# GitHub Actions Runners: Managed, Ephemeral, Self-Healing - Latchkey

Source: https://latchkey.dev/github-actions-runners

## 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-small
```

Steps, 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 guide](/learn/ci-explained/ephemeral-runners-explained)
- [What GitHub Actions costs Per-minute rates, what the free tier covers, and where the bill comes from. See the numbers](/github-actions-cost-reduction)
- [Runner alternatives compared Nine providers on published price, limits removed, and who wins where. Compare them](/github-actions-self-hosted-runner-alternatives)

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Latchkey runs CI/CD that repairs its own failures. Agent entry points: https://latchkey.dev/agent.txt, https://latchkey.dev/openapi.json, https://latchkey.dev/llms.txt