a clear migration path.
• Actions Data Stream: The Actions Data Stream will deliver a near real-time, authoritative feed of GitHub Actions workflow and job event data, including metadata. This capability enhances observability and troubleshooting, allowing integration of event data into monitoring and analytics systems for compliance and operational insights.

Why These Changes Matter

While agentic workloads are expanding automation capabilities, CI/CD remains critical for modern software delivery. These updates aim to provide a faster, more reliable CI/CD experience for all developers, alongside a scalable, flexible, and secure execution layer for GitHub’s agentic platform. The goal is to ensure GitHub Actions continues to meet the needs of both large enterprises and individual developers, with transparent pricing, stronger performance, and a product direction built for the future of software development.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Why is there a charge for using self-hosted hardware? Historically, self-hosted runner customers utilized GitHub Actions’ infrastructure and services without direct cost, with GitHub-hosted runner prices subsidizing these services. The new pricing aligns costs more closely with usage and delivered value, while supporting ongoing innovation. Most users, especially individuals and small teams, will not see an increase. You can estimate your future costs using the Actions pricing calculator.
• What are the new GitHub-hosted runner rates? The GitHub Actions runner pricing reference details the updated rates effective January 1, 2026. These rates include the new $0.002 per-minute Actions cloud platform charge.
• Why is $0.002/minute the chosen price for self-hosted runners on cloud? A per-minute charge was determined to be the fairest and most accurate by users and is competitive with other self-hosted CI solutions. GitHub believes this sustainable option will not significantly impact lightly or heavily active customers, while still delivering fast, flexible workloads.
• Which job execution scenarios are affected by this pricing change? Jobs running in private repositories using standard GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runners, and any jobs running on larger GitHub-hosted runners, are affected. Standard usage on public repositories will remain free, and GitHub Enterprise Server pricing is not impacted.
• When do these pricing changes take effect? The price decrease for GitHub-hosted runners is effective January 1, 2026. The new charge for self-hosted runners will apply starting March 1, 2026.
• Will free usage quotas change? Beginning March 1, 2026, self-hosted runners will be included within your free usage quota and will consume available usage based on list price, similar to Linux, Windows, and macOS standard runners.
• Will self-hosted runner usage consume from my free usage minutes? Yes, billable self-hosted runner usage will consume minutes from the free quota associated with your plan.
• How does this impact GitHub Enterprise Server customers? This change does not affect customers using GitHub Enterprise Server. They can continue to host, manage, troubleshoot, and use Actions on self-hosted runners in conjunction with their implementation free of charge.
• Can I bill self-hosted runner usage on private repositories through Azure? Yes, provided you have an active Azure subscription ID associated with your GitHub Enterprise or Organization(s).
• What is the overall impact of this change to GitHub customers? 96% of customers will see no change to their bill. Of the 4% impacted, 85% will see their Actions bill decrease, while the remaining 15% face a median increase of around $13. For individual users (free & Pro plans) in private repos, only 0.09% might see an increase (median under $2/month), after utilizing their included minutes. A further 2.8% of this user base will see a decrease, with the rest unaffected.
• How can I estimate my new monthly Actions cost? GitHub Actions provides detailed usage reports for the current and prior year. You can use this data with the rate changes (effective January and March) to estimate costs. A Python script is available to help leverage full usage reports for calculation. The updated Actions pricing calculator also assists in estimating future costs, especially for limited or unrepresentative historical usage.