Instance Types

Blacksmith runners are 2x faster and costs 75% less than GitHub-hosted runners

Diff Example

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    runs-on: blacksmith-2vcpu-ubuntu-2404

Overview

• We’re substantially faster: We orchestrate jobs over our fleet of modern gaming CPUs which have significantly higher single-thread performance compared to their server counterparts. Blacksmith is twice as fast as GitHub’s decade-old server hardware for most CI jobs. Learn more about our runners here.

• We’re able to provision runners instantly: Blacksmith runs jobs in ephemeral Firecracker microVMs which boot up in less than 3 seconds, regardless of runner size and number of concurrent jobs. We maintain our own homogenous pool of compute, so your CI jobs don’t compete with other on-demand workloads like they would on a hyperscaler like AWS.

• We’re less than half the cost: Our runners are exactly half the cost of GitHub’s per minute. Since Blacksmith runners are also faster, you will consume fewer minutes than on GitHub. Discover your potential savings with Blacksmith here.

• We’re a drop-in replacement: Blacksmith runners boot off of the same image(s) as GitHub’s runners and have the exact same environment. Transitioning to Blacksmith is as simple as changing a single line in your workflow file.

• We co-locate your cache right next to your runners: All official GitHub and popular third-party cache actions transparently interact with our co-located cache which quadruples cache throughput to 400MB/s, significantly outperforming GitHub’s cache backend. Read more about it here.

• We offer unlimited concurrency: Blacksmith runners are not subject to the same concurrency limits as GitHub-hosted runners. You can run as many jobs as you need, without the risk of being queued.

Basics

To switch to a Blacksmith runner, just replace the current tag with the appropriate Blacksmith runner tag.

Runner Tags

x64 Runners

Ubuntu 24.04

Instance Type	Compute	Memory	Storage
blacksmith-2vcpu-ubuntu-2404	2 vCPU	8 GB	80 GB
blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404	4 vCPU	16 GB	80 GB
blacksmith-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404	8 vCPU	32 GB	160 GB
blacksmith-16vcpu-ubuntu-2404	16 vCPU	64 GB	750 GB
blacksmith-32vcpu-ubuntu-2404	32 vCPU	128 GB	1.5 TB

ARM Runners

Ubuntu 24.04

Instance Type	Compute	Memory	Storage
blacksmith-2vcpu-ubuntu-2404-arm	2 vCPU	6 GB	75 GB
blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404-arm	4 vCPU	12 GB	75 GB
blacksmith-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404-arm	8 vCPU	24 GB	160 GB
blacksmith-16vcpu-ubuntu-2404-arm	16 vCPU	48 GB	750 GB
blacksmith-32vcpu-ubuntu-2404-arm	32 vCPU	96 GB	1.5 TB

Free Upgrades

Blacksmith maintains a fleet of bare metal gaming CPUs that these runners are orchestrated over. When our fleet has substantial spare capacity, our system automatically bumps a runner to the next tier, at no additional cost to the user. Example: A blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2204 runner may get bumped to blacksmith-8vcpu-ubuntu-2204 for no additional cost.

Pre-installed Packages

Ubuntu x64

Blacksmith runners are pre-installed with the same dependencies supported by GitHub’s official runner image.

Ubuntu ARM

Blacksmith ARM runners are pre-installed with the same dependencies supported by GitHub’s official ARM runner image.

Windows x64

Blacksmith Windows runners are based on GitHub’s official Windows runner image but with some exclusions optimized for VM performance:

Not included:

• Visual Studio (full IDE) - VS Build Tools 2022 is available instead
• Visual Studio Extensions
• EdgeDriver - Chrome and ChromeDriver are available
• WinAppDriver - headless VM environment
• Azure Cosmos DB Emulator

If you require any of these components for your workflows, please contact support.

Pricing

For pricing, please visit our pricing page.

FAQ

Is there a free tier?

Blacksmith provides 3000 x64 2vCPU minutes for free per month per organization. These minutes can be used on runners with higher vCPU counts, but the minutes will be consumed at a higher rate proportional to the vCPU count. For instance, a job taking 10 minutes on a 4vCPU runner would consume the equivalent of 20 2vCPU minutes and a job taking 10 minutes on an 8vCPU runner would consume the equivalent of 40 2vCPU minutes.

Note that ARM runners may also utilize the free minutes. For billing purposes, 1 ARM vCPU minute = 0.625 x64 2vCPU minutes. The same conversion rate applies proportionally to runners with higher vCPU counts. For example, a job running for 10 minutes on an ARM 4vCPU runner would consume 12.5 x64 2vCPU minutes.

Windows runners may also utilize the free minutes. For billing purposes, 1 Windows vCPU minute = 2 x64 vCPU minutes. The same conversion rate applies proportionally to runners with higher vCPU counts. For example, a job running for 10 minutes on a Windows 4vCPU runner would consume 80 x64 2vCPU minutes. Note that Blacksmith Windows runners are still half the cost of equivalent GitHub-hosted Windows runners.

What are the concurrency limits?

Blacksmith does not impose any concurrency limits i.e., limits on how many vCPUs or jobs that can be run simultaneously. Our mission is to offer a truly serverless experience for your CI.

Do I need to worry about queuing?

No. A common complaint from customers migrating from GitHub-hosted runners or self-hosted setups are the long wait times for a job to be picked up by larger runners (8vCPU+), especially during peak hours. All Blacksmith runner configurations (2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 vCPU) are instantly available on demand.

We maintain our own homogenous pool of compute, so your CI jobs don’t compete with other on-demand workloads like they would on hyperscalers like AWS, GCP or Azure. This helps our customers aggressively shard their test suites and deploy pipelines without worrying about queued jobs due to a lack of available runners.