GitHub Actions runners
GitHub Actions runners, without the machines
Managed, ephemeral runners that replace ubuntu-latest with one line of YAML, at $0.0025 a minute against a GitHub-hosted list price of $0.006, and that repair transient failures while the job is still running.
30 days free · No credit card required · Up to 6,000 free runner minutes
Three kinds of runner, and what each one costs you
The choice is usually framed as a price comparison, which hides the real trade. What actually differs is how much of the machine you are responsible for.
The four sizes
| Label | Spec | Rate |
|---|---|---|
latchkey-small | 2 vCPU / 8 GB | $0.0025/min |
latchkey-medium | 4 vCPU / 16 GB | $0.0050/min |
latchkey-large | 8 vCPU / 32 GB | $0.0100/min |
latchkey-xlarge | 16 vCPU / 64 GB | $0.0200/min |
All Ubuntu 24.04 x86-64, one job per machine, destroyed afterwards. Cold start is about ten seconds; a warm machine picks a job up in seconds.
The switch is one line
jobs:
build:
- runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+ runs-on: latchkey-smallSteps, actions, secrets, services and matrix strategies are untouched, and GitHub-hosted labels keep working alongside Latchkey labels in the same workflow. Migrating one job is a one-line diff, and so is reverting it.
How the rates compare
| Feature | Latchkey | Blacksmith | GitHub Hosted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per minute | from $0.0025/min | from $0.0040/min | from $0.0060/min |
| Savings vs GitHub | -60% | -33% | Baseline |
| Free minutes/mo (mid tier) | 4,000 | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Cold start speed | ~10s | ~10s | 30-60s |
| AI optimization insights | |||
| Cost performance analytics | |||
| Dependency caching | Built-in S3 streaming | 25 GB/repo | 10 GB/repo |
| AI scan runner images |
Frequently asked questions
What are GitHub Actions runners?
A runner is the machine that executes the steps in a workflow job. GitHub-hosted runners are provisioned and destroyed by GitHub and billed per minute. Self-hosted runners are machines you provide and register yourself, free of per-minute charges but yours to patch, scale and secure. Managed runners such as Latchkey are a third option: someone else provisions ephemeral machines and you change only the runs-on line.
How do I switch to a Latchkey runner?
Change one line: set runs-on to a Latchkey label such as latchkey-small. Steps, actions, secrets, services and matrix strategies stay exactly as they are, and GitHub-hosted labels keep working in the same workflow, so you can move one job at a time and roll back by reverting a single line.
What sizes are available, and what do they cost?
Four Ubuntu 24.04 x86-64 sizes: small at 2 vCPU for $0.0025 a minute, through xlarge at 16 vCPU for $0.0200 a minute. GitHub publishes $0.006 a minute for its comparable 2-core Linux runner. Every plan includes 2,000 to 6,000 free runner minutes a month.
Are Latchkey runners ephemeral?
Yes. One job per machine, single-use credentials issued just in time, and the machine is destroyed when the job ends. Nothing carries between jobs, so a build result describes your code rather than the state a previous job left on a shared host.
What happens when a job fails on a Latchkey runner?
A self-healing agent on the machine diagnoses the failure and, when it is transient or environmental, applies a fix and retries the step during the same run. Registry timeouts, out-of-memory kills, disk-full errors and missing tools are repaired without a person. Failing tests, compile errors and lint violations are not: those fail normally with their original logs.
Do Latchkey runners support Windows, macOS or ARM?
Not today. Latchkey runners are Linux x86-64 only. Jobs needing another OS or architecture can stay on GitHub-hosted or other runners inside the same workflow, so this does not block adoption for the rest of the pipeline.
Keep reading
What ephemeral runners are
Why one job per machine changes caching, secrets and debugging.
Read the guideWhat GitHub Actions costs
Per-minute rates, what the free tier covers, and where the bill comes from.
See the numbersRunner alternatives compared
Nine providers on published price, limits removed, and who wins where.
Compare them