Blacksmith alternatives: what GitHub Actions minutes cost on each
Blacksmith runs your GitHub Actions jobs on its own faster machines when you change one runs-on label, at $0.004 per 2-vCPU Linux minute with 3,000 free minutes a month. Teams still shop around for three reasons. Ubicloud lists the same machine sizes at less than a third of that rate; compliance pushes some teams to keep runners inside their own cloud account; and a runner swap leaves the Actions workflow model itself untouched. Below, three real workloads priced on every option, then what changes in your workflow files.
- Lowest bill: Ubicloud, $497.50/mo for 100,000 minutes on 8 vCPU, against $1,588 on Blacksmith and $2,182 on GitHub-hosted runners.
- Fastest single-thread CPU: Namespace scores 4,675 in RunsOn's public PassMark benchmark, Blacksmith 4,074, GitHub's 4-vCPU runner 3,529.
- Docker builds are the bottleneck: Depot pairs its runners with dedicated container builders and a shared layer cache.
- Runners in your own cloud: RunsOn (your AWS, license from $350/yr) or WarpBuild BYOC ($0.002/min plus your cloud bill).
Cost at real volumes
Monthly cost of 3,000, 20,000 and 100,000 Linux runner minutes
Three workloads on Linux x64 with about 4 GB of RAM per vCPU, the shape Blacksmith, GitHub's larger runners, Depot, WarpBuild and Ubicloud all sell. Small: 3,000 min/mo on 2 vCPU, 1 user. Medium: 20,000 min/mo on 4 vCPU, 10 users. Large: 100,000 min/mo on 8 vCPU, 25 users. All prices are per minute, billed monthly, unless the cell says otherwise.
| Runner | List rate per min: 2 · 4 · 8 vCPU | Small: 3,000 min, 2 vCPU | Medium: 20,000 min, 4 vCPU | Large: 100,000 min, 8 vCPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blacksmith (baseline) | $0.004 · $0.008 · $0.016 3,000 free 2-vCPU min/mo, used up in proportion to vCPU |
$0/mo covered by the 3,000 free minutes |
$148/mo 20,000 × $0.008 − $12 free allowance |
$1,588/mo 100,000 × $0.016 − $12 free allowance |
| GitHub-hosted | $0.006 · $0.012 · $0.022 4 and 8 vCPU are larger runners: Team or Enterprise Cloud only |
$6/mo Free plan: 3,000 × $0.006 − $12 included |
$222/mo Team: 20,000 × $0.012 − $18 included |
$2,182/mo Team: 100,000 × $0.022 − $18 included |
| Namespace | $0.006 · $0.012 · $0.024 pay-as-you-go rate on 2×8, 4×16, 8×32 GB shapes; $0.0015 per unit-min |
$18/mo Developer: 12,000 unit-min × $0.0015 |
$190/mo Team $100 incl. 100,000 unit-min + 60,000 × $0.0015 |
$2,275/mo Business $250 incl. 250,000 + 1,350,000 × $0.0015 |
| Depot | $0.006 · $0.012 · $0.024 plan minutes count at 1×, 2×, 4× |
$26/mo Developer $20 incl. 2,000 min + 1,000 × $0.006 |
$320/mo Startup $200 incl. 20,000 + 20,000 × $0.006 (Developer is 1 user) |
$2,480/mo Startup $200 + 380,000 × $0.006; Business is contact sales |
| WarpBuild | $0.004 · $0.008 · $0.016 no free minutes stated |
$12/mo 3,000 × $0.004 |
$160/mo 20,000 × $0.008 |
$1,600/mo 100,000 × $0.016 |
| Buddy (Accelerated GitHub Runners) | See buddy.works/pricing | Not priced here: we have no verified per-minute rate for Buddy's GitHub runners. Check buddy.works/pricing. | ||
| Ubicloud | $0.00125 · $0.0025 · $0.005 standard; premium (default for new accounts) $0.002 · $0.004 · $0.008 |
$1.25/mo 3,000 × $0.00125 − $2.50 monthly credit (premium: $3.50) |
$47.50/mo 20,000 × $0.0025 − $2.50 (premium: $77.50) |
$497.50/mo 100,000 × $0.005 − $2.50 (premium: $797.50) |
| RunsOn (your AWS) | AWS EC2 at cost plus a yearly license |
$29.17/mo license Starter $350/yr (€300), under 50,000 jobs/mo; plus your AWS bill (not priced) |
$29.17/mo license plus your AWS bill (not priced) |
$29.17/mo license plus your AWS bill (not priced) |
Formula: plan fee + (minutes × per-minute rate at that size) − the included allowance, at the cheapest plan that fits the user count. GitHub seat fees ($4/user/mo on Team) are left out of every row because you pay them whichever runner you pick. Namespace bills unit-minutes (1 vCPU + 2 GB RAM = 1 unit), so a 4 GB-per-vCPU shape costs 2 units per vCPU; on its standard 1:2 shapes (2×4, 4×8, 8×16 GB) the same workloads cost $9, $100 and $1,075, and Namespace reserves unspecified "larger shapes" for Business. RunsOn compute is billed by AWS and changes with instance type and spot price, so we do not total it. Excluded: storage, cache and Docker-cache add-ons, egress, static IPs, Windows and macOS minutes, annual commits and startup discounts.
Sources, checked 2026-11-02: Blacksmith pricing · GitHub Actions runner pricing · GitHub Actions limits · Namespace pricing · Depot pricing · Depot runner types · WarpBuild pricing · Buddy pricing · Ubicloud pricing · RunsOn pricing
The shortlist
6 Blacksmith alternatives worth trying
Ranked for the broad "faster, cheaper GitHub Actions" intent. If you only care about one axis, the badges say who leads it.
Top single-thread score (4,675) among the 93 runners in RunsOn's PassMark benchmark, plus remote Docker builders and cache volumes. Billing is in unit-minutes: pay as you go at $0.0015, or Team at $100/mo with 100,000 included. Plan tiers cap concurrency (32, 64 or 160 Linux vCPU), unlike Blacksmith.
Runners at $0.006/min for 2 vCPU with a shared cache behind actions/cache, and separate container builders ($0.04/min) for image-heavy pipelines. Developer is $20/mo for one user; teams need Startup at $200/mo. Pricier per minute than Blacksmith; worth it when Docker builds dominate.
Same list rates as Blacksmith on Linux x64 ($0.004/min at 2 vCPU) and a bring-your-own-cloud mode on AWS, GCP or Azure at $0.002/min plus your cloud bill. No free minutes are stated, and the BYOC setup is more work than a hosted drop-in.
Accelerated GitHub Runners (x86, ARM, Apple silicon) for the jobs you keep on Actions, plus Buddy's own CI/CD pipelines if you later want workflows off Actions. Not the fastest or cheapest runner here, and we have no verified runner rate: check buddy.works/pricing. Buddy's own pipelines run on Free, Pro $29/mo or Team $299/mo plus usage.
Lowest list price on this page: $0.00125/min for 2 vCPU standard, $0.002 premium, with a $2.50 monthly credit. Open source, so the whole stack can run on your own hardware. Runners sit in Germany, and the premium tier scored 3,605 single-thread in the same benchmark.
Ephemeral EC2 runners from one CloudFormation or Terraform stack in your account. License from €300/yr ($350) for under 50,000 jobs a month, free for open source; compute is billed by AWS at cost. Code and secrets stay in your account. AWS only.
Migration map
What changes in your workflow when you leave Blacksmith
Every option here keeps your GitHub Actions YAML. What moves is the runs-on label, how caches are stored, which Docker build action you call, and how many jobs can run at once. Examples use a 4-vCPU Linux runner.
| Runner | runs-on label | Dependency cache | Docker layer cache | ARM label | Concurrency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blacksmith (today) | blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404 |
Co-located cache behind actions/cache, no extra charge |
useblacksmith/setup-docker-builder@v2 + useblacksmith/build-push-action@v2, $0.50/GB/mo |
-arm suffix |
Unlimited |
| GitHub-hosted | ubuntu-latest (2 vCPU) or the label you give a larger runner |
actions/cache, 10 GB per repository |
docker/build-push-action with cache-from: type=gha, inside the same 10 GB |
ubuntu-24.04-arm |
60 jobs on Team (standard), 1,000 for larger runners |
| Namespace | nscloud-ubuntu-24.04-amd64-4x16 |
Cache volumes: add -with-cache to the label |
Remote builders via nscloud-setup-buildx-action |
nscloud-ubuntu-24.04-arm64-4x16 |
32, 64 or 160 Linux vCPU by plan |
| Depot | depot-ubuntu-24.04-4 |
actions/cache redirected to Depot's cache, scoped per repository |
depot/build-push-action on Depot container builders ($0.04/min) |
depot-ubuntu-24.04-arm-4 |
Unlimited |
| WarpBuild | warp-ubuntu-2404-x64-4x |
WarpBuild cache, on by default on Linux, $0.20/GB-mo | Warpbuilds/build-push-action on WarpBuild Docker builders |
warp-ubuntu-2404-arm64-4x |
Unlimited |
| Buddy | The label from Buddy's runner setup, or move the job into a Buddy pipeline | Not covered in our sources | Not covered in our sources | x86, ARM and Apple silicon runners offered | See buddy.works/pricing |
| Ubicloud | ubicloud-standard-4 |
Transparent cache, on by default for new accounts; actions/cache unchanged |
Same transparent cache speeds up Docker caching | ubicloud-standard-4-arm |
No limit published on the pricing page |
| RunsOn | runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}/runner=4cpu-linux-x64 |
Magic Cache: add extras=s3-cache + runs-on/action@v2; S3 in your VPC |
Magic Cache Docker layer caching, also on your S3 | runner=2cpu-linux-arm64 |
Your AWS account quotas |
Blacksmith's archived useblacksmith/cache and setup-* actions should already be gone from your workflows; if not, swap them back to the upstream actions/* versions first, since every runner above works with those. Label formats are from each vendor's runner docs, checked 2026-11-02.
Method
How we checked
On 2 November 2026 we fetched the pricing pages of Blacksmith, Namespace, Depot, WarpBuild, Ubicloud and RunsOn, GitHub's runner pricing and Actions limits reference, and each vendor's runner-label docs. Every total in the cost table is the list rate at the stated machine size times the workload minutes, minus the included allowance, on the cheapest plan that fits the user count, with the arithmetic printed in the cell. Speed figures come from RunsOn's public PassMark benchmark of 93 runners; RunsOn is itself on this list, and the benchmark does not cover Depot or Buddy.
Common questions
Blacksmith alternatives: common questions
Which Blacksmith alternative is cheapest?
On list prices, Ubicloud: its standard Linux runners cost $0.00125 a minute on 2 vCPU against Blacksmith's $0.004, so 100,000 minutes on 8 vCPU come to $497.50 a month versus $1,588. RunsOn can undercut it at scale because you pay AWS directly plus a license from $350 a year, but that AWS bill depends on instance type and spot prices. WarpBuild matches Blacksmith's x64 rates without the 3,000 free minutes.
Is Blacksmith cheaper than GitHub-hosted runners?
Yes, per minute at every size we checked: $0.004 vs $0.006 on 2 vCPU, $0.008 vs $0.012 on 4 vCPU and $0.016 vs $0.022 on 8 vCPU. For 20,000 minutes a month on 4 vCPU that is $148 on Blacksmith and $222 on GitHub Team after each one's included allowance. GitHub's 4- and 8-vCPU larger runners also require a Team or Enterprise Cloud plan.
How hard is it to switch away from Blacksmith?
For Namespace, Depot, WarpBuild and Ubicloud the core change is the runs-on label in each job. The extra work is Docker: if you use Blacksmith's setup-docker-builder and build-push-action, swap them for the new vendor's builder action or the upstream docker/build-push-action. RunsOn first needs a CloudFormation or Terraform stack in your AWS account, which its docs put at about 10 minutes.
When is Blacksmith still the right choice?
When you want to stay on GitHub Actions with no concurrency cap and no plan tier to manage. Blacksmith's 3,000 free 2-vCPU minutes cover a small team outright, its x64 rates are a third under GitHub's, and its co-located cache works with the standard actions/cache. If cost, data residency and Docker build time are not hurting, there is little reason to move.
Which alternative has the fastest runners?
In RunsOn's public PassMark benchmark of 93 runners, Namespace's 4-vCPU x64 machine has the top single-thread score at 4,675, ahead of WarpBuild's 8-vCPU runner at 4,369 and Blacksmith's 2-vCPU runner at 4,074; GitHub's 4-vCPU runner scores 3,529. Single-thread speed is only part of build time, since cache hits and Docker layer reuse often matter more. Depot and Buddy are not in that benchmark.