Let's face it, sometimes you need faster execution of your GitHub Action workflows.

I've worked for a few companies where the full test suite runtime was greater than 20min, and this is not good for developer feedback.

The usual fix here is to deploy faster self-hosted runners, but then this means you must ensure that those runners stay online, regularly patched, and sufficiently used to justify their cost.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could spawn self-hosted runners on demand, with a large choice of CPU/RAM configurations, and for cheap? This is what RunsOn provides, with up to 10x cheaper runners, and the widest choice of runner types on the market.

RunsOn can be installed in your own AWS account, which means there is no middleman between your workflows and your runner. It also supports both x64 and arm64 architecture, and is a one-line change from your current workflow files.

- runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+ runs-on: runs-on,runner=16cpu-linux,image=ubuntu22-full-x64

Whenever a new workflow starts, a runner is automatically provisioned, and will be terminated as soon as the workflow ends. You only pay the per-minute cost of the runner, and you can easily track your costs in your AWS Cost Explorer page.

Some quick pricing comparison:

The cost is fully open, can be installed in one click thanks to a cloudformation template, and a license only costs $250 once. Find out more at https://runs-on.com