The true cost of self-hosted GitHub Actions - Separating fact from fiction
Analysis of self-hosted GitHub Actions runners' costs and challenges, and how RunsOn solves these problems with minimal overhead and maximum savings.
In recent discussions about GitHub Actions runners, there’s been some debate around the true cost and complexity of self-hosted solutions. With blog posts like “Self-hosted GitHub Actions runners aren’t free” ↗ and various companies raising millions to build high-performance CI clouds, it’s important to separate fact from fiction.
The Complexity Narrative
Section titled “The Complexity Narrative”It’s true that traditional self-hosted GitHub Actions runner approaches come with challenges:
- Operational overhead: Maintaining AMIs, monitoring infrastructure, and debugging API issues
- Hidden costs: Infrastructure expenses, egress charges, and wasted capacity
- Human costs: Engineering time spent on maintenance rather than product development
However, these challenges aren’t inherent to self-hosted runners themselves. They’re symptoms of inadequate tooling for deploying and managing them.
RunsOn: Self-Hosted Without the Headaches
Section titled “RunsOn: Self-Hosted Without the Headaches”At RunsOn, we’ve specifically designed our solution to deliver the benefits of self-hosted GitHub Actions runners without the traditional downsides:
1. Truly Maintenance-Free
Section titled “1. Truly Maintenance-Free”While some providers claim to eliminate maintenance, they’re actually just moving your workloads to their infrastructure—creating new dependencies and security concerns. RunsOn takes a fundamentally different approach:
- Battle-tested CloudFormation stack: Deploy in 10 minutes with a simple template URL.
- Zero Kubernetes complexity: Unlike Actions Runner Controller (ARC), no complex cluster management.
- Scales to zero: No jobs in queue? No cost. When a job comes up, RunsOn spins up a new runner and starts the job in less than 30s.
- Automatic updates: Easy, non-disruptive upgrade process.
- No manual AMI maintenance: Regularly updated runner images.
2. Cost Transparency
Section titled “2. Cost Transparency”When third-party providers advertise “2x cheaper” services, they’re comparing themselves to GitHub-hosted runners—not to true self-hosted solutions. With RunsOn:
- Up to 90% cost reduction compared to GitHub-hosted runners.
- AWS Spot instances provide maximum savings (up to 75% cheaper than on-demand).
- Use your existing AWS credits and committed spend.
- No middleman markup on compute resources.
- Transparent licensing model, with a low fee irrespective of the number of runners or job minutes you use.
3. Security Without Compromise
Section titled “3. Security Without Compromise”Many third-party solutions gloss over a critical fact: your code and secrets are processing on their infrastructure. RunsOn:
- 100% self-hosted in your AWS account—no code or secrets leave your infrastructure.
- Ephemeral VM isolation with one clean runner per job.
- Full audit capabilities through your AWS account.
- No attack vectors from persistent runners.
4. Enterprise-Grade Performance
Section titled “4. Enterprise-Grade Performance”High-performance CI doesn’t require VC-funded cloud platforms:
- 30% faster builds than GitHub-hosted runners.
- Flexible instance selection with x64, ARM64, GPUs, and Windows support.
- Unlimited concurrency (only limited by your AWS quotas).
- Supercharged caching with VPC-local S3 cache backend (5x faster transfers).
The “Human Cost” Reality
Section titled “The “Human Cost” Reality”The often-cited “human cost” of self-hosted runners assumes significant ongoing maintenance. With RunsOn:
- 10-minute setup with close to zero AWS knowledge required.
- No ongoing maintenance burden for your DevOps team. Upgrades are one click away, and can be performed at your own pace.
- No infrastructure to babysit or weekend emergency calls.
- No complex debugging of runner API issues.
Breaking Down the Claims
Section titled “Breaking Down the Claims”Let’s address some specific claims from recent competitor blog posts:
Claim: “Maintaining AMIs is time-consuming and error-prone”
Section titled “Claim: “Maintaining AMIs is time-consuming and error-prone””Reality: RunsOn handles all AMI maintenance for you, with regularly updated images that are 100% compatible with GitHub’s official runners. If you want full control, we also provide templates for building custom images.
Claim: “Self-hosting means babysitting infrastructure”
Section titled “Claim: “Self-hosting means babysitting infrastructure””Reality: RunsOn uses fully managed AWS services and ephemeral runners that are automatically recycled after each job. There’s no infrastructure to babysit.
Claim: “You’ll need to become an expert in GitHub Actions”
Section titled “Claim: “You’ll need to become an expert in GitHub Actions””Reality: With RunsOn, you only need to change one line in your workflow files—replacing runs-on: ubuntu-latest with your custom labels. No GitHub Actions expertise required.
Claim: “High-performance CI requires third-party infrastructure”
Section titled “Claim: “High-performance CI requires third-party infrastructure””Reality: RunsOn provides high-performance CI within your own AWS account, with benchmarks showing 30% faster builds for x64 workloads than GitHub-hosted runners and full compatibility with the latest instance types and architectures.
For arm64 workfloads, AWS is currently the leader in CPU performance.
Conclusion
Section titled “Conclusion”Self-hosted GitHub Actions runners can be complex and costly, if you’re using the wrong approach. But with RunsOn, you get all the benefits of self-hosting (cost savings, performance, security) without the traditional drawbacks.
Before making assumptions about the “true cost” of self-hosted runners, evaluate solutions like RunsOn that have specifically solved these challenges. Your developers, security team, and finance department will all thank you.