# GitHub Actions concurrency limit reached for repository

> Fix jobs queuing because the account/plan concurrent-jobs limit for GitHub-hosted runners is reached.

Source: https://latchkey.dev/learn/github-actions/github-actions-concurrency-limit-reached-repository  
Updated: 2026-06-26

Each plan caps how many GitHub-hosted jobs can run at once. Beyond the cap, additional jobs queue until a slot frees, even if minutes remain. This is a parallelism cap, not a billing block.

## Diagnose it: is the job queued, or is the runner gone?

A job that never starts and a job whose runner disappeared mid-run look similar in the UI and have opposite causes. The first is a labelling or capacity problem, the second is the runner being killed, usually by memory pressure or a spot reclaim.

```.github/workflows/ci.yml
- name: Runner facts
  run: |
    echo "runner name: $RUNNER_NAME"
    echo "os/arch:     $RUNNER_OS/$RUNNER_ARCH"
    nproc; free -h; df -h /
    echo "labels this job asked for: ${{ toJSON(job) }}"
```

> If the job sits in `queued` and never picks up, no runner matches every label you listed. Labels are ANDed: `runs-on: [self-hosted, linux, gpu]` needs one runner carrying all three, not three runners carrying one each.

## The failures that are not your workflow

- Exit 137 is the kernel out-of-memory killer, not an application error. Check `free -h` above against your peak usage.
- Disk exhaustion presents as unrelated write errors deep in a build. GitHub-hosted runners ship roughly 14 GB of free space, which a Docker-heavy job can exhaust.
- A lost connection to the server on a self-hosted runner is usually the host being reclaimed or rebooted, not a network fault in your job.
- A job that starts and immediately fails with no step output normally failed during runner setup, before your workflow ran at all.

## FAQ

### What causes GitHub Actions concurrency limit reached for repository?

There are 2 common causes: plan concurrent-jobs cap hit and large matrix fan-out. Total simultaneous GitHub-hosted jobs across the account reached the plan ceiling.

### How do I fix GitHub Actions concurrency limit reached for repository?

There are 2 fixes depending on which cause you have: reduce parallel demand or raise the plan and use managed runners for elastic parallelism. Work through them in order, since the first is the most common.

### What does GitHub Actions concurrency limit reached for repository actually mean?

Many jobs sit queued while a few run; the limit is the plan concurrency cap, not minutes.

### How do I stop GitHub Actions concurrency limit reached for repository happening again?

Right-size matrix fan-out to the available concurrency. The prevention section lists 2 changes that keep it from recurring.

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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