GitHub will start charging for use of its Actions features on self-hosted environments from next year, though it says the majority of users will not be affected – those who are, have been vocal in reacting.
In a pricing update on December 14, GitHub said self-hosted runners would be charged $0.002 per minute for using its CI/CD platform Actions from March 1 2026, while prices will decrease for other users from January 1.
Responding to concerns from users on X, SVP Jared Palmer said the move “aligns pricing to match consumption and our cost patterns (infra, eng, and support) as usage grows across both hosted and self-hosted.”
He claimed 96% of customers would not see any changes, and 85% of those that would will see their bill decrease thanks to an up to 39% decrease in charges for all but two GitHub hosted runners.
Actions
Actions launched in 2018 as a CI/CD platform allowing GitHub users to create and automate workflows for building and testing code using Windows, Linux, Mac or self-hosted runners, software components used to run jobs.
While some claim the feature has been neglected in recent years, GitHub said public projects have used 11.5 billion Actions minutes in 2025.
GitHub said the introduction of self-hosted runner fees would help it further invest in the feature following improvements to its backend services this year. It added investment would increase in the self-hosted experience specifically with "new approaches to scaling, new platform support, [and] Windows support."
Pricing changes
The self-hosted price matches the lowest tier for GitHub hosted runners on the Linux 1-core operating system. Use of Actions for public repositories hosted on GitHub remains free.
While usage can vary drastically depending on the project using Actions, a team of 20 developers running 10 builds each per day at an average of 8 minutes could see costs reach $70 in a month with 22 working days.
However, one Reddit user who said his business used 1.6 million Actions minutes in November expected its GitHub bill to increase by $3,500 per month.
According to Palmer, the median increase for those set to pay more is $13 per month, or $2 for individual users.
GitHub controversy
Despite the assurances about its limited effect, the change has stirred up controversy with users and reignited pricing and performance concerns with the platform flagged by the Zig language’s decision to leave GitHub in November.
Posting on X, engineer and content creator The Primeagen said the move “feels downright dirty”.
Kyle Galbraith, co-founder of third-party runners service Depot claimed the price change was “GitHub extracting more revenue… for a service that is slow, unreliable and that GitHub has openly not invested in.”
The move also comes just weeks after Atlassian announced it would also start charging for self-hosted runners using the Pipelines tool on its Bitbucket git hosting service.
Similar to GitHub, Atlassian said the decision would help it "accelerate development" and improve support for the feature.
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