Arm-based hosted runners enter public beta on GitHub Actions
GitHub has announced that Arm-based Linux and Windows runners for GitHub Actions are now in public beta. The new hosted runners are designed for teams building and deploying release assets for any Arm architecture target, and are priced at 37% less than GitHub's x64 Linux and Windows runners.
The runners are fully managed by GitHub and ship with an image built by Arm that includes the toolchain needed to get started. GitHub positions the power-efficient compute layer as a way to improve price-to-performance ratios, letting teams do more work within existing budgets while reducing their carbon footprint.
Previously, developers who wanted to build on Arm had to either self-host runners or rely on QEMU virtualization, which is slower than native execution. With the new hosted option, teams can run builds, tests, and deployments for web and application servers, open-source databases, containers, microservices, Java and .NET applications, AI applications, gaming, and media servers entirely within GitHub Actions.
We leveraged Arm runners to very quickly set up a workflow to build a Linux Arm64 binary for our open source Rust project, Spice.ai OSS, and it’s been rock-solid–we haven’t had any issues with it since we set it up. We’ve saved 2-3 days of engineering effort up front to set up our own runners, plus about 1-2 hours per week to maintain them ourselves.
Partner-built images
GitHub worked with Arm to produce the Ubuntu and Windows VM images for the new runners. The Ubuntu 22.04 image includes a full set of tools so developers can start building on Arm and producing release assets quickly. GitHub says it plans to add developer tools to the Windows image and to release a new Ubuntu 24.04 image in the future.
The partnership follows the model GitHub introduced with its GPU runners in April, which used an image built by NVIDIA for teams incorporating MLOps practices into GitHub Actions. As GitHub expands its hosted runner fleet, it intends to continue offering partner-built images alongside its own.
Feedback and issue reports for the new images can be filed in the partner runner images repository, which also lists installed software.
"Our longstanding partnership with GitHub is rooted in empowering shift-left software development and accelerating time to market while improving sustainability," said Bhumik Patel, Director of Software Ecosystem Development, Infrastructure Line of Business at Arm. "The availability of Arm-hosted runners marks an important step toward more sustainable computing by enabling software developers with advanced CI/CD capabilities to develop the power-efficient and versatile Arm architecture for projects, from data centers and cloud to automotive, IoT, and much more."
Energy efficiency claims
GitHub points to external research showing that Arm-based cloud servers use 30-40% less power than equivalent x86 systems for some widely deployed workloads. The company also references a community tool for estimating energy consumption per GitHub Actions workflow run, which teams can use to measure their own impact.
Availability and setup
The Arm runners are available now to GitHub Team and Enterprise Cloud customers. GitHub expects to offer Arm runners for open-source projects by the end of the year.
To use an Arm runner, create it in your organization or enterprise, then update the runs-on syntax in your GitHub Actions workflow file to reference the runner name. Per-minute pricing details are covered in GitHub's billing documentation for Actions.
