RunsOn
Shares rank 4 of 9 ci runners by recommenders
People recommend it for cheaper, fixed-cost self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on your own AWS account. Critics note it is AWS-only and cannot build iOS apps on EC2 Macs.
People recommend it for cheaper, fixed-cost self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on your own AWS account. Critics note it is AWS-only and cannot build iOS apps on EC2 Macs.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: 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
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, 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
Cheaper than GitHub-hosted runners
“Pretty great if you want to get off expensive GH actions boxes and do self hosting”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Our GitHub Actions bill kept climbing, so we moved CI to one box” “Better instance choice, much cheaper, and you can setup an AWS budget alert.”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “They also say that they're much cheaper than github”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “GitHub Actions down again today” - Comment from 11 Apr 2026 on Hacker News
Good for self-hosting GitHub runners
“If you want a 'fixed' cost option for GitHub self hosted runners on your AWS I can't recommend https://runs-on.com/ enough.”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “Pretty great if you want to get off expensive GH actions boxes and do self hosting”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Our GitHub Actions bill kept climbing, so we moved CI to one box” “had a few glitches but largely been great for using AWS instances for runners”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Actions is the weakest link” Better performance and instance choice
“Better instance choice, much cheaper, and you can setup an AWS budget alert.”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “Having faster CI compute would reduce a big negative of Rust”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “One year of Dioxus fullstack in production: the good, the painful” “self host via runs-on.com for cost and performance”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 on Hacker News Alternative to persistent self-hosted runners
“you'll probably hit limits with the persistent self hosted runner approach, and end up with something like runs-on”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Self-hosting our GitHub Action runners” “JIT runners allow a lot of flexibility that we don't find elsewhere.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Glitches and runner cancellations
“had a few glitches but largely been great for using AWS instances for runners”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Actions is the weakest link” “even with runs-on it is a bit painful with runner cancellations”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”
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 runners | 22 | 21 | 51% | 8 | — | — |
| WarpBuild | 12 | 2 | 86% | 8 | — | Approved |
| GitHub Actions self-hosted runners | 9 | 25 | 26% | 6 | — | — |
| RunsOnThis page | 8 | 3 | 73% | 8 | — | — |
| Namespace | 8 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
14 of the 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Having faster CI compute would reduce a big negative of Rust”
“Shame this is AWS specific and not just a Docker image”
“Pretty great if you want to get off expensive GH actions boxes and do self hosting”
“Doesn't support EC2 Macs, so you can't use this to build iOS apps.”
“If you want a 'fixed' cost option for GitHub self hosted runners on your AWS I can't recommend https://runs-on.com/ enough.”
“Better instance choice, much cheaper, and you can setup an AWS budget alert.”
“I think both of these provide nodes that are scheduled using GitHub's control plane.”
“They also say that they're much cheaper than github”
“had a few glitches but largely been great for using AWS instances for runners”
“I'm the founder of runs-on.com, we should talk!”
“self host via runs-on.com for cost and performance”
“you'll probably hit limits with the persistent self hosted runner approach, and end up with something like runs-on”
“even with runs-on it is a bit painful with runner cancellations”
“JIT runners allow a lot of flexibility that we don't find elsewhere.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.