Github Postponing the Announced Billing Change for Self-Hosted Github Actions
Key topics
GitHub's plan to revamp billing for self-hosted GitHub Actions has been put on hold, sparking a lively debate about the implications. Some commenters, like kevin061, are skeptical, interpreting the postponement as a temporary reprieve before the changes are implemented, while others, like thomascountz, point out that "postponing" simply means delaying, not canceling. The discussion also touches on the financials, with sltr questioning whether GitHub's $184 million in "build minutes" given away to support open-source software is a loss or profit. As the community digests the news, some are calling for more transparency, with baggachipz urging people to rely on official company communications rather than Twitter announcements.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Moderate engagementFirst comment
16m
Peak period
7
0-3h
Avg / period
2.6
Based on 26 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Dec 17, 2025 at 2:33 PM EST
16 days ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Dec 17, 2025 at 2:49 PM EST
16m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
7 comments in 0-3h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Dec 19, 2025 at 11:10 AM EST
14 days ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
The writing is on the wall. Up to you if you wish to continue using and trusting Microsoft.
$184M in profit or cost?
It's called a loss leader, not a gift, and it's a marketing and adoption tactic. They already bought the machines which cost about as much to run idle as at 100% utilization. Might as well put that idle capex and opex to use.
Or just collectively bill OSS the $184M and stop signaling virtue.
Updates to GitHub Actions pricing https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/182186
Interesting, I was trying to estimate how much they spent on free actions per year. I thought it would be around $100m. This is the first actual number I've seen.
I expect the $184 million figure is the sale price rather than the actual cost to GitHub, and given that competitors offer the same service for 3-10x less it's probably more like $80m overall I'd guess.
Still a pretty huge amount of money that I don't think any competitors can really hope to match.
it could be per-workflow, regardless of duration
- logs are generally proportional to the length of the job
- other artifacts also usually correlate to an extent
- some of the cost for Github will be for the entire time the job is active: e.g. active connections for log streaming etc. - it's largely correlated to the value the end-user gets out of it
- it's easy to bill for because they can already do billing that way on the hosted runners
- the costs are easy to predict for end-users
It's not like the rest of the Github platform is a per-user cost to run, but that's how Github charge for most features.
https://jaredpalmer.com/about
Open to feedback or tips and tricks on this, but so far it's looking promising. Curious how other folks experience has been.
Maybe I don't understand something, but self-hosted GitHub Actions cost more resources than GitHub Actions hosted with them?
There might be some creative uses of GitHub Actions, it seemed that getting users into the platform was valuable.
initial development and reactions:
Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291156
96 more comments available on Hacker News