GitHub to charge $0.002/min for self-hosted runners starting March 2026

Update Dec 17th 2025: GitHub has suspended ↗ the fee for now.

GitHub recently announced ↗ that starting March 2026, they will begin charging $0.002 per minute for jobs running on self-hosted runners, including those managed by e.g. Actions Runner Controller (ARC) or other solutions like RunsOn.

What does this mean?#

Until now, self-hosted runners have been free to use on GitHub Actions - you only paid for your own infrastructure costs. Starting March 2026, GitHub will add a per-minute fee on top of your infrastructure costs for any job running on a self-hosted runner.

For context:

$0.002/min = $0.12/hour = $2.88/day for a runner running 24 hours
For 40,000 minutes/month: additional $80/month in GitHub fees
For 100,000 minutes/month: additional $200/month in GitHub fees

How does this affect RunsOn users?#

RunsOn will continue to provide significant cost savings compared to GitHub-hosted runners, even with this additional fee. However, the savings margin will be reduced for some runner configurations.

To estimate the impact, use our pricing tools:

Pricing Table#

Our pricing page compares RunsOn runner prices with GitHub-hosted runners.

Calculator#

The pricing calculator shows how much you’ll save with RunsOn at your own volume.

RunsOn still delivers major savings#

Even with the additional GitHub fee, RunsOn remains significantly cheaper than GitHub-hosted runners for most configurations:

Spot instances: Still deliver 60-90% savings depending on runner size
On-demand instances: Still deliver 30-60% savings for most configurations
Larger runners: The bigger the runner, the more you save (GitHub’s hosted runner pricing scales up faster than AWS EC2 pricing)

The fee has a larger impact on smaller runner sizes where the base cost is lower. For 2-CPU runners, the $0.002/min fee represents a larger percentage of the total cost.

What should you do?#

Check your current usage: Review your GitHub Actions minutes to understand your monthly consumption
Use our calculator: Try the calculator to see your projected costs
Consider runner sizes: Larger runners provide better value as the fee is fixed per minute regardless of runner size
Use spot instances: AWS spot instances remain the most cost-effective option