GitHub is overhauling pricing for its Actions automation service, cutting the cost of hosted runners while introducing a new charge for customers that use their own hardware.
The Microsoft-owned code hosting platform will reduce the net price of GitHub-hosted runners by up to 39% from January 2026. The scale of the reduction will depend on the machine type.
From March 2026, GitHub will add a charge of USD $0.002 per minute on GitHub Actions cloud platform usage for self-hosted runners. This will cover jobs that run on private repositories when they rely on GitHub’s orchestration layer but execute on hardware that customers manage themselves.
Usage of Actions on public repositories will remain free. Pricing for GitHub Enterprise Server customers will not change.
GitHub said the change will shift more of the cost of its orchestration and management layer on to self-hosted users. These customers previously avoided most direct charges for that part of the product.
The company said that 96% of Actions customers will see no increase in their bill. It said they will instead receive a lower charge or no change.
Among the 4% of Actions users that will be affected, GitHub said 85% will see a decrease in their Actions bill. The remaining 15% of that cohort will face a median monthly increase of around USD $13.
GitHub said that only a small share of individual developers that run Actions on private repositories will see higher charges. It said 0.09% of these users would experience a price increase, with a median rise of under USD $2 a month, after they use their included minutes.
It said a further 2.8% of individual users will see their monthly cost decrease under the new model. The rest will be unaffected.
New platform charge
The new USD $0.002 per minute charge will apply to self-hosted runner usage that runs through the GitHub Actions cloud platform. This usage will count towards the included minutes in a customer’s plan.
Billable self-hosted runner usage will draw down on the same quota as Linux, Windows and macOS standard runners. The free minute quotas associated with each GitHub plan will remain unchanged.
Jobs that run in private repositories on standard GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runners will fall under the revised structure. Jobs that use larger GitHub-hosted runners in any context will also be in scope.
Standard GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runner usage on public repositories will continue to incur no charge. The company said there is no change to the price structure for customers running GitHub Enterprise Server on their own infrastructure.
Customers with an Azure subscription that is linked to their GitHub Enterprise account or organisation will be able to bill their self-hosted runner usage on private repositories through Azure.
Cost alignment
GitHub said the price change follows strong growth in use of Actions for continuous integration and deployment and for newer “agentic” workloads. It said customers that used self-hosted runners have been able to draw on much of the Actions orchestration layer without a direct cost.
The company said the new prices bring charges closer to actual usage and the value the platform provides. It said this will shift some of the subsidy that had supported self-hosted workloads, which came from prices charged for GitHub-hosted runners.
GitHub said its research with customers showed that a per-minute rate is the fairest model for self-hosted runners on cloud infrastructure. It said the USD $0.002 per-minute rate is competitive with other self-hosted continuous integration tools.
The company said it expects the rate to be sustainable for both lightly active and heavily active customers. It said it does not expect the new charge to have a deep impact on those groups.
Product investment
GitHub said it is increasing investment in the Actions self-hosted experience. The company plans to expand autoscaling beyond Linux container scenarios.
It said it is working on new approaches to scaling and on new platform support. It also plans to add broader Windows support over the next year.
GitHub has updated its Actions pricing calculator so customers can estimate their future bills under the revised rates. It has also published a Python script that uses detailed usage reports from the current and prior year.
Customers can use historical reports and the script to model how usage patterns translate into costs after the change. They can also use the calculator if their past usage does not match future expectations.
GitHub provides detailed documentation of the new runner rates that apply from 2026. It has also set out guidance for organisations that want to shift workloads from self-hosted to GitHub-hosted runners.
The company said that as a result of the combined changes it will charge less overall for Actions than in the past. It said most customers will either pay the same amount or see a reduction when the new rates take effect.