GitHub Actions alternatives: 8 runner options, 10 CI platforms (2026)

For GitHub Actions alternatives that keep your workflows, Lizard (our product) and Ubicloud offer lower Linux rates: on November 4, 2026, their rate cards list Lizard Small at $0.00027/min and Ubicloud Premium at $0.002/min, against GitHub's $0.006/min for 2-vCPU Linux x64. Small has 4 GB RAM; the others have 8 GB. Compare Depot for Docker builds, Namespace for macOS, and RunsOn for your own AWS account. GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, Buildkite and Jenkins replace the scheduler; Forgejo and Gitea also replace repository hosting. Lizard, Ubicloud, GitHub

We build Lizard, which sells GitHub Actions runners; prices checked on November 4, 2026. Rates come from vendor pricing pages and docs linked below.

Should you replace the runners or the CI platform?

Jump to runner prices, monthly bills, CI platforms, or migration.

Can you keep GitHub Actions and use cheaper runners?

Yes. Runner services execute your jobs while GitHub keeps scheduling them. This table covers six managed providers with published Linux rates, RunsOn and ARC, plus GitHub as a baseline; awesome-runners lists more. Prices checked November 4, 2026. Rows are sorted by 2-vCPU Linux rate, lowest first; options without a fixed rate follow. Rates are USD except RunsOn's EUR license. Equal CPU counts do not imply equal speed.

The OS column describes each provider's wider catalog, not what its Linux price buys. Ubicloud's April 27, 2026 post closes Standard x64 to new customers; its docs still list that tier for existing customers. This guide uses Premium for new accounts.

What would 10,000 or 50,000 Linux minutes cost?

Illustrative monthly USD usage charges and bills, using the dated rates above:

Assume a private organization uses only 2-vCPU Linux x64 jobs, in whole billable minutes including setup/teardown, at default placement (Ubicloud Premium in Germany), with no other allowance consumption. Plans are Lizard Pro, Ubicloud, Blacksmith, Namespace Developer, Depot Developer for one eligible user, and GitHub Free, after trials. Exclude storage, remote builders, network extras, support and separately charged taxes; Lizard includes taxes. Equal runtime is an example assumption, not a benchmark.

Apply Ubicloud's $2.50 credit, Blacksmith's 3,000 base minutes and GitHub's $12 allowance once. Depot's $20 plan includes 2,000 runner minutes, rather than a dollar credit; Lizard's $19 minimum includes $19 usage. Ubicloud, Blacksmith, GitHub, Depot, Lizard

Using prices checked November 4, 2026, this 10,000-minute example bills Ubicloud Premium at $17.50 and Lizard at $19. Ubicloud's bill passes Lizard's minimum above 10,750 minutes: (19 + 2.50) / 0.002, assuming no other Lizard usage. Below that point, Ubicloud Premium, GitHub Free or Blacksmith's free tier can cost less than Lizard; GitHub covers 2,000 standard Linux minutes and Blacksmith covers 3,000. The RAM differs as shown, so test your own runtime before choosing.

Which CI platforms can replace GitHub Actions?

These platforms replace scheduling and pipeline management. Entry terms checked November 4, 2026; hosted free plans have limits, while self-hosted software needs infrastructure.

Blacksmith vs Depot vs Namespace

For a Blacksmith alternative, compare Ubicloud Premium for ARM, Germany placement and no published monthly minimum; Lizard for low Linux x64 rates; or RunsOn for your own AWS account. Here are their published terms, checked November 4, 2026:

Sources: Blacksmith prices and setup, Depot prices and setup, Namespace prices and setup.

Faster GitHub Actions: queue time vs run time

First locate the wait. GitHub's plan concurrency limits can queue ready jobs. A job waiting on an earlier job needs a workflow change. A ready job waiting for a machine needs a capacity check; a running job that takes too long needs profiling. Changing runners still leaves GitHub dispatching the work, as its ARC architecture shows.

Compare providers on the same commit and test set, with cold and warm caches. Record queue time separately from execution, and compare the cost of successful jobs, including retries. Our only published runner measurement compares Lizard with GitHub on one job. We have not established a fastest provider.

Leaving GitHub entirely

GitLab, Bitbucket, and self-hosted Forgejo or Gitea can host repositories as well as CI. Plan to move repositories, issues, pull requests, CI definitions, secrets and permissions. Check which collaboration records the destination imports; recreate anything it cannot carry over. Git history alone is not the whole project.

Choose a destination from the platform table, then test one repository and a deployment workflow before changing required status checks. GitLab's migration guide covers pipeline translation; Forgejo and Gitea document Actions compatibility limits.

Runner details and trade-offs

Is Lizard the cheapest GitHub Actions runner?

As of November 4, 2026, the vendor rates in this page's runner table put Lizard Small first among six managed 2-vCPU Linux x64 providers at $0.00027/min, followed by Ubicloud Premium at $0.002, Namespace at $0.003, Blacksmith and WarpBuild at $0.004, and Depot at $0.006. Lizard Small and Namespace have 4 GB; Ubicloud, Blacksmith, WarpBuild and Depot have 8 GB. Lizard Medium has 8 GB and 4 vCPU at $0.00054/min. Lizard rate card

The lowest rate does not guarantee the lowest bill. Lizard Pro costs $19/month, taxes included, with $19 usage; extra usage is pay as you go. The example above puts the Ubicloud Premium crossover at 10,750 minutes with no other account usage. Lizard pricing

Lizard runners support Linux x64 on Ubuntu 24.04, for GitHub organizations only. Windows, macOS and ARM jobs stay on GitHub. An organization admin installs the Lizard GitHub App. The 7-day trial requires a card and includes $5 usage; jobs use Small runners, up to 4 vCPU at once. Requirements, trial terms

Lizard's only published frontend image-build measurement records a median 3 min 35 s on GitHub's ubuntu-latest across 54 runs on October 21 to 28, 2026, billed as 4 minutes at $0.024. On Lizard Medium, median VM time was 4 min 27 s across 60 runs on October 29, 2026, costing about $0.0024 in usage. GitHub had 2 vCPU and 8 GB; Lizard had 4 vCPU and 8 GB. Lizard was cheaper and slower on this job. These historical measurements compare different machines and are not monthly invoices.

Ubicloud: ARM, Germany placement and open-source cloud

Ubicloud's pricing docs list Premium at $0.002/min for 2 vCPU and 8 GB. Its April 27 post says Standard x64 is closed to new customers, although the docs retain that tier for existing customers.

Ubicloud offers Linux x64 and ARM runners in Germany without a published monthly plan minimum. Its cloud software is open source; operating it yourself differs from buying managed runners. Its runner catalog does not list Windows or macOS.

Blacksmith: test hardware and cache with your jobs

Blacksmith CI keeps Actions workflows and supplies runners, cache and job diagnostics. Its speed claims come from Blacksmith; our only published measurement is Lizard versus GitHub on one job. Blacksmith supports organizations, not personal repositories. Windows is in public beta, with restrictions on Docker Linux containers. Docker layer caching and sticky disks have storage charges. Runner docs, prices

Namespace: flexible shapes and macOS

Namespace's pricing page defines a Linux unit minute as one vCPU with 2 GB RAM for one minute. Its 2-vCPU, 4-GB shape costs $0.003/min at Developer/overage rates or $0.002/min from prepaid plan usage. A 2-vCPU, 8-GB shape costs $0.006/min at overage rates. Profiles let you choose CPU and memory; extra memory and cache storage change the bill.

WarpBuild: managed runners or your own cloud

WarpBuild's managed 2-vCPU, 8-GB Linux x64 rate is $0.004/min. BYOC charges $0.002 per Linux runner minute plus your cloud bill, with AWS, GCP or Azure support. Managed cache and snapshots can add charges. BYOC requires cloud permissions, networking and stack maintenance. Pricing, BYOC setup

Depot: runners and remote Docker builders

Depot offers Actions runners and remote container builders with separate usage pools. Developer costs $20/month for one user; Startup costs $200/month with unlimited users. Check the team size before budgeting included runner minutes. Depot pricing

Depot's runner docs say Windows runners “don't come equipped with Hyper-v” and “our macOS runner capacity is not fully elastic like our other runner types”. Check those limits against your tools and workload. Exact runner caveats

RunsOn and ARC: control comes with operating work

RunsOn suits teams that can operate AWS infrastructure. Its license excludes EC2, disks, the launching service, cache storage and data transfer. Spot estimates change with the region and instance; they are not fixed managed rates. RunsOn does not support macOS. Costs, macOS limitation

ARC is GitHub's Kubernetes operator for runner scale sets. You maintain the cluster, images, isolation and idle capacity; GitHub still dispatches jobs. See GitHub's ARC docs and how to set up and secure a self-hosted runner.

How do CI platform migrations differ?

GitHub Actions vs GitLab CI/CD

Choose GitLab when you want repositories, review and CI in one product outside GitHub. If only runner cost or speed is the problem, try a runner swap first. As of November 4, 2026, GitLab.com Free includes 400 compute minutes/month, with five users per top-level group; Premium costs $29/user/month billed annually. GitHub Free organizations get $12/month shared compute, with standard Linux at $0.006/min. GitLab pricing, GitHub billing

GitLab's migration guide maps Actions steps to jobs and scripts in .gitlab-ci.yml. Keep build scripts; rewrite triggers, dependencies and reusable configuration. Self-managed Free needs your own storage and runners.

CircleCI vs GitHub Actions pricing

As of November 4, 2026, CircleCI's credit docs price a credit at $0.0006; a medium Docker executor uses 10 credits/minute, or $0.006/minute before allowances. That matches GitHub's standard Linux rate, but CircleCI Docker Medium has 2 vCPU and 4 GB while GitHub's VM has 2 vCPU and 8 GB. CircleCI resources, GitHub specifications

CircleCI Free includes 30,000 credits/month and five active users. Performance starts at $15/month; additional active users beyond five cost $15/month each. Credits also pay for features beyond compute, so compare users, storage and caching. CircleCI plans

Open-source alternatives and workflow compatibility

Forgejo Actions and Gitea Actions keep Actions-style YAML; Jenkins and Woodpecker use their own formats. You can host all of them yourself and operate the infrastructure. Gitea describes mostly compatible Actions; Forgejo aims for familiarity rather than strict compatibility. Check runner images, contexts, permissions, OIDC and deployment settings. Forgejo differences, Gitea differences, Woodpecker syntax

Depot CI: retain syntax, change the scheduler

Depot CI's migration command copies workflows and local actions into .depot/, while GitHub workflows can run in parallel. Its sandbox allowance is separate from the Actions runner allowance. Windows and macOS Actions-runner labels do not work in Depot CI. Review the migration flow and compatibility matrix.

Why look for an alternative to GitHub Actions?

• Cost: GitHub lists standard Linux at $0.006/min and macOS at $0.062/min, rounding each job up to a minute. Prices
• Queues: distinguish plan limits from job dependencies and machine waits. Diagnosis
• Outages: GitHub's October 30, 2026 incident delayed Actions and webhooks; third-party runners depend on those services too. Incident
• Lock-in: changing schedulers means reviewing events, permissions and deployment rules. GitLab migration

GitHub postponed its announced self-hosted fee, and its billing docs, checked November 4, 2026, still list self-hosted usage as free; our GitHub Actions price list and fee history has the details.

How much migration work should you expect?

For a runner swap, connect the provider, then change one eligible job's runs-on label. Namespace uses profiles; RunsOn requires an AWS stack; ARC requires a Kubernetes runner scale set. Keep the job's existing steps and test its images and caches. This fragment selects Lizard Small:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: lizard-small-ubuntu-2404
    # Keep this job's existing steps here.

An organization admin must install the Lizard GitHub App first. Lizard's wizard can open one pull request changing runner labels and optionally replacing checkout, cache and Docker actions. The action swaps are optional; on other runners, Lizard's replacement actions fall back to the standard ones. Lizard migration

Keep the old label so you can revert. Test installed tools, memory, network access and cold caches; a remote builder or cache action may need its own rollback.

For a platform migration:

1. Inventory events, dependencies, matrices, actions, caches, artifacts, secrets and approvals.
2. Reuse build scripts; translate pipeline configuration or check Actions compatibility.
3. Run both CI systems on the same commits, with production deployment enabled in only the intended system.
4. Compare results and artifacts; test pull requests, schedules, release tags and failures.
5. Change required status checks and credentials after the new pipeline works; retain a tested way back.

Start with the chosen provider's setup or migration docs linked above and one repository. If your CI is Linux x64 in a GitHub organization, start Lizard's 7-day trial ($5 usage, card required), check the runner requirements and plan terms, then compare one job's runtime and cost before moving the rest.

Frequently asked questions

Is GitHub Actions free for open-source projects? Yes: GitHub's billing docs, checked November 4, 2026, make standard GitHub-hosted runner compute free for public repositories; larger runners are paid. Other allowances include Blacksmith's 3,000 base Linux minutes/month and Ubicloud's $2.50 monthly credit, but moving free work needs another reason. GitHub billing, Blacksmith, Ubicloud

Is there a free alternative to GitHub Actions for private repositories? As of November 4, 2026, GitLab.com Free includes 400 compute minutes/month, CircleCI Free 30,000 credits and five active users, Bitbucket Free 50 build minutes for up to five users, and Buildkite Free up to five users, with compute charges to check separately. Jenkins, Forgejo, Gitea and Woodpecker have free software, but you fund infrastructure. GitLab, CircleCI, Bitbucket, Buildkite

Which open-source alternative keeps familiar workflows? Gitea Actions and Forgejo Actions keep Actions-style YAML, with documented compatibility limits. Review permissions, runner images and deployments before moving. ARC keeps GitHub Actions itself, including its scheduler. Gitea differences, Forgejo differences

Is BuildJet still available? No. BuildJet's shutdown notice says its runners became unavailable on March 31, 2026. Replace buildjet-* labels and buildjet/cache as its migration instructions describe. As of November 4, 2026, runner replacements include managed services such as Lizard, Ubicloud Premium, Blacksmith, Namespace, WarpBuild and Depot, or RunsOn in your AWS account. Do not choose BuildJet from an older list.