{"slug": "blacksmith", "name": "Blacksmith", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 12, "warners": 2, "score": 3.834, "rising": -1.64, "first": "2025-12-16", "latest": "2026-08-17", "why": "Blacksmith (https://blacksmith.sh) exists and it works pretty well!", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 3, "compare": 2, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Blacksmith (https://blacksmith.sh) exists and it works pretty well!", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "blacksmith.sh", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.blacksmith.sh", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Blacksmith", "blacksmith"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 772460976, "item_id": 48278811, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278811", "by": "ttouch", "date": "2026-05-26", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there are a couple and have very good reputation - though I've never used them", "excerpt": "there are a couple and have very good reputation - though I've never used them https://www.blacksmith.sh/ and https://runs-on.com/ They also say that they're much cheaper than github", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Actions down again today"}, {"id": 767116704, "item_id": 47944794, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944794", "by": "JustSkyfall", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Blacksmith (https://blacksmith.sh) exists and it works pretty well!", "excerpt": "re: #1, Blacksmith (https://blacksmith.sh) exists and it works pretty well!", "context": "", "use_case": "faster GitHub Actions runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"}, {"id": 767071088, "item_id": 47941943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941943", "by": "pss314", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fast GitHub Actions with Blacksmith", "excerpt": "John Howard (one of the maintainers of Istio and currently with Solo.io) blogged about \"Fast GitHub Actions with Blacksmith\" [1]. The blog also contains a link to \"GitHub Action Runner Alternatives\" [2]. [1]: https://blog.howardjohn.info/posts/blacksmith-gha/ [2]: https://binhong.me/blog/github-action-runner-alternatives/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Actions is the weakest link"}, {"id": 756705632, "item_id": 47294102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47294102", "by": "tempay", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "though without the need to host the hardware yourself and the potential complexity they comes with that", "excerpt": "This is basically the premise of https://www.blacksmith.sh/ as far as I know, though without the need to host the hardware yourself and the potential complexity they comes with that.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloud VM benchmarks 2026: performance/price for 44 VM types over 7 providers"}, {"id": 741321201, "item_id": 46332575, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46332575", "by": "jacobegold", "date": "2025-12-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we love Blacksmith!", "excerpt": "As a Graphite employee, would love this tbh - we love Blacksmith!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Graphite is joining Cursor"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 775603296, "item_id": 48475206, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475206", "by": "knuckleheads", "date": "2026-06-10", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "their performance was so spotty and yet I was getting billed for it", "excerpt": "Not just the weird billing, which has been annoying the last month I've been trying it, but they have had a couple incidents lately where I feel like I got ripped off because their performance was so spotty and yet I was getting billed for it. https://status.blacksmith.sh/", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Surprise Pay $1000"}, {"id": 740717425, "item_id": 46294839, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294839", "by": "phaser", "date": "2025-12-16", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "these companies that are based on offering you a faster or cheaper github actions service are actually the worst of both worlds", "excerpt": "It\u2019s interesting to see the posts from warpbuild, blacksmith, buikdjet and others defending their business model that was based on the inefficiency of GitHub. I love the fact that git is built in such an open way that if you are worried about running in your own infrastructure you can easily deploy it (It\u2019s just like SSH!) yourself. At least for me, cheaper GitHub actions is a win because I can\u2019t justify running my o", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["ci runners", "ci/cd runners", "faster github actions runners"], "compared": [{"slug": "github-actions", "name": "GitHub Actions", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "warpbuild", "name": "WarpBuild", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "github", "name": "GitHub", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "runson", "name": "RunsOn", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468370", "title": "Surprise Pay $1000", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330684", "title": "Incident with Github.com", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939579", "title": "Ghostty is leaving GitHub", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49198302", "title": "GitHub Actions Is Down", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278374", "title": "GitHub Actions down again today", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47933257", "title": "GitHub Actions is the weakest link", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1, "compare": 2}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 789315984, "item_id": 49332249, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332249", "by": "latchkey", "date": "2026-08-17", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "the recent outages were with their own storage infrastructure https://status.blacksmith.sh/cmsrg61yg09vd0lo9s1eagibm", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Incident with Github.com"}, {"id": 789296833, "item_id": 49331052, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331052", "by": "latchkey", "date": "2026-08-17", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "blacksmith.sh just raised tens of millions on the core premise that self-hosting CI/CD is hard", "excerpt": "blacksmith.sh just raised tens of millions on the core premise that self-hosting CI/CD is hard [0]. they've had multiple outages in the last week, so i guess they are proving themselves correct. in practice, giving ssh/sudo to AI (codex) and telling it to setup ephemeral runners on your own host VM, takes about 30 minutes and works extremely well. it bangs out all the shell scripts. moved my own business over to it. ", "context": "", "use_case": "CI/CD runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Incident with Github.com"}, {"id": 787256256, "item_id": 49203516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203516", "by": "yashap", "date": "2026-08-06", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We use other runners (Blacksmith), and it hasn't helped, still hard down all day long.", "excerpt": "We use other runners (Blacksmith), and it hasn't helped, still hard down all day long. Brutal outage. As a side note, I started getting these symptoms (actions staying queued forever or not running at all) at 5pm PDT yesterday, intermittently. And definitely full outage by 8:30pm PDT. So for sure full outage for 7 hours and counting, even if you use other runners, and I strongly believe partial outage for ~15.5+ hrs ", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 775654449, "item_id": 48478403, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478403", "by": "zamalek", "date": "2026-06-10", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'm not sure if blacksmith offers larger runners", "excerpt": "$1000 in a month? What on earth are you doing in CI? We're on Warp build (50% cheaper instead of 33%) with 6 people hitting it pretty hard across a few repos and only reach $150/mo. That's with building rust - a worse case than anything you're using for build time. 1. I'm not sure if blacksmith offers larger runners, but you if you're using them you have checked that bigger runners are worth the squeeze? A 2x runner ", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Surprise Pay $1000"}, {"id": 775616560, "item_id": 48476035, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48476035", "by": "_pdp_", "date": "2026-06-10", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "I am sure Blacksmith is the easy path if you don't want to do any extra work and I am also sure their solution will scale much better", "excerpt": "I am sure Blacksmith is the easy path if you don't want to do any extra work and I am also sure their solution will scale much better as this is what they do full-time. However, I can share what we did to ease on our GitHub Actions bills if it helps. Effectively we have our own runners hooked so that a job is scheduled, a runner picks it up and goes with it. We still use GitHub Actions but our monthly bill is now fla", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Surprise Pay $1000"}, {"id": 775603296, "item_id": 48475206, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475206", "by": "knuckleheads", "date": "2026-06-10", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "their performance was so spotty and yet I was getting billed for it", "excerpt": "Not just the weird billing, which has been annoying the last month I've been trying it, but they have had a couple incidents lately where I feel like I got ripped off because their performance was so spotty and yet I was getting billed for it. https://status.blacksmith.sh/", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Surprise Pay $1000"}, {"id": 772460976, "item_id": 48278811, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278811", "by": "ttouch", "date": "2026-05-26", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there are a couple and have very good reputation - though I've never used them", "excerpt": "there are a couple and have very good reputation - though I've never used them https://www.blacksmith.sh/ and https://runs-on.com/ They also say that they're much cheaper than github", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Actions down again today"}, {"id": 767280224, "item_id": 47955014, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955014", "by": "vadepaysa", "date": "2026-04-29", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Yes, I pay for blacksmith rn.", "excerpt": "Yes, I pay for blacksmith rn. Thank You for your response though.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"}, {"id": 767116704, "item_id": 47944794, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944794", "by": "JustSkyfall", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Blacksmith (https://blacksmith.sh) exists and it works pretty well!", "excerpt": "re: #1, Blacksmith (https://blacksmith.sh) exists and it works pretty well!", "context": "", "use_case": "faster GitHub Actions runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"}, {"id": 767071088, "item_id": 47941943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941943", "by": "pss314", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fast GitHub Actions with Blacksmith", "excerpt": "John Howard (one of the maintainers of Istio and currently with Solo.io) blogged about \"Fast GitHub Actions with Blacksmith\" [1]. The blog also contains a link to \"GitHub Action Runner Alternatives\" [2]. [1]: https://blog.howardjohn.info/posts/blacksmith-gha/ [2]: https://binhong.me/blog/github-action-runner-alternatives/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Actions is the weakest link"}, {"id": 756705632, "item_id": 47294102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47294102", "by": "tempay", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "though without the need to host the hardware yourself and the potential complexity they comes with that", "excerpt": "This is basically the premise of https://www.blacksmith.sh/ as far as I know, though without the need to host the hardware yourself and the potential complexity they comes with that.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloud VM benchmarks 2026: performance/price for 44 VM types over 7 providers"}, {"id": 741321201, "item_id": 46332575, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46332575", "by": "jacobegold", "date": "2025-12-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we love Blacksmith!", "excerpt": "As a Graphite employee, would love this tbh - we love Blacksmith!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Graphite is joining Cursor"}, {"id": 740717425, "item_id": 46294839, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294839", "by": "phaser", "date": "2025-12-16", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "these companies that are based on offering you a faster or cheaper github actions service are actually the worst of both worlds", "excerpt": "It\u2019s interesting to see the posts from warpbuild, blacksmith, buikdjet and others defending their business model that was based on the inefficiency of GitHub. I love the fact that git is built in such an open way that if you are worried about running in your own infrastructure you can easily deploy it (It\u2019s just like SSH!) yourself. At least for me, cheaper GitHub actions is a win because I can\u2019t justify running my o", "context": "", "use_case": "CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions"}]}