Guides: GitHub Actions billing and runners

What GitHub charges for Actions, why jobs stop when a budget runs out, and the minutes a month above which a flat-price runner is the lower bill.

• 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 one, and the break-even in minutes

  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, the job-minutes a month above which a flat price is lower than GitHub's runners, and which jobs Skipbox doesn't run.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• "The job was not started because an Actions budget is preventing further use": what it means and how to get CI running

  GitHub Actions refuses jobs with this message when a budget set to stop usage is spent. Which budget it is (product, SKU, repository, cost center or enterprise), whether included minutes run with a $0 budget, who can raise it in Billing & Licensing, re-running the refused jobs, when it lifts on its own, and how to keep it from coming back.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• When do GitHub Actions minutes reset, and how do you keep CI running until then?

  GitHub's included Actions usage resets at 00:00 UTC on the 1st of each month, in your time zone, and doesn't roll over. Since October 28, 2026 it's a dollar amount ($12, $18 or $300 by plan), so the minutes it buys depend on the runner. How to see what's left, what happens when it runs out, and how to keep jobs running until the 1st.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• How many free GitHub Actions minutes do private repositories get in 2026?

  GitHub now includes dollars, not minutes: $12 a month on GitHub Free, $18 on Pro and Team, and $300 on Enterprise Cloud (GitHub Docs, read November 9, 2026). On ubuntu-latest that is 2,000, 3,000 and 50,000 minutes; on Windows, macOS and larger runners it is fewer. The amounts by plan and runner, what GitHub's docs changed on October 28, 2026, what never counts, when it resets, and what happens past it.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• ubuntu-latest runner specs: CPU, memory, disk and what's installed (2026)

  On a private repository, GitHub's ubuntu-latest runner has 2 CPUs, 8 GB of RAM and a 14 GB SSD; on a public repository, 4 CPUs and 16 GB (GitHub Docs, read November 9, 2026). The label is moving from Ubuntu 24.04 to 26.04 between October 19 and November 19, 2026. The specs of every GitHub Linux runner, what the image has installed, a step that prints the runner's real specs, the signs a job needs more, and where to get a bigger machine.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• GitHub Actions too expensive? Find what's driving the bill, then cut it

  A GitHub Actions bill is each job's minutes, rounded up to the whole minute, times its runner's rate, less your plan's included compute. How to find the workflow that costs the most in the detailed usage report, eight cuts with the YAML for each (concurrency, paths filters, fewer tiny jobs, timeouts, smaller runners, caching, less macOS, artifact retention), what each saves, and when a flat price fits the heavy Linux jobs.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• What does Claude Code's GitHub Action cost? API usage plus Actions minutes

  Claude Code's GitHub Action has two bills: Anthropic's, for the model, through an API key or a Claude subscription's OAuth token, and GitHub's, for the runner minutes the job uses, at $0.006 a minute on ubuntu-latest in a private repository past your plan's included compute. What each part costs, the arithmetic for a review job, Copilot code review and Agentic Workflows minutes, and how to keep both down.

  Updated November 9, 2026

• GitHub Actions "exit code 137" or "JavaScript heap out of memory": why the job was killed and how to fix it

  Exit code 137 is 128 + 9: the process was killed with SIGKILL, on a GitHub-hosted runner almost always by the Linux out-of-memory killer, because the job used more than the runner's memory (8 GB on ubuntu-latest in a private repository). How to confirm it, the fixes for Node, Gradle and other JVMs, Rust and C++, Jest, Vitest and Playwright, Docker, swap, and the runners with more memory.

  Updated November 9, 2026