GitHub Actions billing - GitHub Docs (original) (raw)

Learn how usage of GitHub Actions is measured against your free allowance and how to pay for additional use.

How use of GitHub Actions is measured

GitHub Actions usage is free for self-hosted runners and for public repositories that use standard GitHub-hosted runners. See Choosing the runner for a job.

For private repositories, each GitHub account receives a quota of free minutes, artifact storage, and cache storage for use with GitHub-hosted runners, depending on the account's plan. Any usage beyond the included amounts is billed to your account. Minutes reset every month, while artifact and cache storage usage do not.

Tip

Anyone with write access to a repository can run actions without using minutes for their personal account.

Examples of how usage is measured

• If you run a workflow on a standard Linux runner and it takes 10 minutes to complete, you'll use 10 minutes of the repository owner's allowance. If the workflow generates a 10 MB artifact, then you'll also use 10 MB of the repository owner's artifact storage allowance.
• If you run a workflow that normally takes 10 minutes and it fails after 5 minutes because a dependency isn't available, you'll use 5 minutes of the repository owner's allowance. If you fix the problem and re-run the workflow successfully, in total you'll use 15 minutes of the repository owner's allowance.
• If you run a workflow that generates many log files and a long job summary, these files do not count towards the repository owner's artifact storage allowance.
• Cache storage usage is measured by the peak usage for each hour. Included usage is 10 GB per repository. For a given hour, if a repository has a peak cache usage of 15 GB, then the repository owner will be charged for the 5 GB of usage above the 10 GB included for that hour. The repository owner will only be charged if the repository cache storage limit has been configured higher than the included usage.
• Additional cache storage is $0.07 per GiB, per month.

Free use of GitHub Actions

The following amounts of time for standard runners, artifact storage, and cache storage are included in your GitHub plan. At the start of each month, the minutes used by the account are reset to zero.

Note

Included minutes cannot be used for larger runners. These runners will always be charged for, even when used by public repositories.

The use of standard GitHub-hosted runners is free:

• In public repositories
• For GitHub Pages
• For Dependabot
• For the agentic features (public preview) in GitHub Copilot code review

Using more than your included quota

If your account does not have a valid payment method on file, usage is blocked once you use up your quota.

Paying for additional GitHub Actions use

You pay for any additional use above your quota using the payment method set up for your GitHub account. See Managing your payment and billing information.

Storage is billed based on hourly usage of artifacts and caches throughout the month. Minutes are calculated based on the total processing time used on each runner type during the month.

• To estimate costs for paid GitHub Actions usage, use the GitHub pricing calculator.
• To view your current minutes, artifact, and cache storage, see Viewing your usage of metered products and licenses.

Note

The billing dashboard may show your Actions usage as a dollar amount ("spend") rather than raw minutes. This amount already reflects any applicable minute multipliers.

Minute multipliers

Each type of runner has a minute multiplier that is determined by the operating system and processing power. For example, jobs that run on Windows and macOS runners hosted by GitHub consume minutes at 2 and 10 times the rate that jobs on Linux runners consume.

For full details of minute multipliers for GitHub-hosted runners, see Actions runner pricing.

Example minutes cost calculation

For example, if your organization uses GitHub Team, using 5,000 minutes beyond the included quota would have a total actions minutes cost of $56 USD, with the use of both Linux and Windows runners.

• 5,000 (3,000 Linux and 2,000 Windows) minutes = 56USD(56 USD (56USD(24 USD + $32 USD).
  • 3,000 Linux minutes at 0.008USDperminute=0.008 USD per minute = 0.008USDperminute=24 USD.
  • 2,000 Windows minutes at 0.016USDperminute=0.016 USD per minute = 0.016USDperminute=32 USD.

This example assumes that the baseline runner was used for each operating system.

Example artifact storage cost calculation

If you use 3 GB of artifact storage for 10 days of March and 12 GB for 21 days of March, your artifact storage usage would be:

• 3 GB x 10 days x (24 hours per day) = 720 GB-Hours
• 12 GB x 21 days x (24 hours per day) = 6,048 GB-Hours
• 720 GB-Hours + 6,048 GB-Hours = 6,768 GB-Hours
• 6,768 GB-Hours / (744 hours per month) = 9.0967 GB-Months

At the end of the month, GitHub rounds your artifact storage to the nearest MB. Therefore, your artifact storage usage for March would be 9.097 GB.

Note

GitHub updates your artifact storage space within a 6 to 12-hour window. If you delete artifacts, the available space will be reflected in your account during the next scheduled update.

Example cache storage cost calculation

If you use 3 GB of cache storage for 10 days of March and 12 GB for 21 days of March, your cache storage usage would be:

For cached storage, billing charts and reports show only the cost of usage beyond the included 10 GB. At the end of the month, the Actions Cache Storage SKU would show a use of 1008 GB-Hours.

Managing your budget for GitHub Actions

If your account does not have a valid payment method on file, usage is blocked once you use up your quota.

If you have a valid payment method on file, spending may be limited by one or more budgets. Check the budgets set for your account to ensure they are appropriate for your usage needs. See Setting up budgets to control spending on metered products.

Accounts that have migrated from the old billing platform may contain automatically generated budgets that mirror their previous spending limits.

Further reading

• Understanding GitHub Actions
• Quickstart for GitHub Actions