Blacksmith runners
The most recommended of 9 ci runners
Developers recommend it for faster CI builds and tests and lower cost than GitHub-hosted runners. Critics say a free trial led to unexpected charges and weak support.
Developers recommend it for faster CI builds and tests and lower cost than GitHub-hosted runners. Critics say a free trial led to unexpected charges and weak support.
43 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 22
- criticize it
- 21
- approval share
- 51%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster tests and builds
“Massively sped up tests and a huge improvement for Docker builds”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst” “love to hear we've helped speed up your tests and docker builds”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst” “have been pretty happy with how fast and inexpensive they are”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “AI coding has made CI a bottleneck, so we reworked ours to keep up” - Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “GitHub Incident with Actions, Pages, and Webhooks”
- Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service”
Lower cost than GitHub runners
“Services like blacksmith and WarpBuild (I'm the founder) are still cheaper than GitHub hosted runners”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “using WarpBuild/blacksmith runners remains the cheaper option”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “have been pretty happy with how fast and inexpensive they are”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “AI coding has made CI a bottleneck, so we reworked ours to keep up” - Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unexpected charges after free trial
“giving us an unpleasant surprise and a prickly support exchange”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “it implies Blacksmith knows they're being shady: if you know you're not going to pursue it, why did you invoice the customer in the first place?”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “a business would take an approach to a free trial that risks leaving such a sour taste in a prospect's mouth”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” - Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000”
- Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000”
- Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000”
Depends on GitHub's outages
“that didn't shield us from this as GitHub actions is still the control plane for triggering and monitoring them”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “GitHub Actions down again today” “They run on top of GH, so if GH goes down, so does Blacksmith, every time”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com” “they've had multiple outages in the last week”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com” Poor support and communication
“giving us an unpleasant surprise and a prickly support exchange”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “this feels like damage control”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “BlackSmith should get in this thread and explain themselves.”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” - Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000”
Other ci runners people recommend
The four most recommended other ci runners, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blacksmith runnersThis page | 22 | 21 | 51% | 8 | — | — |
| WarpBuild | 12 | 2 | 86% | 8 | — | Approved |
| GitHub Actions self-hosted runners | 9 | 25 | 26% | 6 | — | — |
| RunsOn | 8 | 3 | 73% | 8 | — | — |
| Namespace | 8 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
37 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“cut our ci times by about 4x on almost all of our workflows”
“have been pretty happy with how fast and inexpensive they are”
“They run on top of GH, so if GH goes down, so does Blacksmith, every time”
“they've had multiple outages in the last week”
“We use other runners (Blacksmith), and it hasn't helped”
“they chose to hack it the sketchy way”
“a business would take an approach to a free trial that risks leaving such a sour taste in a prospect's mouth”
“our in-product language compounded that issue”
“it implies Blacksmith knows they're being shady: if you know you're not going to pursue it, why did you invoice the customer in the first place?”
“I'm not so sure that Blacksmith is making the right choice around how to handle this signup flow”
“this feels like damage control”
“you deceptively communicated what happens at the end of the free trial”
“this kind of surprise gotcha is a major dealbreaker for me”
“Having been a happy customer of Blacksmith, Depot, and Ubicloud”
“please do not reward this scummy behavior.”
“their performance was so spotty and yet I was getting billed for it”
“the billing thing feels scummy”
“I don't know how much I trust Blacksmith or would want to make it hard for myself to move away from them.”
“When you spam your users with too many emails”
“I'm not sure who I hate more, Blacksmith for doing this or OP for being such a doormat about it.”
“giving us an unpleasant surprise and a prickly support exchange”
“BlackSmith should get in this thread and explain themselves.”
“Blacksmith are wrong, but also they’re a YC company- they may be young founders that haven’t run a SaaS before”
“They would also not be working right now.”
“that didn't shield us from this as GitHub actions is still the control plane for triggering and monitoring them”
“have very good reputation - though I've never used them”
“Blacksmith exists and it works pretty well!”
“how modular and readable it is for an automated security tool”
“they are not your platform and they are not in the position to offer you a better service”
“using WarpBuild/blacksmith runners remains the cheaper option”
“providers like blacksmith or self-hosted solutions like the k8s operator being better at operating their very bad runner”
“Services like blacksmith and WarpBuild (I'm the founder) are still cheaper than GitHub hosted runners”
“a caching system that actually works”
“this caching layer only adds costs in some of our projects”
“love to hear we've helped speed up your tests and docker builds”
“Massively sped up tests and a huge improvement for Docker builds”
“half the price, faster and unlimited parallelisation etc.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.