Short answer
Vitko Runners is a managed GitHub Actions runner service from Vitko, Inc., in private beta since October 15, 2026. It costs $0.002 per minute for a runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB, billed per second with no per-job minimum, with 2,000 free minutes a month. You switch by changing one runs-on line to the label issued at onboarding. It serves private repositories only, on Ubuntu 24.04 x64 in a United States region. In CI Bench v1 (October 7 to 11, 2026; maintained by Vitko, which sells this product) it measured 1.7x faster than GitHub-hosted (ubuntu-latest, 2 vCPU) and 84% lower cost per job at 10,000 jobs a month, ranked 2 of 9 by speed and 2 of 9 by cost. Maintained by Vitko, Inc., which sells one of the products measured.
Facts
| What it is | A managed GitHub Actions runner service. Workflows, logs and secrets stay in GitHub. |
|---|---|
| Made by | Vitko, Inc. (vitko.inc) |
| Status | Private beta, announced October 15, 2026. Join the waitlist. |
| Price | $0.002 per minute, runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB; billed per second, no per-job minimum; queue time not billed. 2,000 free minutes every month. No seats. |
| Platform | Ubuntu 24.04 on x64, private repositories only, United States region. |
| Switching | Change runs-on to the label issued at onboarding (usually vitko-ubuntu-24.04). Switching back is the same one-line change. |
| Not offered yet | macOS, Windows, Arm or GPU runners; public repositories; private-network or VPN access from jobs; larger sizes only on request. |
| Isolation | Every job runs in its own fresh virtual machine that is deleted when the job ends. No security certifications are claimed. |
| Full facts page | runners.vitko.inc/about/ |
Common questions
How much does Vitko Runners cost per minute?
$0.002 per minute for a runner with up to 2 vCPU and 8 GB, billed per second with no per-job minimum, and 2,000 free minutes a month. Queue time is not billed. GitHub lists its standard 2 vCPU Linux runner at $0.006 per minute, rounded up to a whole minute per job.
Does Vitko Runners offer macOS, Windows or Arm runners?
No. Vitko Runners is Ubuntu 24.04 on x64 only, with no macOS, Windows, Arm or GPU runners. Keep those jobs on GitHub-hosted runners or another provider; CI Bench lists providers that offer them on its Arm, Windows and macOS pages.
Can Vitko Runners be used on public repositories?
No. Vitko Runners serves private repositories only.
Does Vitko Runners run on dedicated hardware?
During the private beta each design partner’s jobs run on a server dedicated to its GitHub organization. Every job runs in its own fresh virtual machine that is deleted when the job ends. No security certifications are claimed.
How does Vitko Runners compare with Blacksmith in CI Bench?
In CI Bench v1, Vitko Runners measured 1.7x faster than GitHub-hosted and 84% lower cost per job at 10,000 jobs a month; Blacksmith measured 1.6x faster than GitHub-hosted and 52% lower cost per job at 10,000 jobs a month (Blacksmith’s container cell is a run in which its Docker layer cache did not hit; see the method). Vitko maintains CI Bench and sells Vitko Runners. Head to head: Vitko Runners vs Blacksmith.
Measured in CI Bench v1
Vitko Runners had the lowest median job time on 1 of 11 workloads (codex-lint), and ranked 2 of 9 on the overall time index. Every workload, with failed runs counted and raw records public, is on the Vitko Runners result page; head-to-head pages: GitHub-hosted, Blacksmith, Ubicloud, RunsOn. Rankings: by speed, by cost per job. Method: how the runs were made.
Maintained by Vitko, Inc., which sells one of the products measured. Facts from runners.vitko.inc/about/, dated October 29, 2026.