$ ~/cicdcalculator

GitHub Actions cost calculator
./estimate --your-monthly-actions-bill

This calculator models your GitHub Actions bill from four inputs (builds per day, average build minutes, runner OS and team size) and shows the result next to GitLab CI, CircleCI, Buildkite and self-hosted Jenkins so you can see where Actions is competitive and where it is not. All rates are the post-January-2026 GitHub-hosted meter prices, verified against the GitHub docs.

~/cicdcalculator/run --compare
live
presets:
$ compute = 20,160 build mins / month$ assumes 21 working days / month

Monthly cost comparison

sorted ascending by monthly spend / linked to vendor pricing pages

cheapest: GitHub Actions / $183/mo
GitHub ActionsPASS / cheapest
Team plan ($80) + 17,160 mins @ $0.006/min
# rate: $0.006/min Linux 2-core all-in
# 3,000 free Linux mins on Team plan
$183
/ month
Linux 2-core baseline. Rates cut up to 39% in Jan 2026; the $0.002/min platform charge is included in the meter price. Self-hosted runners free.
Bitbucket Pipelines
Premium ($145) + 16,660 extra mins @ $0.010/min
# rate: $7.25/user + $0.01/min Linux
# 3,500 mins / month per workspace on Premium
$312
/ month
Tightly coupled with Jira. Best value if your stack is already Atlassian. No hosted macOS runners.
CircleCI
Performance ($240 incl users) + 171,600 extra credits @ $0.0006
# rate: $15/25K credits + $15 per extra user
# 30,000 credits + 5 active users / month
$343
/ month
Medium resource class. Larger machines burn proportionally more credits.
GitLab CI
Premium ($580) + 10,160 extra mins @ $0.010/min
# rate: $29/user + $0.01/min over allowance
# 10,000 CI mins / namespace / month on Premium
$682
/ month
Premium tier baseline. Included minutes are per namespace, not per user. Self-hosted runners run free.
Buildkite
20 seats @ $30 ($600) + 8 agents @ ~$30 ($240)
# rate: $30/user + your own infrastructure
# Personal plan free for 1 user, 3 concurrent jobs
$840
/ month
Bring-your-own-compute. No per-minute fees on self-hosted agents. Agent cost = your AWS / GCP bill.
Jenkins (self-hosted)
Controller + 8 agents (~$310) + admin allowance (~$800)
# rate: Free software + your infra
# Software is open source (MIT). Everything else costs.
$1,110
/ month
Software free. Infra estimate uses public AWS on-demand rates. Admin time is typical, not vendor-quoted.

$ Estimates use vendor-published pricing (re-verified June 2026). Enterprise discounts, regional rates, and resource-class choice will move the numbers. Use this as a starting point, not a quote.

Worked examples: what teams actually pay

# Team plan ($4/user, 3,000 included Linux mins); overage at the GitHub-hosted meter rate. ~21 working days/mo.

Team & runnerBuild profileMinutes/moPlanEst. monthly
Solo dev · Linux10 builds/day × 5 min1,050 min/moFree$0
Small team (5 devs) · Linux40 builds/day × 6 min5,040 min/moTeam$32 / mo
Medium team (20 devs) · Linux150 builds/day × 8 min25,200 min/moTeam$213 / mo
iOS team (10 devs) · macOS30 builds/day × 20 min12,600 min/moTeam$821 / mo
Large team (50 devs) · Linux400 builds/day × 10 min84,000 min/moTeam$686 / mo
Solo dev · Linux

Inside the 2,000 free Linux minutes. No charge on the Free plan.

Small team (5 devs) · Linux

$20 seats + 2,040 billable min × $0.006 = $12.24 overage.

Medium team (20 devs) · Linux

$80 seats + 22,200 billable min × $0.006 = $133.20 overage.

iOS team (10 devs) · macOS

$40 seats + 12,600 min × $0.062 macOS = $781.20. macOS is ~10× Linux and gets no Linux free-minute offset.

Large team (50 devs) · Linux

$200 seats + 81,000 billable min × $0.006 = $486. Compare Enterprise ($21/user, 50,000 included) at this scale.

The rates the calculator uses

# All-in GitHub-hosted meter prices since 1 Jan 2026 (include the $0.002/min platform charge). Source: docs.github.com.

RunnerMultiplier vs LinuxRate / min
Linux 2-core1×$0.006
Windows 2-core2×$0.010
macOS 3/4-core10×$0.062
Linux 4-core2×$0.012
Linux 8-core~3.7×$0.022
Linux 16-core7×$0.042

The announced $0.002/min platform charge for self-hosted runners was postponed and has not taken effect, so self-hosted runner minutes remain free of GitHub metering; you pay only your own compute.

Related deep dives

GitHub Actions deep diveis GitHub Actions free?cost at 2,000 minscost at 25,000 minsvs GitLab CIiOS / macOS CI costcut your CI billall-platform calculator

Frequently Asked Questions

# click any question to expand

How much does GitHub Actions cost per minute in 2026?>
On GitHub-hosted standard runners the all-in meter rates are $0.006 per minute for Linux 2-core, $0.010 for Windows 2-core and $0.062 for macOS 3/4-core. These are the reduced rates that took effect on 1 January 2026 (hosted-runner prices were cut by up to 39%), and they already include the $0.002 per-minute Actions cloud platform charge. Larger x64 Linux runners cost $0.012 (4-core), $0.022 (8-core) and $0.042 (16-core) per minute.
How do I calculate my GitHub Actions bill?>
Take your monthly build minutes (builds per day × average minutes × roughly 21 working days), subtract your plan's included Linux minutes, then multiply the remainder by the per-minute rate for your runner OS, and add the per-seat plan fee. For example, a 20-developer team on the Team plan running 150 Linux builds per day at 8 minutes each uses about 25,200 minutes: $80 in seats plus 22,200 billable minutes at $0.006 equals roughly $213 per month. The calculator on this page does this for you and compares the result against GitLab CI, CircleCI, Buildkite and Jenkins.
How many free GitHub Actions minutes do you get?>
Private repositories get 2,000 free Linux-equivalent minutes per month on the Free plan, 3,000 on Team ($4/user/month) and 50,000 on Enterprise ($21/user/month), plus 500 MB, 2 GB and 50 GB of storage respectively. Public-repository workflows on standard GitHub-hosted runners are unlimited on every plan, including Free.
Why is a macOS pipeline so much more expensive?>
Windows minutes are deducted at 2× and macOS minutes at 10× against your included allowance, and the overage rate mirrors that: macOS runs at $0.062 per minute versus $0.006 for Linux. So an iOS team building on hosted macOS burns money about ten times faster than a Linux pipeline of the same length. Many mobile teams run a self-hosted Mac mini fleet to escape the hosted-macOS meter.
Do Windows and macOS jobs use the free tier faster?>
Yes. The included minutes are measured in Linux-equivalent minutes, so a 2,000-minute Free allowance is only 1,000 Windows minutes or 200 macOS minutes if you run those runners exclusively. This is why teams building on macOS exhaust the free tier almost immediately.
When does self-hosting beat paying per minute?>
Self-hosted runners tend to win once you consistently exceed roughly 80,000 to 100,000 build minutes per month, or as soon as you have meaningful macOS volume. Below that the operator time to run your own fleet rarely pays back against the post-January-2026 hosted rates. The right answer for most mid-size teams is hybrid: hosted runners for the long tail of PR checks, self-hosted for hot paths and macOS.