Overview

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Tl;dr

Blackmith provides runners for GitHub Actions that are 2x faster and 50% cheaper than GitHub-hosted runners.

To get started, all you need to do is modify your runs-on label in your workflow file.

jobs:
  build:
-    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    runs-on: blacksmith

The easiest way to get started with Blacksmith is through our migration wizard, which creates a PR with all required changes to use Blacksmith runners in three clicks.

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More on our runners

• We’re substantially faster: We orchestrate jobs over our fleet of modern gaming CPUs which have significantly higher single-thread performance compared to their server counterparts. Blacksmith is twice as fast as GitHub’s decade-old server hardware for most CI jobs. Learn more about our runners here.

• We’re able to provision runners instantly: Blacksmith runs jobs in ephemeral Firecracker microVMs which boot up in less than 3 seconds, regardless of runner size. We maintain our own homogenous pool of compute, so your CI jobs don’t compete with other on-demand workloads like they would on a hyperscaler like AWS.

• We’re less than half the cost: Our runners are exactly half the cost of GitHub’s per minute. Since Blacksmith runners are also faster, you will consume fewer minutes than on GitHub. Discover your potential savings with Blacksmith here.

• We’re a drop-in replacement: Blacksmith runners boot off of the same image(s) as GitHub’s runners and have the exact same environment. Transitioning to Blacksmith is as simple as changing a single line in your workflow file.

• We co-locate your cache right next to your runners: Our custom useblacksmith/cache action quadruples cache throughput to 400MB/s, significantly outperforming GitHub’s cache actions/cache@v3. Read more about our cache action here.