awesome-runners 🏃

A curated list of awesome self-hosted GitHub Action runner solutions in a large comparison matrix

Purpose

The purpose of this repository is to provide an overview on self-hosted runner solutions for GitHub Actions compared by various criteria. There is no rating implied as the importance of the various categories differ from use case to use case. Data can be out of date, so if a certain feature is told to be missing, please double check whether this is still the case.

General collection of self-hosted runner best practices

During my research, I stumbled over dduzgun-security/github-self-hosted-runners with ✨ tips ✨ on what to consider when using self-hosted runners by yourself.

A word about self-hosted action runner images / virtual environments and how to test locally

The virtual environments provided by GitHub Action managed runners like ubuntu-latest contain a LOT of pre-installed tools already. If all of those tools were installed in your self-hosted runner, this would result in images > 18 GB. In many cases where you have a better picture for which purposes/platforms you will use your self-hosted runners, this is probably not what you want for performance and maintenance reasons. All of the self-hosted solutions compared allow to define custom images with custom tooling.

If you like to test your custom images with your Actions workflows locally before you expose them to your end users at large scale, you can use nektos/act to specify your own Docker image for a specific runner label using the -P option, see a more complex example here.

The matrix (might be better readable on GitHub pages)

Solution name	Runtime	GHES	RegScope	Scaling	AutoScaling	Architecture	AutoDereg	PATInRunner	CleanUp	Privileged	Exposed	AllInOne	SelfService	IdleCosts
actions/actions-runner-controller	k8s	✅	Enterprise, Org, Repo, Labels, RunnerGroups	k8s manifests & dynamic scaling	✅ (pending + running jobs or percentage runners already busy, check run events, scale up/down and flapping prevention parameters)	x86, AMD64, ARM, ARM64	✅	no	yes (if ephemeral option is used)	yes (install time, optional DinD)	only if github-webhook autoscaler is used	no	yes (IssueOps project available)	actions-runner controller + at least one pod per org runner
philips-labs/terraform-aws-github-runner	AWS EC2/Lambda for Linux and Windows VMs	✅	Org, Repo, Labels, RunnerGroups	Terraform config & dynamic scaling	✅ (pending jobs in org/repo, scale up/down and flapping prevention parameters)	x86, AMD64, ARM, ARM64	✅	no	yes (if ephemeral option is used)	no	yes (GitHub check_run events)	yes (at least intended this way)	yes (IssueOps project available)	no (only Lambdas, KMS, queue service, API gateway)
myoung34/docker-github-actions-runner	Docker	✅	Org, Repo, Labels, RunnerGroups	docker-compose, Nomad & k8s examples	❌	x86, ARM64, ARM	✅	yes	no	yes (DinD)	no	no	no	no
evryfs/github-actions-runner-operator	k8s	✅	Organization, Repo	yes (k8s manifests define max and min)	✅ scales up to min runners ASAP, then adds one runner at a time up to max if all current runners are busy, scales down idle runners up to min	x86	✅	no	yes (ephemeral from v0.10.0)	yes (install time, optional DinD)	no	no	no	actions-runner controller
MonolithProjects/ansible-github_actions_runner	bare metal/VM	✅	Organization, Repo, Labels	based on Ansible playbook	❌	x86, AMD64, ARM, ARM64	explicitly in playbook	no	no	install Ansible agents	Ansible agents	possible	no	Ansible agents
SanderKnape/github-runner	Docker	❌	Org, Repo, Labels	k8s manifest example	❌	x86	✅	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no
machulav/ec2-github-runner	AWS EC2	❌	Repo	GitHub Actions workflow params	✅ (1 runner per workflow run that requests it)	x86	part of Actions workflow	no	yes (ephemeral)	no	embedded in GitHub Action workflow	possible	yes (Actions Workflow)	no
terraform-google-modules/terraform-google-github-actions-runners	k8s (GKE), Docker, VMs (GCE)	❌	Repo	Terraform config/k8s manifests	only on k8s, based on generic pod CPU consumption (HPA metric)	x86	only worked for Docker	yes	no	no	no	VMs could be configured like this	no	at least one idle runner to allow HPA to kick in based on CPU consumption
github-developer/self-hosted-runners-anthos	k8s (Anthos GKE)	❌	Repo	Terraform config/k8s manifests	only on k8s, based on generic pod CPU consumption (HPA metric)	x86	✅	yes	no	yes, for DinD (can be turned off)	no	no	no	at least