GitHub Actions Pricing 2026
Plans, hidden costs, and alternatives compared
Prices last confirmed on Oct 2, 2026 on github.com. Same data as Markdown or JSON.
Cite this data: Toolradar, GitHub Actions pricing verified Oct 2026, toolradar.com/tools/github-actions/pricing
GitHub Actions is free.
Verified Oct 2026 from the official pricing page.
Is GitHub Actions worth the price?
GitHub Actions is free for public repositories and includes 2,000 minutes/month on the free plan, enough for most individual developers and small open-source projects.
The real cost kicks in with private repos on teams: Linux runners cost $0.006/minute (2-core), but macOS runners jump to $0.062/minute, 10x more. The pricing is fair for Linux-heavy workflows but punishes iOS/macOS builds severely.
Pricing Plans
Free
Public repos
- Unlimited minutes
- Self-hosted runners
- 6 concurrent jobs
Free (private)
Free
2000 min/mo
- Linux/Windows/Mac
- 500MB storage
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
macOS runner minutes cost 10x more than Linux ($0.062/min vs $0.006/min).
Windows runners cost $0.010/minute, 67% more than Linux. Teams with .NET or Windows-native builds pay significantly more than the headline Linux rates suggest
Artifact and cache storage is shared with GitHub Packages. Heavy Docker image publishing or large build artifacts eat into your storage quota, triggering $0.07/GB/month overage charges
Included minutes are shared across the entire organization, not per-user. A single developer with a misconfigured workflow can burn through the team's entire monthly allocation in hours
Larger hosted runners (4-core, 8-core, 16-core+) are always billed, even for public repositories. Only standard 2-core runners are free for public repos
Self-hosted runners are free to use in Actions, but you bear the infrastructure cost: EC2/VM hosting, maintenance, security patching, and scaling. GitHub does not manage self-hosted runners
Concurrent job limits exist
Free gets 20 concurrent jobs, Team/Pro get 60, and Enterprise gets 180+. CPU-heavy monorepos can hit these limits and queue builds, slowing deployment velocity
Cache storage has a 10GB limit per repository regardless of plan. Large monorepo builds that exceed this limit see cache eviction and slower builds
Which Plan Do You Need?
Completely free for public repos with unlimited minutes on standard runners. Even private repos get 2,000 minutes/month and 500MB artifact storage, generous enough for personal projects
How GitHub Actions compares
5 of 6 direct competitors offer a free plan.
| Tool | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Actions | Free | Yes |
| Jenkins | Free | Yes |
| CircleCI | $15/month, billing unit not specified | Yes |
| Travis CI | $15/month, billing unit not specified | No |
| TeamCity | $1,999/year, billing unit not specified | Yes |
| Buildkite | $30/month, billing unit not specified | Yes |
| GitLab CI | $29/user/month | Yes |
GitHub Actions Pricing FAQ
How much does GitHub Actions cost?
GitHub Actions is free to use. No subscription or one-time fee is required for the core product.
Does GitHub Actions have a free plan?
Yes. GitHub Actions offers a free plan called "Free". It includes: Unlimited minutes, Self-hosted runners, 6 concurrent jobs.
What are alternatives to GitHub Actions?
Alternatives to GitHub Actions include Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, TeamCity. Jenkins is fully free. CircleCI starts at $15/month, billing unit not specified; Travis CI starts at $15/month, billing unit not specified; TeamCity starts at $1,999/year, billing unit not specified.
GitHub Actions alternatives
Direct competitors. Starting prices match the table above.
Sources
- Official GitHub Actions pricing: github.com/features/actions (verified Oct 2026)
- Cite this data: Toolradar, GitHub Actions pricing verified Oct 2026, toolradar.com/tools/github-actions/pricing
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