GitHub is going to start charging you for using your own hardware

Engineers cry foul over plan to charge $0.002/min for self-hosted Actions runners

GitHub customers, take notice: Come March, the Microsoft-owned repository host will begin charging for some uses of self-hosted Actions runners.

The change comes in the form of a $0.002 per minute charge for self-hosted runners executing jobs on private GitHub repositories. At the same time, GitHub noted in a Tuesday blog post that it's lowering the prices of GitHub-hosted runners beginning January 1, under a scheme it calls "simpler pricing and a better experience for GitHub Actions." Self-hosted runner usage on public repositories will remain free, we note. 

Regardless of the public repo distinction, enterprise-scale developers who rely on self-hosted runners were predictably not pleased about the announcement. 

"Github have just sent out an email announcing a $0.002/minute fee for self-hosted runners," Reddit user markmcw posted on the DevOps subreddit. "Just ran the numbers, and for us, that's close to $3.5k a month extra on our GitHub bill."

The powers-that-be at GitHub owner Microsoft seem to understand that the change to self-hosted runner billing would piss off a number of customers, as the very first question in the FAQ attached to Tuesday's blog post is "why am I being charged to use my own hardware?" 

To be fair to GitHub, it’s not exactly free for the company to run the GitHub Actions infrastructure and services that self-hosted runners rely on, and that’s the company’s justification for the change.

"Historically, self-hosted runner customers were able to leverage much of GitHub Actions' infrastructure and services at no cost," the repo host said in its blog FAQ. "This meant that the cost of maintaining and evolving these essential services was largely being subsidized by the prices set for GitHub-hosted runners."

The move, GitHub said, will align costs more closely with usage. Like many similar changes to pricing models pushed by tech firms, GitHub says "the vast majority of users … will see no price increase." 

GitHub claims that 96 percent of its customers will see no change to their bill, and that 85 percent of the 4 percent affected by the pricing update will actually see their Actions costs decrease. The company says the remaining 15 percent of impacted users will face a median increase of about $13 a month.

For those using self-hosted runners and worried about increased costs, GitHub has updated its pricing calculator to include the cost of self-hosted runners. 

As the company noted, it's also decreasing the costs of many GitHub-hosted runners, and while some will be up to 39 percent less, self-hosted runners can still work out cheaper for teams with their own hardware. The cheapest standard GitHub hosted runners using a 1-core Linux system come in at the same price as $0.002 per minute for a self-hosted runner, and haven't been adjusted under the new pricing scheme.

Many commenters concerned over the self-hosted runner price change also expressed worry that their runners would eat into free quota minutes associated with their GitHub plan, and that appears to be a valid concern.

"Billable self-hosted runner usage will be able to consume minutes from the free quota associated with your plan," GitHub said. In other words, the time spent using runners on your own hardware will eat into your free time and further increase your GitHub costs.

"We believe this is a sustainable option that will not deeply impact our lightly- nor heavily-active customers, while still delivering fast, flexible workloads for the best end user experience," GitHub said. ®