Hardware

BuildJet for GitHub Actions is built from the ground up to be the fastest CI/CD platform on the market. Starting from the hardware all, orchestrating the runners and custom actions built on top to deliver the faster GitHub Actions experience. Even compared to the best dedicated machine on AWS or GCP, BuildJet is still has a higher single-core performance, is significantly cheaper and is fully managed.

BuildJet for GitHub Actions uses runner tags to specify hardware configurations. Runner tags determine CPU architecture, vCPU count, RAM, and the runner's operating system. These tags are used within the jobs.[job-name].runs-on property in the workflow config. Please refer to the Run your first workflow guide for more information on how to use the runner tag.

If you want to use Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04, simply replace 2204 with 1804 or 2004 in the runner tag.

The ARM runners only support Ubuntu 22.04. Additionally, the ARM runners doesn't have all pre-installed packages that are available on the AMD runners. For more information, please refer to the ARM Support and Package Compatibility

We are keen to offer macOS M1 runners as part of the BuildJet runner fleet, but there are currently two obstacles in our way.

Firstly, we are waiting for the M1 ecosystem to mature. We tried setting up M1 runners a few months ago but faced numerous compatibility issues. However, the situation is improving daily and may soon be suitable for integration.

Secondly, Apple's Terms of Service prevent us from renting out macOS runners for less than 24 hours. This means that customers would be charged on a per-day basis rather than per minute. We believe this pricing model might not appeal to smaller customers and may not be perceived as fair.

However, if you are a larger customer and would like to run BuildJet for GitHub Actions on a 24-hour basis, please reach out to us at contact@buildjet.com. We are more than willing to explore options and work with you to accommodate your needs.

We can offer Windows runners, but due to the licensing terms of Windows, we can't offer it as part of regular per minute offering. If you're interested in dedicated Windows runners, please reach out to us at contact@buildjet and we'll look into what we can do.

BuildJet provides 64 GB of SSD disk space, allowing you to create up to 64 GB of data during your workflow runs. In comparison, GitHub offers only 14 GB of SSD space.

All BuildJet AMD runners support nested virtualization. This allows for example, Android developers to use fast and affordable runners for their CI workloads.

For more information, please refer to blog post about Hardware accelerated Android Emulator.

The 18.04 and the 20.04 home folder is found in /home/ubuntu and not as with the default GitHub Actions runner in /home/runner.