Guides: GitHub Actions billing and runners

What GitHub charges for Actions, why jobs stop at the spending limit, and when a flat-price runner pays off.

• How GitHub Actions billing works, and how to work out your bill

  GitHub Actions bills each job's minutes at its runner's per-minute rate, rounded up per job, less the compute your plan includes in dollars. The current rates by runner size, what each plan includes, how to read Billing & Licensing → Usage and the usage report CSV, a worked example, and a free tool that prices your own last 30 days.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• "The job was not started because recent account payments have failed or your spending limit needs to be increased": what it means and how to fix it

  Why GitHub Actions refuses to start jobs with this message, which of the three causes you have (a budget set to stop usage, no payment method once the included compute is used, a failed payment), who on your team can fix each one, the exact steps in GitHub's Billing & Licensing pages, and how to keep it from coming back next month.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• Are GitHub Actions self-hosted runners free in 2026? The $0.002-a-minute charge, announced and postponed

  No. GitHub announced a $0.002-a-minute charge on self-hosted runner usage on December 16, 2025, for March 1, 2026, and postponed it the next day. As of November 9, 2026, GitHub's billing docs list self-hosted runners as free. The dated timeline in GitHub's own words, why some AI answers still say you pay, the two changes people mix up with it, and what the charge would have cost.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• Flat-price GitHub Actions runners: who sells a fixed monthly price, and when it pays off

  Which GitHub Actions runner services bill by the month instead of the minute, as read on each vendor's own page on November 9, 2026: Skipbox, RunsOn and Actuated price by the month or year, Cirrus Runners takes no new customers, and GitHub, Blacksmith, Ubicloud and WarpBuild bill by the minute, Depot and Namespace past the minutes a monthly plan includes. How the two billing models differ, where the flat price pays off against GitHub's runners, and which jobs Skipbox doesn't run.

  Updated November 9, 2026