Self-hosted runner pricing for public repositories is ambiguous and seems to imply it is paid unlike the announcement #41900
Description
Code of Conduct
- I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct
What article on docs.github.com is affected?
- https://docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-actions
- https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/runners/self-hosted-runners
- https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing
- https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/billing-and-usage
What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?
The GitHub Resources article on the self-hosted runner announcement today states:
Standard GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runner usage on public repositories will remain free.
The changelog and associated email sent out were more ambiguous on this matter. It still read to me like it was going to be free for public repositories, but it still lead to many concerns online for everyone that self-hosted is becoming paid for all users since most wouldn't have clicked through to the GitHub Resources article.
I nevertheless turned to the docs for clarification just in case the GitHub Resources article was mistaken and to my surprise almost all of the references seem to imply it isn't free for public repositories. For example on https://docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-actions:
- Self-hosted runners: You will be charged for using the GitHub Actions cloud platform from March 1, 2026.
- GitHub-hosted runners: The charge for using actions minutes in private and internal repositories will include the cost of using the cloud platform from January 1, 2026.
GitHub-hosted runners explicitly state it is only charged for private and internal while self-hosted point simply says "you will be charged". This reads to me like the repository visibility is irrelevant and it is always charged, but the general implicit vs explicit nature of the wording is confusing.
- Standard, GitHub-hosted runners
- Public repositories: Free to use, see Choosing the runner for a job.
- Private and internal repositories: Free until your plan quota is empty, then billed for minutes and storage use
- Larger, GitHub-hosted runners: Billed for minutes and storage
- Self-hosted runners on the GitHub Actions cloud platform: Free until your plan quota is empty, then billed for cloud platform use from March 1, 2026
Again GitHub-hosted has a breakdown of public vs private but self-hosted uses similar wording to that of private/internal, which suggests all self-hosted usage follows the rules of private/internal (i.e. it's billed).
The use of standard GitHub-hosted runners is free:
- In public repositories
- For GitHub Pages
- For Dependabot
- For the agentic features (public preview) in GitHub Copilot code review
NOTE
Self-hosted runners: Are free to use until March 1, 2026.
This again seems to imply that the public repository rule only applies to GitHub-hosted runners.
Similiar wording exists on:
- https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/runners/self-hosted-runners
- https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing
One interesting change was in https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/billing-and-usage where the reference to self-hosted being free in public repositories was removed (ce33310#diff-3bd8e1ec37da292a837a99180c7b5b2e608c3bd1006aa08ce8d7ca41fcdb26d3) but did so in a way that seems to imply self-hosted is only going to be available in private/internal repositories?
Additional information
It's possible the docs are correct and the other articles are wrong. In any case, it would be good to clarify this situation.