Why FlyCI runners are more cost-effective than GitHub's

For every company claiming to build high-quality software, CI/CD and automation is a must. There are many considerations to consider when choosing a CI/CD service - managed or self-managed, performance and scalability, reliability, security, community, ecosystem, and cost-effectiveness.

Today we'll focus on cost-effectiveness and why FlyCI runners are more cost-effective than the default GitHub-managed runners when using GitHub Actions.

Understanding the CI/CD billing model

There are two major types of billing models among the managed CI/CD services currently available - pay-as-you-go and fixed price. With pay-as-you-go billing, you pay for what you have used. With fixed pricing, there are no surprises in the bill at the end of the month, but you are usually restricted in some way - you can use a fixed number of runners or you have limited concurrency.

We'll focus now on how the pay-as-you-go offering works with FlyCI and GitHub and why choosing FlyCI is more cost-effective.

The FlyCI Advantage

A tiny difference but having a significant impact on the bill, is how the pay-as-you-go model works on both platforms.

Imagine you have a workflow with 5 jobs and each job takes 30 seconds.

With GitHub, there is a rounding policy 🔗 in place that says "GitHub rounds the minutes and partial minutes each job uses up to the nearest whole minute.". It means that in the above scenario, one workflow run with GitHub costs 5 minutes instead of 2.5 or 5 mins x $0.08 which is $0.40.

With FlyCI, billing is done per second, there is NO rounding policy and every job is billed according to the exact usage time. So, in the same scenario, one workflow run with FlyCI costs 2.5 mins x $0.06 which is $0.15. As you see, although the FlyCI runners seem just 25% ($0.02) cheaper, in the above example it's pretty obvious one can save more than twice the cost you pay with GitHub. All this is because of the way the billing process is applied.

Performance and Reliability

Cost-effectiveness is not all you get with FlyCI. For a price lower than GitHub, you get the advantage of the latest and greatest macOS M2 chips to make your builds fly. Considering M2 chips are 20% faster than M1s, you save even more since your builds take less time with FlyCI compared to GitHub runners.

Here is how not only OSHI made their builds twice faster with FlyCI , but also GoAccess. NativeScript on the other hand, have now fast and stable test suite leveraging FlyCI runners.

Last, but not least, with FlyCI you get Customer Support that helps you optimize your builds in terms of performance and cost.

Integrating FlyCI into Your Workflow

Integration of FlyCI is fairly easy and takes not more than a few minutes. It requires just 3 simple steps:

• Install the FlyCI app
• Grant the app access to your repository
• Change one line of code in your workflow

Check out FlyCI's getting started 🔗 tutorial for more details.

Give FlyCI a try, and make your builds take off - all while keeping your piggy bank happy with some extra cash!