What Is Included vs Metered CI Usage? Free Allowance vs Pay-Per-Use
Included CI usage is the free allowance bundled with your plan; metered usage is everything beyond it, billed per minute or per gigabyte.
Most CI pricing has two zones: a flat included allowance and a pay-per-use meter past it. The boundary between them is where bills start to grow, and the rules about what counts as included - especially around runner type and OS - are where teams get caught out.
Included usage
Included usage is the allowance your plan grants for free each cycle. On GitHub Actions that is 2,000 standard-runner minutes and 500 MB of storage on the free plan, more on paid plans. Public repos get unlimited included standard-runner minutes.
Metered usage
Once you exceed the allowance, additional minutes and storage are metered and billed per unit - about $0.008/min for Linux 2-core, scaling by size and OS, plus per-gigabyte storage. Metered usage is where the variable part of your bill lives.
What is excluded from "included"
The allowance applies to standard runners only. Larger runners are metered from the first minute, and OS multipliers mean Windows and macOS consume the included pool 2x and 10x faster. So "included" is narrower than it first appears.
Finding the line
Watch your usage dashboard for when you cross from included into metered each cycle. Crossing early in the month signals you have outgrown the allowance and that further optimization or a cheaper platform will pay off.
Staying on the cheap side
Cache to cut minutes, keep heavy work on Linux, and right-size runners so you stay inside the included zone longer. Pruning artifact retention keeps storage under its allowance too.
When metered cost dominates
Once most of your usage is metered, the per-unit rate is what matters. Latchkey managed runners meter the same work at roughly 69% less than GitHub-hosted and include their own free minutes, lowering both the line and the rate past it.
Key takeaways
- Included usage is the free monthly allowance; metered usage is billed past it.
- On GitHub free plan: 2,000 standard-runner minutes and 500 MB included.
- Larger runners and non-Linux OS sit largely outside "included".