Short answer
GitHub's free minutes depend on your plan (2,000 a month on Free, 3,000 on Pro and Team, 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud, for private repositories) and reset at the start of each billing cycle; usage beyond them is charged. Options: wait for the reset; move work to public repositories, where standard runners are free; use self-hosted runners, which GitHub does not charge for (you pay for machines and operations); cut usage by cancelling superseded runs and combining short jobs; or switch the runner to a managed service that bills per minute or per second, several with their own included minutes. In CI Bench v1 the managed runners measured cost 52% lower to 84% lower per job than GitHub-hosted at 10,000 jobs a month. Maintained by Vitko, Inc., which sells one of the products measured.
GitHub's included minutes, by plan
| Plan | Minutes per month | Cache storage per repository |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Free | 2,000 | 10 GB |
| GitHub Pro | 3,000 | 10 GB |
| GitHub Free for organizations | 2,000 | 10 GB |
| GitHub Team | 3,000 | 10 GB |
| GitHub Enterprise Cloud | 50,000 | 10 GB |
GitHub Docs, billing for GitHub Actions, read 2026-10-27: minutes reset at the start of each billing cycle; standard GitHub-hosted runners are free in public repositories; larger runners are always charged; usage charges apply beyond the free minutes and storage.
Included usage of managed alternatives, as published
| Provider | $ per minute (2 vCPU) | Included usage as published | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub-hosted runners (ubuntu-latest, 2 vCPU) | $0.006 | Plan-dependent, private repositories only: 2,000 minutes (Free), 3,000 (Pro, Team), 50,000 (Enterprise Cloud); standard runners are free in public repositories | source, read 2026-10-24 |
| Vitko Runners | $0.002 | 2,000 minutes every month | source, read 2026-10-24 |
| Blacksmith | $0.004 | 3,000 free minutes a month | source, read 2026-10-24 |
| Depot | $0.006 | 2,000 GitHub Actions minutes a month on the Developer plan; 20,000 on Startup | source, read 2026-10-24 |
| Ubicloud | $0.00125 | Not stated on the pricing page | source, read 2026-10-24 |
| Sengi | $0.003 | 3,000 minutes a month on 2 vCPU (1,500 on 4 vCPU, 750 on 8 vCPU, or any mix) | source, read 2026-10-24 |
Included minutes are not comparable across providers (different runner sizes, plan credits). See free minutes by provider, cutting the bill inside GitHub, and the cost per job ranking. List price per minute is not cost per job; faster runners finish sooner.
More: all questions answered · 12 options compared · ranked by speed · ranked by cost per job · free minutes.
Provider pages may have changed since 2026-10-27; they are the authority. Method: how the runs were made; data: results.json; every raw record: the repository. Maintained by Vitko, Inc., which sells one of the products measured. Page dated October 28, 2026.