About larger runners
Customers on GitHub Team and GitHub Enterprise Cloud plans can choose from a range of managed virtual machines that have more resources than the standard GitHub-hosted runners. These machines are referred to as "larger runners." They offer the following advanced features:
- More RAM, CPU, and disk space
- Static IP addresses
- Azure private networking
- The ability to group runners
- Autoscaling to support concurrent workflows
- GPU-powered runners
These larger runners are hosted by GitHub and have the runner application and other tools preinstalled.
GitHub offers larger runners with macOS, Ubuntu, or Windows operating systems, and different features and sizes are available depending on which operating system you use.
About Ubuntu and Windows larger runners
Larger runners with Ubuntu or Windows operating systems are configured in your organization or enterprise. When you add a larger runner, you are defining a type of machine from a selection of available hardware specifications and operating system images.
With Ubuntu and Windows larger runners, you can:
- Assign runners static IP addresses from a specific range, allowing you to use this range to configure a firewall allowlist
- Control access to your resources by assigning runners to runner groups
- Use autoscaling to simplify runner management and control your costs
- Use your runners with Azure private networking
About macOS larger runners
Larger runners with a macOS operating system are not manually added to your organization or enterprise, but are instead used by updating the runs-on key of a workflow file to one of the GitHub-defined macOS larger runner labels.
Since macOS larger runners are not preconfigured, they have limitations that Ubuntu and Windows larger runners do not. For more information, see Larger runners reference.
Billing
Note
Larger runners are not eligible for the use of included minutes on private repositories. For both private and public repositories, when larger runners are in use, they will always be billed at the per-minute rate.
Compared to standard GitHub-hosted runners, larger runners are billed differently. Larger runners are only billed at the per-minute rate for the amount of time workflows are executed on them. There is no cost associated with creating a larger runner that is not being used by a workflow. For more information, see GitHub Actions billing.
Next steps
To start using Windows or Ubuntu larger runners, see Managing larger runners.
To start using macOS larger runners, see Running jobs on larger runners.
To find reference information about using larger runners, see Larger runners reference.