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RunsOn m8i-⁠flex.xlarge · EBS gp3 vs Namespace 4x16 x64

RunsOn does each build for 2.5–3.2× less; Namespace is 1.8–2.4× faster. Both 4 vCPU x64.

All three builds 2.7× cheaper on RunsOn: $0.0364 vs $0.0966Namespace 2.2× faster: 7m 26s vs 16m 39s
Rust build 3.2× cheaper on RunsOn: $0.0065 vs $0.0208Namespace 1.8× faster: 1m 38s vs 2m 56s
TypeScript build 2.6× cheaper on RunsOn: $0.0042 vs $0.0108Namespace 1.9× faster: 47s vs 1m 28s
Docker build 2.5× cheaper on RunsOn: $0.0257 vs $0.0650Namespace 2.4× faster: 5m 01s vs 12m 15s

Side by side

Every measurement both runners share, cost first. The dot marks the better value; gap is the larger over the smaller.

Measurement RunsOn Namespace Gap
Cost
Cost per Rust build $0.0065 $0.0208 3.2× RunsOn
Cost per TypeScript build $0.0042 $0.0108 2.6× RunsOn
Cost per Docker build $0.0257 $0.0650 2.5× RunsOn
Price per minute $0.0017 $0.0120 overage rate 7.0× RunsOn
Real builds, wall time
Rust build (spotify-⁠player) 2m 56s 1m 38s 1.8× Namespace
TypeScript build (opencode) 1m 28s 47s 1.9× Namespace
Docker build (PostHog) 12m 15s 5m 01s 2.4× Namespace
CPU & memory
PassMark single-⁠thread (points) 3,273 4,700 1.4× Namespace
PassMark CPU Mark, all cores (points) 8,025 16,176 2.0× Namespace
sysbench CPU, 1 thread (events/s) 3,326 7,051 2.1× Namespace
7-⁠Zip compression (MIPS) 19,236 33,428 1.7× Namespace
Memory read bandwidth 20.2 GiB/s 44.8 GiB/s 2.2× Namespace
Measurement RunsOn Namespace Gap
Workspace disk (fio)
Random read, 4k QD32 (IOPS) 2,994 1,011,926 338.0× Namespace
Random write, 4k QD32 (IOPS) 2,993 436,056 145.7× Namespace
Random read, 4k QD1 (IOPS) 1,576 78,615 49.9× Namespace
QD1 read latency, p99 963 µs 12 µs 78.9× Namespace
Sequential read 401 MiB/s 4.1 GiB/s 10.6× Namespace
Sequential write 401 MiB/s 2.9 GiB/s 7.5× Namespace
Sync write, 4k + fdatasync (IOPS) 527 17,844 33.9× Namespace
Network, cache & Docker
Download from GitHub 243 MiB/s 202 MiB/s 1.2× RunsOn
Cache restore, 4 GB (actions/cache) 19s 28s 1.5× RunsOn
Cache save, 4 GB (actions/cache) 13s 14s 1.1× RunsOn
docker pull 8.3s 4.2s 2.0× Namespace
Database
pgbench read/write (TPS) 3,061 8,463 2.8× Namespace
pgbench read-⁠only (TPS) 54,626 67,294 1.2× Namespace
Queue
Queue under burst load 17s 2m 23s plan limit —
  • ≈ even: under 5% apart, or a build inside both runners' run-to-run spread
  • Queue: identical jobs queued at the same instant (burst suite)
  • Queue: not compared. Namespace's burst ran 4 jobs at a time, the concurrency limit of the plan this benchmark account is on
  • RunsOn at EC2 spot, its default (7-day average of the cheapest us-east-1 zone's spot price, fetched 5 Oct 2026); the jobs ran on spot
  • Cost: a managed SaaS runner against RunsOn self-hosted on your AWS account; the effort of running it was not measured

Other head-to-heads