An alternative to Blacksmith, in your own AWS account.
Blacksmith makes GitHub Actions faster by running your jobs on its own bare-metal servers. RunsOn gets you fast runners too, but on EC2 instances in your AWS account: your code, secrets and caches never leave it, and AWS bills the compute directly.
A flat license from €300 / $350 a year, plus your AWS bill.
- Your AWS accountjobs, code and caches stay inside
- 1 to 896 vCPUsany EC2 type, picked per job
- x64 · arm64 · GPU · Windowsfrom the same label
- 8.2× cheaperper minute than Blacksmith at 16 vCPUs
What Blacksmith is, and how its runners work.
Blacksmith is a managed runner service for GitHub Actions. You install
its GitHub App on your organization and replace
runs-on: ubuntu-latest with a Blacksmith label
such as blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404 (or
-arm for arm64). From then on, GitHub sends
those jobs to Blacksmith's machines.
Blacksmith's bare-metal servers
Jobs run on Blacksmith's own hardware: in our benchmark runs, every job came from bare metal in Phoenix, AZ (AS20454). Your checkout, build secrets and caches are on their machines for the duration of the job.
Fast CPUs and nearby caches
Blacksmith's pitch is speed: recent desktop-class CPUs, a cache next
to the runners for actions/cache, and
sticky disks for Docker layers and other build state.
Per minute, per core
$0.0040 a minute for 2 x64 vCPUs, $0.0025 for 2 arm64 vCPUs, linear with the core count. 3,000 free x64 2 vCPU minutes a month per organization, used proportionally on larger runners. Optional add-ons: static IPs $100 per IP a month; sticky disks and Docker layer caching $0.50 per GB-month.
How much Blacksmith costs, size by size.
Linux x64 prices per minute. RunsOn is the 7-day average Spot price of a matching EC2 instance in us-east-1 plus its default gp3 volume, paid to AWS; the RunsOn license is a flat yearly fee on top.
| vCPUs | GitHub-hosted | Blacksmith | RunsOn (EC2 Spot) | Blacksmith ÷ RunsOn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | $0.0060 | $0.0040 | $0.0009 | 4.4× |
| 4 | $0.0120 | $0.0080 | $0.0014 | 5.9× |
| 8 | $0.0220 | $0.0160 | $0.0022 | 7.4× |
| 16 | $0.0420 | $0.0320 | $0.0039 | 8.2× |
| 32 | $0.0820 | $0.0640 | $0.0080 | 8.0× |
- GitHub-hosted $0.0120 8.9× more
- Blacksmith $0.0080 5.9× more
- WarpBuild $0.0080 5.9× more
- Namespace * $0.0060 4.4× more
- Ubicloud $0.0025 1.9× more
- RunsOn $0.0014 billed by AWS
*Namespace's price is for 4 vCPU with 8 GB of RAM; the others have 16 GB. RunsOn's figure is m8a.xlarge spot in us-east-1 (7-day average of the cheapest zone) plus a 30 GB gp3 volume. The license (from €300 / $350 a year) is flat, so it isn't in the per-minute figure. Hosted prices are the standard tier from each provider's pricing page, checked 2026-10-03. Every size and platform →
RunsOn vs Blacksmith, side by side.
Both keep your workflows as they are: you change the runs-on: label. What differs is whose machines run the job.
| Blacksmith | RunsOn | |
|---|---|---|
| Where jobs run | Blacksmith's bare-metal servers | EC2 instances in your AWS account and VPC |
| Code, secrets, caches | On Blacksmith's infrastructure during the job | Stay in your account (S3 cache, your IAM, your network) |
| Billing | Per minute to Blacksmith, plus paid add-ons | Flat license from €300 / $350 a year, compute billed by AWS |
| Machines | Fixed sizes, from 2 vCPUs, x64 and arm64 | Any EC2 type, 1 to 896 vCPUs: x64, arm64, GPU, Windows |
| Private network access | Through static IPs (add-on) and allow-lists | Native: runners are in your VPC, next to your databases and registries |
| Set-up | Install a GitHub App | One CloudFormation stack (or Terraform) and a GitHub App, about 10 minutes |
| Who operates it | Blacksmith | Managed AWS services in your account; you upgrade the stack |
When Blacksmith is the better fit.
You don't use AWS
RunsOn runs only in an AWS account. Without one, a managed service is simpler.
Small volume, no AWS work
With a few thousand minutes a month, Blacksmith's free allowance and zero set-up can beat a license.
Third-party hosting is fine
If your security review is happy with code and secrets on a vendor's servers, that constraint goes away.
Questions about Blacksmith.
What is Blacksmith CI?
A managed service that runs GitHub Actions jobs on its own bare-metal servers, selected with labels like blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404.
How much does it cost?
$0.0040 a minute for 2 vCPUs, linear with the core count, with 3,000 free minutes a month. Static IPs and sticky disks cost extra.
Is it self-hosted?
No. Jobs run on Blacksmith's machines. RunsOn is the self-hosted option: the runners are EC2 instances in your AWS account.
Can I switch back and forth?
Yes, with both. Each is a runs-on: label, so you can move one workflow at a time and compare.
AWS EC2 vs Blacksmith?
Raw EC2 is cheaper per minute but needs something to launch and clean up runners per job. That's what RunsOn does.
Other alternatives?
See the full comparison of GitHub Actions runner alternatives.
Fast runners, in your own account.
One CloudFormation stack, a private GitHub App, about 10 minutes. The 15-day trial runs the real product in your AWS account, so you can run the same workflow on Blacksmith and RunsOn and compare.