Buildhound vs Blacksmith
Blacksmith runs GitHub Actions on its own bare-metal machines, by the minute and below GitHub's rates. Buildhound runs them on machines you already have, for a flat price per machine.
- Checked 16 October 2026
- No referral agreement
What a month costs
- Buildhound Teamone machine you already have$24
- GitHub-hostedmacos-latest, list price$310
- Blacksmith6 vCPU, list price$400
One Mac you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Blacksmith costs $400, and GitHub-hosted $310.
List prices, before free minutes or credits on either side. One machine runs these minutes a job at a time; Personal is $10 a machine on a personal account.
Choose the one that fits
Choose Blacksmith when
- Nobody on the team has a machine to spare.
- You need Windows, or Linux runners larger than your machines.
- Many jobs must run at once, and 3,000 free minutes a month cover a small team.
Choose Buildhound when
- You already have a Mac or a Linux box, even a laptop you work on.
- Your macOS CI runs past about 300 minutes a month, or Linux past about 6,000.
- You want GitHub-hosted kept as the fallback when a machine is offline.
Side by side
Blacksmith from its own pages, checked 16 October 2026
Clean runners on machines you already have$24a machine a month on TeamPrice
- How it is priced
- BuildhoundFlat, per machine$10 a machine a month on a personal account, $24 in an organisation, counted only on days it runs a job. Public repositories free.
- BlacksmithBy the minute3,000 free minutes a month per organisation, no minimum.
- macOS
- BuildhoundYour MacA fresh macOS VM per job; Apple allows two per Mac.
- Blacksmith$0.08 a minuteM4, 6 vCPU.
- Linux
- BuildhoundYour Mac or Linux boxA fresh Linux VM per job, arm64 on a Mac.
- Blacksmith$0.004 a minute2 vCPU x64; arm64 at $0.0025.
- Windows
- BuildhoundNot yetWindows jobs stay on GitHub-hosted.
- Blacksmith$0.008 a minute2 vCPU, in public beta.
Where it runs
- Machines
- BuildhoundYoursA spare Mac, a Linux box, or a laptop while plugged in and not in use.
- BlacksmithBlacksmith's bare metalIn the US and Europe.
- Each job
- BuildhoundA fresh VM, destroyed afterIt reaches the internet and never your network.
- BlacksmithA Firecracker microVMFor Linux and Windows jobs.
- Secrets
- BuildhoundOn your hardwareOnly on a machine a person marked Trusted.
- BlacksmithOn Blacksmith's machinesLike every hosted runner.
When things change
- Runners unavailable
- BuildhoundNew jobs route to the healthy sideGitHub-hosted, within about two minutes; a stuck job is re-run.
- BlacksmithJobs wait for BlacksmithMoving them to GitHub-hosted is a change to
runs-on. - Jobs at once
- BuildhoundAs many as your machines holdSuch as one macOS and one Linux job on a 24 GB Mac mini. When every machine is busy, new jobs go to GitHub-hosted after two and a half minutes.
- BlacksmithNo limitBy its docs.
- Setup
- BuildhoundOne prompt to your coding agentOr two commands by hand.
- BlacksmithIts GitHub App and a labelOn an organisation.
One line in runs-on
Both ask you to change the runner label in your workflow. Your coding agent makes the Buildhound change in a pull request.
runs-on: blacksmith-2vcpu-ubuntu-2404The job runs where Blacksmith runs it.runs-on: ${{ vars.BUILDHOUND_LINUX || 'ubuntu-latest' }}The job runs on your machine while one can take it, and on GitHub-hosted when none can.Put the machines you already have to work.
A spare Mac, a Linux box, or the laptop you code on while it is plugged in and not in use. One prompt into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor: Linux jobs run within minutes, macOS jobs once the Mac has built its image.
- The Buildhound agent holds no GitHub credential
- A fresh VM per job, off your network
- Your agent prepares, you approve
- How security works