GitHub Actions 2026: What's Changing?

GitHub has announced changes to its Actions pricing model for January 2026. The good news: After community feedback, some original plans have been revised.

The Key Changes

GitHub-Hosted Runners:

  • Price reduction of up to 39% for larger runner sizes
  • Smaller runners receive smaller reductions
  • A new cloud platform fee is already included in the new prices
  • Public repositories remain free

Self-Hosted Runners - The Controversial Idea:

  • GitHub originally planned a fee of $0.008 per minute (later reduced to $0.002)
  • After massive criticism, this fee was completely postponed
  • GitHub is "re-evaluating the approach"

Why the Self-Hosted Runner Fee Was a Bad Idea

The original announcement sparked significant criticism from the community - and rightfully so. The idea of charging for self-hosted runners is problematic for several reasons:

You're already paying for everything:

  • The hardware belongs to you and is funded by you
  • Electricity, cooling, maintenance - all at your expense
  • Network and bandwidth are your responsibility
  • GitHub merely provides the orchestration

The "added value" is questionable:

  • GitHub argued with "platform costs" for logs, artifacts, and orchestration
  • These services existed for years without additional fees
  • Other platforms offer comparable features without such charges

The signal to the community:

  • Companies that need self-hosted runners for security reasons would have been penalized
  • Open-source projects with their own infrastructure would suddenly have to pay
  • It creates the impression: First create dependency, then monetize

The original calculation was alarming:

  • At $0.008/minute, heavy users would have paid hundreds of dollars monthly
  • For resources they provide themselves
  • A build server running 8 hours daily: ~$115/month - for a runner you own

The fact that GitHub backtracked after the feedback shows: The community understood that a line had been crossed. But "postponed" doesn't mean "abandoned" - this topic could return at any time.

Who Is Affected?

According to GitHub, 96% of customers are unaffected. Of the remaining 4%, 85% will actually pay less. Nevertheless, this announcement shows: dependency on a platform always carries risks.

Codeberg: The Non-Profit Alternative

Those looking for an alternative should check out Codeberg. Codeberg is a Germany-based non-profit association that operates a free Git hosting platform.

Advantages of Codeberg

  • Non-profit: No profit motive, no investors
  • Privacy: Servers in Germany, GDPR compliant
  • No tracking: No analytics tools, no advertising
  • CI/CD included: Codeberg CI (based on Woodpecker CI) is freely available
  • Community-funded: Through donations and membership fees

Codeberg CI

Codeberg offers Codeberg CI as an integrated CI/CD solution. It's based on Woodpecker CI and enables automated builds and tests - at no additional cost and without per-minute billing.

Forgejo: The Software Behind It

Codeberg runs on Forgejo - a community-driven continuation of Gitea. The name means "forge" in Esperanto and represents forging a better Git platform.

What Makes Forgejo Special?

  • Soft-fork of Gitea: Fully compatible, but with its own governance
  • Community-first: Development by the community, for the community
  • Lightweight: Resource-efficient, runs even on small servers
  • Feature-rich: Issues, Pull Requests, Wiki, Projects, Packages, Actions

Self-Hosting with Forgejo

The best thing about Forgejo: You can host it yourself. Installation is straightforward:

  • Single binary: One executable file
  • Docker support: Official container images available
  • Low requirements: Runs on a Raspberry Pi
  • SQLite or PostgreSQL: Flexible database options

With Forgejo Actions, you can even run GitHub Actions-compatible workflows - on your own infrastructure, without minute limits.

Conclusion

The GitHub Actions 2026 pricing changes may be harmless for most users. But they remind us that platform dependency is a risk. With Codeberg and Forgejo, mature open-source alternatives exist that enable full control over code and CI/CD pipelines - without surprises at the next pricing announcement.