Ubicloud offers 10x cost-effective managed GitHub Actions runners with superior performance. You can choose from different runner types and sizes based on your needs. When you request a runner, a fresh, ephemeral runner is prepared in seconds, and you only pay for the minutes you use. They are fully compatible with default runners and require just a simple one-line change.

All Ubicloud runners come with newer processors, NVMe SSDs, and high-speed networks. This newer hardware allows us to offer better price-performance service.

Our x64 runners are powered by AMD EPYC 9454P processors, while our arm64 runners use Altra Q80-30 processors. Each two x64 vCPUs correspond to one physical core, and each arm64 vCPU corresponds to one physical core.

You can use the following label pattern for Ubicloud runners:

# x64 runners
runs-on: ubicloud-{family}-{vcpu}-{os}

# arm64 runners
runs-on: ubicloud-{family}-{vcpu}-arm-{os}

# GPU runners
runs-on: ubicloud-gpu

{family}

The only supported VM family is standard, which comes with dedicated CPUs.

{vcpu}

The supported number of vCPUs are 2 (default), 4, 8, 16, and 30.

{os}

The operation system can be ubuntu-2404, ubuntu-2204 (default), ubuntu-2004.

If you don’t specify the OS, like ubicloud-standard-4 or ubicloud-standard-4-arm, it will default to ubuntu-2204.

If you don’t specify a vCPU like ubicloud or ubicloud-arm, it will default to 2 vCPUs.

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Available Labels

Workflow labelvCPUMemoryDisk
ubicloud-standard-2-ubuntu-220428GB86GB
ubicloud-standard-4-ubuntu-2204416GB150GB
ubicloud-standard-8-ubuntu-2204832GB200GB
ubicloud-standard-16-ubuntu-22041664GB300GB
ubicloud-standard-30-ubuntu-220430120GB400GB
ubicloud-standard-2-arm-ubuntu-220428GB86GB
ubicloud-standard-4-arm-ubuntu-2204416GB150GB
ubicloud-standard-8-arm-ubuntu-2204832GB200GB
ubicloud-standard-16-arm-ubuntu-22041664GB300GB
ubicloud-standard-30-arm-ubuntu-220430120GB400GB
ubicloud-gpu632GB180GB

You can replace ubuntu-2204 with ubuntu-2404 to use a runner with Ubuntu 24.04. You can find all the available labels here.

Deprecation of Ubuntu 20.04: GitHub has decided to discontinue Ubuntu 20.04 runners on February 1, 2025. While we don’t have a specific date for deprecating our Ubuntu 20.04 runners yet, we discourage using them, as we will eventually need to align with GitHub and discontinue the Ubuntu 20.04 runners.

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Linux x64 Image

Our x64 runner images are fully compatible with default runners. We generate them using the official HashiCorp packer templates published by GitHub in the actions/runner-images repository.

We update the images monthly after GitHub releases a new version. We don’t deploy new images on the same day as GitHub to avoid potential issues. In the past, GitHub has encountered problems with new images and had to quickly rollback.

To prevent any disruption to our customers, we typically deploy new images a few days after GitHub’s deployment is complete.

If you notice any mismatches between Ubicloud x64 runners and the official GitHub runners, please reach out to us at support@ubicloud.com.

If your workflow has a package dependency that doesn’t exist on Ubicloud’s image, we recommend installing the dependency manually for the time being or creating an issue at actions/runner-images repository.

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Linux arm64 Image

GitHub launched official arm64 runners at the beginning of 2025. However, GitHub doesn’t create arm64 images; their partner does. Unfortunately, they don’t publish a packer template like the one for x64 images. As a result, Ubicloud builds its own Ubuntu arm64 image, and our arm64 runners don’t have all the pre-installed packages that are available on x64.

Arm shares a list of installed packages in the actions/partner-runner-images repository, and we try to keep it similar. However, our images might not be identical to GitHub’s arm64 images since they don’t share the exact template and versions.

If your workflow has a package dependency that doesn’t exist on Ubicloud’s arm64 image, we recommend installing the dependency manually for the time being.

If you need commonly used packages on arm64 that are already installed on x64, please contact us at support@ubicloud.com.

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Linux GPU Runners Image

GitHub launched official GPU runners at the middle of 2024. However, like the arm64 runners, GitHub doesn’t create GPU images; their partner does.

NVIDIA shares a list of installed packages in https://docs.nvidia.com/ngc/ngc-deploy-public-cloud/ngc-azure/index.html#azure-vmi, and we try to keep it similar. However, our images might not be identical to GitHub’s GPU images since they don’t share the exact template and versions.

If your workflow has a package dependency that doesn’t exist on Ubicloud’s GPU image, we recommend installing the dependency manually for the time being.

If you need commonly used packages on GPU runner that are already installed on x64, please contact us at support@ubicloud.com.

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Ubuntu 24.04 Migration

GitHub changed the default version of the ubuntu-latest label to Ubuntu 24.04 from Ubuntu 22.04 in January 2025. They actually tried to switch ubuntu-latest from 22.04 to 24.04 twice. The first attempt was rolled back due to community frustration. GitHub succeeded on the second attempt, but people are still reporting issues with the 24 image. GitHub Issue #10636.

We’re sticking with Ubuntu 22.04 as the default operating system for backward compatibility. We need to make the change eventually, but we’re waiting for the Ubuntu 24 image to mature. We’re holding off until things settle down before we make the switch.

If your workflow depends on a specific Ubuntu version, we recommend explicitly specifying the operating system in the runner label.