How use of GitHub Actions is measured
GitHub Actions usage is free for self-hosted runners and for public repositories that use standard GitHub-hosted runners. See Choosing the runner for a job.
For private repositories, each GitHub account receives a quota of free minutes and artifact storage for use with GitHub-hosted runners, depending on the account's plan. Any usage beyond the included amounts is billed to your account. Minutes reset every month, while storage usage does not.
Tip
Anyone with write access to a repository can run actions without using minutes for their personal account.
Examples of how usage is measured
- If you run a workflow on a standard Linux runner and it takes 10 minutes to complete, you'll use 10 minutes of the repository owner's allowance. If the workflow generates a 10 MB artifact, then you'll also use 10 MB of the repository owner's storage allowance.
- If you run a workflow that normally takes 10 minutes and it fails after 5 minutes because a dependency isn't available, you'll use 5 minutes of the repository owner's allowance. If you fix the problem and re-run the workflow successfully, in total you'll use 15 minutes of the repository owner's allowance.
- If you run a workflow that generates many log files and a long job summary, these files do not count towards the repository owner's storage allowance.
Free use of GitHub Actions
The following amounts of time for standard runners and artifact storage are included in your GitHub plan. At the start of each month, the minutes used by the account are reset to zero.
| Plan | Storage | Minutes (per month) |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Free | 500 MB | 2,000 |
| GitHub Pro | 1 GB | 3,000 |
| GitHub Free for organizations | 500 MB | 2,000 |
| GitHub Team | 2 GB | 3,000 |
| GitHub Enterprise Cloud | 50 GB | 50,000 |
Note
Included minutes cannot be used for larger runners. These runners will always be charged for, even when used by public repositories.
Using more than your included quota
If your account does not have a valid payment method on file, usage is blocked once you use up your quota.
Paying for additional GitHub Actions use
You pay for any additional use above your quota using the payment method set up for your GitHub account. See Managing your payment and billing information.
Storage is billed based on hourly usage of artifacts throughout the month. Minutes are calculated based on the total processing time used on each runner type during the month.
- To estimate costs for paid GitHub Actions usage, use the GitHub pricing calculator.
- To view your current minutes and storage, see Viewing your usage of metered products.
Note
The billing dashboard may show your Actions usage as a dollar amount ("spend") rather than raw minutes. This amount already reflects any applicable minute multipliers.
Minute multipliers
Each type of runner has a minute multipler that is determined by the operating system and processing power. For example, jobs that run on Windows and macOS runners hosted by GitHub consume minutes at 2 and 10 times the rate that jobs on Linux runners consume.
| Operating system | Minute multiplier |
|---|---|
| Linux | 1 |
| Windows | 2 |
| macOS | 10 |
For full details of minute multiplers for GitHub-hosted runners, see Actions minute multiplier reference.
Example minutes cost calculation
For example, if your organization uses GitHub Team, using 5,000 minutes beyond the included quota would have a total storage and minute cost of $56 USD, with the use of both Linux and Windows runners.
- 5,000 (3,000 Linux and 2,000 Windows) minutes = $56 USD ($24 USD + $32 USD).
- 3,000 Linux minutes at $0.008 USD per minute = $24 USD.
- 2,000 Windows minutes at $0.016 USD per minute = $32 USD.
This example assumes that the baseline runner was used for each operating system.
Example storage cost calculation
For example, if you use 3 GB of storage for 10 days of March and 12 GB for 21 days of March, your storage usage would be:
- 3 GB x 10 days x (24 hours per day) = 720 GB-Hours
- 12 GB x 21 days x (24 hours per day) = 6,048 GB-Hours
- 720 GB-Hours + 6,048 GB-Hours = 6,768 GB-Hours
- 6,768 GB-Hours / (744 hours per month) = 9.0967 GB-Months
At the end of the month, GitHub rounds your storage to the nearest MB. Therefore, your storage usage for March would be 9.097 GB.
Note
GitHub updates your storage space within a 6 to 12-hour window. If you delete artifacts, the available space will be reflected in your account during the next scheduled update.
Managing your budget for GitHub Actions
If your account does not have a valid payment method on file, usage is blocked once you use up your quota.
If you have a valid payment method on file, spending may be limited by one or more budgets. Check the budgets set for your account to ensure they are appropriate for your usage needs. See Setting up budgets to control spending on metered products.
Accounts that have migrated from the old billing platform may contain automatically generated budgets that mirror their previous spending limits.