Introducing Latchkey Runners: Faster CI, Up to 58% Cheaper, One Line Change

We've been heads-down building this since we entered open beta, and today it's ready: Latchkey Runners are now available to all users.

Latchkey Runners replace GitHub-hosted runners with fully managed, ephemeral infrastructure that's faster, cheaper, and completely isolated — with one line of code.

The problem with GitHub-hosted runners

If you're using GitHub Actions at any meaningful scale, you've hit the same friction points:

• Queue time. Runners aren't always ready when your job is. You wait.
• Cold starts. Even when a runner is assigned, startup takes time.
• Noisy neighbors. Shared infrastructure means unpredictable performance. Your build times vary, and there's no explanation why.
• No cost visibility. GitHub shows you minutes consumed. It doesn't show you which repo, which workflow, or which job is burning the most money.

None of this is a workflow problem. It's a runner problem.

What Latchkey Runners do differently

Zero queue time. Latchkey Runners are provisioned on demand, isolated per job, and ready in seconds. There's no pool to compete with.

2x faster startup. Our infrastructure is optimized specifically for CI workloads. Runners boot fast, cache dependencies efficiently, and tear down cleanly after every job.

Fully ephemeral. Every job gets a fresh environment. No cross-job contamination, no lingering state from a previous run, no shared hardware.

Full observability, built in. Every run is instrumented automatically. You get cost breakdowns by repo, workflow, and runner size — no dashboards to build, nothing to configure.

One line to switch

You don't need to migrate your workflow files, reconfigure secrets, or touch your CI/CD pipeline. You change one line:

# Before
runs-on: ubuntu-latest

# After
runs-on: latchkey-medium

That's it. Full GitHub Actions compatibility. Your existing steps, caches, secrets, and permissions work exactly as before.

We also offer latchkey-small for lightweight jobs like linting and type checks, and latchkey-large for compute-heavy workloads like build steps and end-to-end test suites — so you're not overpaying for resources you don't need.

How much cheaper?

Up to 58% cheaper than GitHub-hosted runners, depending on your workload mix. Teams with a combination of lightweight and heavy jobs tend to see the biggest savings, especially when paired with the right runner size for each job.

The cost analytics dashboard shows you exactly where your spend is going — broken down by repo, workflow, and runner size — so you can see the savings as they happen and prove ROI to your team.

What comes with it

Switching to Latchkey Runners automatically gives you:

• Real-time cost tracking — see CI spend broken down by repo, workflow, and runner size
• Performance analytics — build times, queue wait, startup latency, success rates, and cache hit rates across every workflow
• AI optimization recommendations — our agents scan your pipelines for caching gaps, oversized runner usage, and workflow inefficiencies, then open a fix PR you can approve in one click
• Command & control dashboard — a live view of every workflow run, failure rate, and resource drain across all your repos

How to get started

1. Connect your GitHub repo — install the Latchkey GitHub App in one click. No agents, no self-hosted infrastructure.
2. Switch to Latchkey Runners — change runs-on: ubuntu-latest to runs-on: latchkey-medium in your workflow YAML.
3. Watch the dashboard fill in — cost, performance, and optimization data appear automatically as your jobs run.

That's three steps. Most teams are fully switched in under 10 minutes.

If you're already using Latchkey, the runner is ready in your account. If you're new, you can start a free trial with no credit card required.

We're just getting started. Managed Runners are the foundation — what comes next is even better.