Short answer
Options whose own pages say each job gets a fresh, discarded machine: GitHub-hosted runners, Depot, RunsOn (in your AWS account), the terraform-aws-github-runner module (in your account), Vitko Runners (private beta) and, if you configure it that way, Actions Runner Controller. A statement on a page is a claim, not an audit; ask each provider for its security documentation. Speed and cost per job for the measured ones: Vitko Runners (warm starts + test splitting) 2.3x faster GitHub-hosted at 84% lower cost per job (10,000 jobs a month); Vitko Runners 1.7x faster GitHub-hosted at 84% lower cost per job (10,000 jobs a month); Blacksmith 1.6x faster GitHub-hosted at 52% lower cost per job (10,000 jobs a month); Ubicloud 1.1x faster GitHub-hosted at 83% lower cost per job (10,000 jobs a month); RunsOn 1.2x faster GitHub-hosted at 75% lower cost per job (10,000 jobs a month). Maintained by Vitko, Inc., which sells one of the products measured.
What each page says
| Option | What its page says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub-hosted runners | Run code in "ephemeral and clean isolated virtual machines". | GitHub Docs, secure use, read 2026-10-27 |
| Depot | Builds run on ephemeral EC2 instances that are never reused; single-tenant infrastructure. | Depot docs, read 2026-10-27 |
| RunsOn | Every job gets a fresh EC2 instance in your AWS account, destroyed when the job ends. | RunsOn, read 2026-10-27 |
| terraform-aws-github-runner | Runners are created on demand and terminated after use (ephemeral), on AWS spot instances in your account. | Module README, read 2026-10-27 |
| Actions Runner Controller | Runner scale sets can be ephemeral and container-based; the guarantee depends on how you configure it. | GitHub Docs, ARC, read 2026-10-27 |
| Vitko Runners | Every job runs in its own fresh virtual machine that is deleted when the job ends; during the private beta each design partner’s jobs run on a server dedicated to its organization. | Vitko Runners security page, read 2026-10-27 |
Related: questions to ask a runner service. Vitko sells one of the products named; the statements are restated from public pages and may have changed.
More: all questions answered · 12 options compared · ranked by cost per job · self-hosted vs managed · price per minute.
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.