Estimate your monthly GitHub Actions bill on the January 2026 runner rates — and see what the same workload cost before the price cut.
| Runner | Minutes | Rate (now) | Rate (before) | Cost now | Cost before |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | 3,000 | $0.006/min | $0.008/min | $6.00 | $8.00 |
| Windows | 0 | $0.01/min | $0.016/min | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| macOS | 0 | $0.062/min | $0.08/min | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Hosted runner price cut effective 2026-01-01: Linux $0.008→$0.006 (−25%), Windows $0.016→$0.010 (−38%), macOS $0.080→$0.062 (−23%). The $0.002/min self-hosted fee announced for March 2026 was postponed after backlash and has not taken effect. Public repositories remain free and unlimited.
Two things trip people up. First, runners are priced differently: on the January 2026 rates a Linux minute is $0.006, Windows $0.010 and macOS $0.062 — so a macOS job costs roughly 10× an equivalent Linux job, and moving a build to macOS changes your bill far more than optimising the build itself. Second, the included allowance is denominated in Linux-equivalent minutes, not raw minutes: Windows and macOS jobs consume the allowance at a multiple, so your "2,000 free minutes" run out sooner than the number suggests. This calculator converts everything to Linux-equivalent minutes first, works out what fraction sits above the allowance, then applies each runner's own rate to that fraction only — which is why adding a macOS job can push a previously free pipeline into a bill.
The allowance is consumed in Linux-equivalent minutes, so a macOS minute eats about 10 Linux minutes of headroom. Billing then applies per-runner rates to the portion above the allowance.
A team runs 3,000 Linux minutes a month in a private repository on the Free plan, which includes 2,000 Linux-equivalent minutes.
What do you call a nosy pepper?
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