Pricing
Idle Cost
Idle cost is spending on provisioned resources that are not doing useful work. In CI it commonly arises from warm runner capacity, reserved machines, or storage retained between jobs, even when no build is executing.
Why it matters
Unused ready capacity can become a significant part of runner spending.
Practical example
Measure how much prewarmed capacity stays unused overnight before expanding a warm pool.
Related terms
Sources
Definition reviewed .
Start with $10 in free credits
Change the runner label in your workflow and keep the rest of your GitHub Actions setup. Runner time is billed per minute.