Estimate your runner bill
Pick the CI you run today, an architecture and a size, and see a month on its machines next to the same jobs on BuildPulse. Both sides' free allowances are taken off, and any fee your CI still charges on our minute is added back, so the number is the one you would see on an invoice.
vCPU
A month of CI at 10,000 GitHub minutes on 2 vCPU x64
runs-on: bp-ubuntu-latest-x64-2x
GitHub-hosted
$42
10,000 min · 3,000 included · 7,000 × $0.006
BuildPulse
$8
5,000 min · 3,000 free · 2,000 × $0.004
Twice the speed, half the minutes.
See the benchmark →You pay
81% less
at 10,000 GitHub minutes a month
$0.004/min, not $0.006/min, for half as many minutes, and the first 3,000 free every month.
| Linux x64 | Memory | BuildPulse | GitHub | Depot | Total vs GitHub |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU | 8 GB | $0.004 | 67% less | ||
| 4 vCPU | 16 GB | $0.008 | 67% less | ||
| 8 vCPU | 32 GB | $0.016 | 64% less | ||
| 16 vCPU | 64 GB | $0.032 | 62% less | ||
| 32 vCPU | 128 GB | $0.064 | 61% less | ||
| 64 vCPU | 256 GB | $0.128 | 60% less |
Per-minute list prices for the same size, September 2026. Depot also charges a monthly plan fee.
3,000 free minutes a month
On every account, renewed monthly. Larger runners use them proportionally faster, so the grant is worth the same whichever size you run.
Flaky test detection included
Every run is parsed for flaky tests and per-test timing. No second tool, no separate bill.
Caching included
Docker layer, dependency and build caches that survive across runs, with no per-GB storage line.
Need your CI to reach a private registry or database behind an allowlist? Our runners leave from four fixed addresses you can allowlist today, and a dedicated egress IP is available on request. Talk to us.
How the estimate is worked out
The month is 10,000 minutes on the provider's own machine, the same example for every CI. Every input comes from the rate card on /pricing and the vendor list prices we read on October 5, 2026. Click a row in the rate table to move the bill to that size.
GitHub Actions
GitHub's 3,000 included minutes a month (Team and Pro, private repos) are taken off its side, and only on 2 vCPU: GitHub charges larger runners from the first minute. BuildPulse's 3,000 base minutes are taken off ours at every size. The rest is GitHub's per-minute list price against ours at 2x the speed, the flat figure the public benchmark rounds to.
CircleCI
CircleCI's 30,000 free credits a month are taken off its side; a self-hosted runner uses no credits for run time, so our minute is our rate alone. The 1.7x speed we measured against CircleCI's Large counts at 4 vCPU only; every other size counts the per-minute price alone.
Semaphore
Semaphore's $15 of monthly credit is taken off its side. Semaphore's $0.0025 a minute self-hosted fee is added to every one of our minutes, free or not. The benchmark put the two 4 vCPU machines within seconds of each other, so no speed factor is applied.
Builds rather than minutes? The compare pages have a per-build slider on the measured medians: GitHub-hosted, CircleCI and Semaphore.
Check the estimate against a real month
The free minutes cover a trial on your own repository. Move one job, run it for a month, and compare the invoice with the number above.
3,000 free minutes every month · No credit card required