Avrea vs GitHub-hosted runners

Features at a glance

Both options use GitHub Actions. Avrea supplies the machines and additional CI tools; GitHub-hosted runners keep execution within GitHub's service.

GitHub's AI products are separate from its runner offering.

Keep GitHub Actions

After connecting Avrea, change the runs-on label for the jobs you want to move. GitHub continues to handle triggers, dependencies between jobs, pull-request checks and deployment rules. Runner labels and setup.

Our guide to GitHub Actions runners explains hosted, self-hosted and third-party runners. If you are considering a different CI system as well, see the broader GitHub Actions alternatives guide.

Runner pricing

Avrea’s paid Linux x64 rates are one-third lower at the sizes below. Its ARM runners have a higher minute rate and the highest measured ARM CPU scores in RunsOn’s 4-vCPU PassMark results. The CPU table shows both architectures.

These are paid compute rates before included usage or discounts. The 4-vCPU GitHub rates are for paid larger runners. Avrea pricing, GitHub runner rates, GitHub runner specifications.

Free and included minutes

Standard GitHub-hosted runners are free for public repositories, including the standard 4-vCPU / 16-GB x64 and ARM shapes. Private repositories receive a monthly allowance based on the GitHub plan. Paid larger runners are charged separately and cannot use that allowance, so the savings available depend on which usage you currently pay for. GitHub Actions billing.

Avrea includes 3,000 monthly minutes in 2-vCPU equivalents and has no monthly base fee. Larger runners consume more of the allowance. Avrea plan details.

Our GitHub Actions pricing guide covers the other costs, including storage.

Compare cost and feedback time

A ten-minute job at the listed 2-vCPU x64 rates costs $0.04 on Avrea or $0.06 on GitHub before allowances. If it also finishes sooner on Avrea, fewer billed minutes reduce the compute cost further.

Billed execution time excludes queueing. PR feedback also depends on the other jobs required before merging.

CPU benchmarks

Avrea scores higher on both x64 and ARM in RunsOn’s 14 October 2026 PassMark results. These are 4-vCPU / 16-GB runners, with each result the median of five runs.

These tests isolate CPU performance. Complete build times also depend on downloads, cache reuse and I/O. RunsOn sells runners and publishes its test code and methodology. RunsOn CPU results. Data: RunsOn, CC BY 4.0; selected rows, shortened labels.

Actions cache benchmarks

In RunsOn's 14 October 2026 cache results, these 4-vCPU / 16-GB x64 runners saved and immediately restored a 4 GB file:

Avrea restores faster in this test; save times are equal. This is a cache-transfer benchmark, not an end-to-end build result. RunsOn cache results.

Each result uses five runs. RunsOn sells runners too. Data: RunsOn, CC BY 4.0; selected rows, shortened labels.

Our runner benchmark guide covers setup time, dependency downloads and build-cache reuse alongside these transfer measurements.

Caching

On Avrea, supported actions/cache usage is routed to Avrea’s cache automatically. Package proxies reuse downloads, and integrations for Turborepo, Gradle, Bazel and sccache reuse valid build outputs. That can remove compilation or other tasks from a repeat build, beyond the transfer-time improvement measured above. Avrea cache documentation, build-cache setup.

Existing Actions cache keys and restore logic continue to apply. For Docker builds, Avrea’s persistent disks retain images, layers and builder state between jobs. You can also export layers to its BuildKit cache endpoint. The Docker guide covers both configurations. Docker caching on Avrea.

Our GitHub Actions caching guide covers cache keys, restore behavior and build-tool caches.

File caches and build-output caches

GitHub's Actions cache restores files selected by the workflow. Turborepo, Gradle and compiler caches can reuse valid build outputs for the current inputs, allowing unchanged tasks to be skipped. GitHub dependency caching.

A large cached directory can take longer to restore than the work it saves. In that case, a narrower cache or a tool-level output cache can reduce job time.

Debugging and AI-assisted fixes

A job can fail without its logs explaining whether it ran out of memory or hit a CPU bottleneck. Avrea’s resource metrics help answer those questions, and SSH lets you inspect the job while it is running. GitHub’s workflow logs and debug logging remain available too.

Avrea Quality takes the investigation through to a proposed change: it uses logs, code changes and test history, runs the fix through your full test suite and opens a PR if it passes. Your team reviews the result.

GitHub offers ways to delegate this work too. Copilot cloud agent can take on code changes and open pull requests. GitHub Agentic Workflows can investigate CI failures and suggest fixes, though they are in public preview and require an AI engine and workflow configuration.

Avrea also offers sandboxes in beta for work that needs a remote execution environment.

Avrea offers static IPs at $100 per IP per month, listed under its Enterprise features. GitHub supports static IP ranges for Linux and Windows larger runners on Enterprise Cloud; macOS larger runners do not support them. Avrea static IP pricing, GitHub static IP configuration.

Avrea documents its security controls and GitHub App permissions.

What changed for Zero

Zero's case study describes moving sixteen GitHub Actions workflow files to Avrea while keeping the existing actions and Docker builds. One PR typecheck fell from five minutes of waiting to one. API deployments became roughly twice as fast without application-code changes.

Choosing between Avrea and GitHub-hosted runners

Avrea offers lower paid x64 rates, higher CPU scores on both architectures and faster cache restores in the tests above. Build-output caching can reduce the work that remains, while diagnostics and Quality address the time spent investigating and fixing failures.

The migration keeps GitHub Actions in place. Zero reported a shorter wait for PR checks and roughly twice-as-fast API deployments.

Related reading

• Avrea pricing: current rates, runner sizes and included features.
• GitHub Actions pricing guide: how to understand and reduce the bill.
• Avrea vs Blacksmith: CPU and cache benchmarks, Docker caching and AI-assisted fixes.
• Avrea vs WarpBuild: equal x64 minute rates, cache benchmarks and BYOC.
• Avrea vs Ubicloud: managed runner prices, standard and premium tiers, caching.
• All runner comparisons: Blacksmith, Depot, Namespace, WarpBuild, Ubicloud and GitHub-hosted runners.