This is going to be the downfall of GA
(I work exclusively on public repo open source at the moment, and get Github actions for free).
It does? I feel like it implies that they want third-party runners like Blacksmith out of the ecosystem, which is why they're now financially penalizing customers who use them.
- Introducing a cheap 1-core runner
- Lowering the price of GitHub-hosted runners
- Making it slightly more expensive to use self-hosted runners
- There is actually a fourth one: the vnet integration, which also allows you to run public runners in your own infra
As a bonus, for some people it means something that was free is now not free. Those who are willing to pay rather than go, might prefer to use GitHub-hosted if they are going to pay anyway.
This is clearly an incentive to use github-hosted, and their sales reps are also going this way.
1. Services like blacksmith and WarpBuild (I'm the founder) are still cheaper than GitHub hosted runners, even after including the $0.002/min self-hosting tax.
2. The biggest lever for controlling costs now is reducing the number of minutes used in CI. Given how slow Github's runners are, or even the ones on AWS compared to our baremetal processor single core performance + nvme disks, it makes even more sense to use WarpBuild. This actually makes a better case for moving from slow AWS instances running with actions-runner-controller etc. to WarpBuild!
3. Messaging this to most users is harder since the first reaction is that Github options make more sense. After some rational thought, it is the opposite.
Overall - it is worse for Github users, but options like blacksmith and WarpBuild are still the better option.
That's not true for _all GitHub Actions usage_.
https://resources.github.com/actions/2026-pricing-changes-fo...
> Standard GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runner usage on public repositories will remain free.
Basically I'll gladly pay for a service, but I don't like getting locked into that service. If the payed service is using FOSS, I will always have the option to migrate if the provider starts to misbehave
Not sure about the "up to" implications, but I guess it's just Microsoft trying to make github a bit more freemium tm
> And we’re reducing the net cost of GitHub-hosted runners by up to 39%, depending on which machine type is used.
> The price reduction you will see in your account depends on the types of machines that you use most frequently – smaller runners will have a smaller relative price reduction, larger runners will see a larger relative reduction.
The only variable is how long after acquisition before they gut it. It's almost never right away. GitHub was acquired 7 years ago, but it started showing symptoms perhaps 2 years ago.
With this I think it's clear the wound was fatal. GitHub will stumble on for a few more years with ever-decreasing quality, before going the way of Skype.
So, I guess we're all migrating to gitlab? Or is it time to launch gittube? Githamster?
They seem to care much less about free users than in the past but businesses still flock to it. GitLab is the only other platform I’ve seen in the workplace of anywhere I worked, with the exception of a big tech company I worked at. They had both GitHub enterprise and an internally maintained platform which was being phased out. if I recall correctly it based on Phabricator
For example, in our pipeline we have 5 different linter tasks (for different subprojects), running each only a few seconds. Nonetheless, we’ll get billed for 5 minutes on every commit.
the control plane clearly has value to people beyond the compute used for running the actions, and it seems reasonable that they should charge for that if you're using it.
That being said even with no free platform minutes my Blacksmith usage will only $1.20 a month in platform fees, so inconsequential.
What I'd really like to see is some new CI/CD systems though. Actions is garbage in multiple dimensions. Can't somebody do something clever and save us from this flaky insecure YAML hell?
To your second statement, I generally agree. Sounds strange to say given we're in the business of GHA runners. But it's just not a performant or reliable system at scale. This change from GitHub doesn't smell of a company that wants to do right by it's users.
If you are interested in what is up next for us at Depot, feel free to ping me via the email in my bio. I think you'll be quite interested in what we are doing.
Hard for me to feel like our industry is innovating and not just gouging with the rest in the battle for enshittification.
I will intentionally start exploring other options even if the cost isn't high, because I don't want to support this type of thing.
ChrisArchitect•2h ago
GitHub will begin charging for self-hosted action runners on March 2026 https://github.blog/changelog/2025-12-16-coming-soon-simpler... (Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291156)