RISE RISC-V Runners

What hackers pick instead

• Blacksmith runnersDevelopers 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.22recommend
• WarpBuildRecommended as cheaper and faster GitHub Actions runners, including macOS, with an easy setup. Critics note it depends on GitHub's platform and pricing decisions.12recommend
• GitHub Actions self-hosted runnersRecommended for running CI jobs on your own machines, often much faster than GitHub's cloud runners and easy to set up. Critics point to hangs, CPU-hungry sleep loops, and weak support outside Linux.9recommend
• NamespaceDevelopers use it as a faster GitHub Actions runner that fixed their CI problems. The most common caveat is that its custom setup makes switching back to another provider hard.8recommend
• Forgejo RunnerPeople recommend it as a small, solid CI runner that is easy to build and run, and that works well with Forgejo and Gitea.8recommend

Every quote

The 7 most detailed of 9 comments. Each links to the original.

1. I’m concerned about the security/trust model: using a third-party CI orchestrator on top of GHA means trusting them with all of your secrets

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”

2. It seems to be a Linux Foundation project, my trust is implicit higher than what you're claiming.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”

3. The Linux Foundation backing does address the trust question well

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”

4. Sadly still on quite old hardware, with no RVV.

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”

5. it's slower than using emulation

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”

6. No one in their right mind would touch this. It's cheaper to buy the board yourself.

   Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”

7. The idea is to promote testing on RISC-V and to eliminate lack of hardware for being the reason not to.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The RISE RISC-V Runners: free, native RISC-V CI on GitHub”