Fastest GitHub Actions Runners: 2026 Benchmark

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Fastest GitHub Actions runners: what is actually published

On the only public cross-vendor benchmark, RunsOn's suite last run on 5 November 2026, the fastest 2 vCPU Linux runner on one thread is Namespace at a PassMark score of 4,551, ahead of RunsOn's own runner at 4,245, WarpBuild at 4,034 and Blacksmith at 3,985, against 2,299 for GitHub-hosted. GitHub-hosted still starts a job first, in about 3 seconds at the median against 10 to 27 seconds for the third-party fleets, so the fastest runner depends on whether your job waits on CPU, cache or the queue. Every provider with a 2 vCPU x64 runner in the only cross-vendor suite published in this market, run by RunsOn, which ranks itself in it. Last run 5 November 2026, read 2026-11-12. "Fast" is three questions and vendors answer different ones. A long compile is a single-thread CPU question. A Docker build or a 4 GB dependency cache is a throughput question, about NVMe and network rather than clock. A matrix of 60 short jobs is a queue question, where the time goes before the first step runs. A runner that wins one can lose the other two. The state of the evidence in November 2026: three vendors publish the processor their runners use, one publishes a cross-vendor benchmark that it also competes in, and the rest publish a multiplier in a headline. Latchkey has not benchmarked these vendors against each other, and a neutral benchmark from this site is planned but does not exist yet, so every number below is somebody else's, with who measured it and when. Prices and shapes for all eight vendors are in GitHub Actions runner alternatives; this page is only about speed, and only about speed somebody has published a number for. The one cross-vendor benchmark, and who runs it RunsOn publishes a running comparison of 93 runners from nine providers, 2 to 12 vCPU on x64 and arm64: PassMark single-thread and all-core scores, sysbench, 7-Zip, disk and network, a 4 GB actions/cache save and restore, real builds, and how long jobs wait when 15 start at once. Its CPU chart ranks each provider by the score its jobs reach 9 times out of 10 (p10), so a runner that sometimes lands on older hardware ranks lower, and its last run was 5 November 2026, with 3 to 5 runs per runner since 23 October. It is also published by a vendor that sells runners and ranks its own families in it, which is the first thing to know. Read with that attached, it is the best evidence anyone publishes. Below are its Linux x64 results at 2 vCPU, read 2026-11-12: GitHub-hosted plus the four managed vendors in the suite this site prices elsewhere, one row each, the faster tier where a vendor has two. The note has everything that rule leaves out, including the runner ranked second. Runner label in the suite Single-thread, p10 Queue in a 15-job burst, p50 Processor the run reported nscloud-ubuntu-24.04-amd64-2x8 (Namespace) 4,551 10s AMD EPYC, model hidden warp-ubuntu-2404-x64-2x (WarpBuild) 4,034 13s AMD Ryzen 9 9950X blacksmith-2vcpu-ubuntu-2404 3,985 10s AMD EPYC, model hidden ubicloud-premium-2-ubuntu-2404 2,421 27s AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D github24-2cpu-x64 (GitHub 2-core, the size a private repository gets) 2,299 3s AMD EPYC 7763 on 53% of jobs, 9V74 on 33% Left out of the table, not out of the ranking. RunsOn's own m8azn.large scores 4,245 at a 15-second queue, second of everything at 2 vCPU, and Avrea scores 3,853 at 11 seconds; StarSling has no 2 vCPU runner in the suite. RunsOn and AWS CodeBuild both run in your own AWS account and bill differently: RunsOn charges a flat annual license with no meter and leaves the EC2 time on your AWS bill, while CodeBuild charges per build minute, $0.005 for build.general1.small in its own pricing example, rounded up to the minute (aws.amazon.com/codebuild/pricing, read 2026-11-12), and scores 2,257 at a 21-second queue. Depot and Latchkey are not in the suite at all, so nothing here ranks either of them. Scores are from the 2 vCPU view of the CPU page; queue times are from the burst test on the RunsOn benchmark overview, 75 samples per runner...

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