What 100,000 GitHub Actions minutes cost in a month
At 100,000 minutes a month no plan covers the usage: even GitHub Enterprise Cloud includes only half of it. This page works out the bill for that volume on each standard runner and each plan with this site's calculator, so you can see how much the runner choice and the plan allowance each move the total.
The formula in words
For a private repository, take the minutes billed in the month, subtract the minutes the plan includes, and multiply what is left by the per-minute rate of the runner. Each job is rounded up to a whole minute before it is counted. With several runners, each one's minutes beyond the allowance are billed at its own rate. In a public repository, standard GitHub-hosted runners are free and the result is $0.00.
Assumptions
- 100,000 billed minutes a month, modelled as 500 jobs per working day, 10 minutes per job, 20 working days: 10,000 jobs.
- A private repository. Standard runners only.
- Compute only: plan seats, storage and taxes are left out.
100,000 minutes on one runner, by plan
| Runner | Rate per minute | All minutes at the rate | GitHub Free (2,000 included) | GitHub Pro or Team (3,000 included) | Enterprise Cloud (50,000 included) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux 1-core, x64 | $0.002 | $200.00 | $196.00 | $194.00 | $100.00 |
| Linux 2-core, x64 | $0.006 | $600.00 | $588.00 | $582.00 | $300.00 |
| Linux 2-core, arm64 | $0.005 | $500.00 | $490.00 | $485.00 | $250.00 |
| Windows 2-core, x64 | $0.01 | $1,000.00 | $980.00 | $970.00 | $500.00 |
| Windows 2-core, arm64 | $0.01 | $1,000.00 | $980.00 | $970.00 | $500.00 |
| macOS 3-core or 4-core, M1 or Intel | $0.062 | $6,200.00 | $6,076.00 | $6,014.00 | $3,100.00 |
On GitHub Team, 3,000 of the 100,000 minutes are included and 97,000 are billed; on GitHub Free, 98,000 are billed. At this volume the small allowances barely matter: on Linux 2-core the month is $582.00 on Team against $600.00 with no allowance at all, and $6,984.00 over a year. GitHub Free for organizations bills the same as GitHub Free, because both include 2,000 minutes.
GitHub Enterprise Cloud includes 50,000 minutes, so only 50,000 are billed and every figure in its column is half the full price. On Linux 2-core that is $300.00 a month and $3,600.00 a year, $282.00 a month less than on Team. That difference is compute only; the price of the plans themselves is not part of this data and has to be added before comparing them.
What the runner choice is worth
The runner matters far more than the plan. Moving 100,000 minutes from Linux 2-core x64 to Linux 2-core arm64 takes the full-rate figure from $600.00 to $500.00. The same minutes on Windows cost $1,000.00 and on macOS $6,200.00, more than ten times the Linux x64 figure. A job is not always the same length on every runner, so measure before assuming the minutes carry over one for one.
A mixed workload on GitHub Team
Few accounts run one runner only. Take 80 percent of the jobs on Linux 2-core x64, 15 percent on Windows and 5 percent on macOS. The 3,000 included minutes are spread over the runners in proportion to their minutes.
| Runner | Minutes | Included minutes used | Minutes billed | Cost per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux 2-core, x64 | 80,000 | 2,400 | 77,600 | $465.60 |
| Windows 2-core | 15,000 | 450 | 14,550 | $145.50 |
| macOS | 5,000 | 150 | 4,850 | $300.70 |
| Total | 100,000 | 3,000 | 97,000 | $911.80 |
That is $911.80 a month, or $10,941.60 a year. The 5 percent of jobs on macOS cost about a third of the bill. Included minutes are really used in the order jobs run, so the month can fall between $754.00, if the macOS jobs used the allowance, and $922.00, if the Linux jobs did.
The same mix on GitHub Enterprise Cloud
| Runner | Minutes | Included minutes used | Minutes billed | Cost per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux 2-core, x64 | 80,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | $240.00 |
| Windows 2-core | 15,000 | 7,500 | 7,500 | $75.00 |
| macOS | 5,000 | 2,500 | 2,500 | $155.00 |
| Total | 100,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | $470.00 |
The mix comes to $470.00 a month and $5,640.00 a year, with a range from $300.00 to $640.00 depending on which jobs use the included minutes first.
Use your own numbers. Enter 500 jobs per day, 10 minutes and 20 working days in the free calculator to reproduce this page, then change the plan, the job length and the share of each runner to match your account.