Job Metrics

Metadata

For each runner, you will also find detailed metrics about the EC2 instance, RunsOn installation, and runner timings. This is available when you expand the “Set up job” section in the GitHub Actions UI:

Runner metadata right from the GitHub Actions UI

Performance Metrics

The runs-on/action@v2 ↗ provides real-time performance metrics collection for individual GitHub Actions jobs. These metrics give you detailed insights into resource utilization during workflow execution.

Note

This feature requires RunsOn version v2.8.4+

The way it works is to automatically configure the CloudWatch agent on the instance to collect additional custom metrics, and then display them in the GitHub Actions job summary. Note that CloudWatch custom metrics are not cheap, so make sure you only enable metric collection while troubleshooting. Also the more metrics you collect, the more expensive it will be.

Supported Metrics

The action can collect the following performance metrics:

Metric Type	Available Metrics	Description
CPU	usage_user, usage_system	CPU utilization by user processes and system processes
Network	bytes_recv, bytes_sent	Network traffic in bytes received and sent
Memory	used_percent	Memory utilization as a percentage
Disk	used_percent, inodes_used	Disk space utilization and inode usage
I/O	io_time, reads, writes	Disk I/O time and read/write operations

Configuration

Enable metrics collection by adding the runs-on/action@v2 to your job and specifying which metrics to collect:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}/runner=2cpu-linux-x64
    steps:
      - uses: runs-on/action@v2
        with:
          metrics: cpu,network,memory,disk,io

      # Your build steps here
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Build application
        run: npm run build

You can also collect specific metric types:

# Collect only CPU and memory metrics
- uses: runs-on/action@v2
  with:
    metrics: cpu,memory

# Collect all available metrics
- uses: runs-on/action@v2
  with:
    metrics: cpu,network,memory,disk,io

Viewing Metrics

After job completion, metrics are displayed as ASCII charts in the GitHub Actions job summary:

📈 Metrics (since 2025-06-30T14:18:56Z):


📊 CPU User:
   100.0 ┤
    87.5 ┤                                        ╭─╮╭───────────╮
    75.0 ┤                                       ╭╯ ╰╯           │
    62.5 ┤                                      ╭╯               ╰╮
    50.0 ┤                                      │                 │
    37.5 ┤                                      │                 ╰╮
    25.0 ┤                                     ╭╯                  │
    12.5 ┤                    ╭─────────╮╭─────╯                   ╰╮
     0.0 ┼────────────────────╯         ╰╯                          ╰
                               CPU User (Percent)
  Stats: min:0.0 avg:29.0 max:93.4 Percent


📊 Memory Used:
   100.0 ┤
    87.5 ┤
    75.0 ┤
    62.5 ┤
    50.0 ┤
    37.5 ┤
    25.0 ┤                                             ╭────────╮
    12.5 ┤                            ╭──╮      ╭──────╯        ╰───╮
     0.0 ┼────────────────────────────╯  ╰──────╯                   ╰
                             Memory Used (Percent)
  Stats: min:0.5 avg:7.4 max:20.9 Percent

The metrics help you:

• Optimize Resource Usage: Identify whether your runner size is appropriate
• Debug Performance Issues: Spot bottlenecks in CPU, memory, disk I/O, or network
• Cost Optimization: Right-size your runners based on actual resource consumption
• Monitor Trends: Track performance changes across builds

You can also find the metrics in the CloudWatch UI and API, under the CWAgent namespace.

Use Cases

Resource Right-sizing:

# Test different runner sizes with metrics
strategy:
  matrix:
    runner:
      - runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}/family=m7a/cpu=2
      - runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}/family=m7a/cpu=4
      - runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}/family=m7a/cpu=8
runs-on: ${{ matrix.runner }}
steps:
  - uses: runs-on/action@v2
    with:
      metrics: cpu,memory,disk,io
  - name: Run build
    run: |
      # Your build commands
      go build ...

Performance Debugging:

# Monitor resource usage during heavy operations
- uses: runs-on/action@v2
  with:
    metrics: cpu,memory,disk,io
- name: Run resource-intensive build
  run: |
    # Your build commands
    npm run build:prod
    docker build -t app .