Alternatives to Zoomies¶
This page compares ways to run GitHub Actions jobs on runners other than GitHub's own. If you are looking for an alternative to GitHub Actions itself, such as GitLab CI or Buildkite, this is not that comparison: here your workflows stay as they are and only the machines that run them change.
There are several good ways to run GitHub Actions jobs somewhere other than GitHub's own runners. Zoomies is one of them, and for many setups it is not the right one. These pages say where each alternative is stronger, where Zoomies is, and how to move between them.
Each page is written from the project's public documentation, dated, and linked so you can check it. They are comparisons of documentation, not benchmarks, and a feature one page does not mention is not a claim that it is missing.
At a glance¶
| Model and licence | Runs on | Pick it when | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoomies | Self-hosted; AGPL-3.0 | Linux hosts you own or rent, anywhere an agent can dial out from | You have machines, not a cluster, and want one place to see and run the fleet |
| ARC | Kubernetes operator; Apache-2.0 | A Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster | You already operate Kubernetes |
| GARM | Self-hosted; Apache-2.0 | Providers you configure | You want a provider catalogue, or GitHub Enterprise Server or Gitea |
| AWS Terraform module | Terraform module; MIT | EC2, in your AWS account | Your infrastructure is AWS and Terraform |
| TestFlows Hetzner runners | Self-hosted; Apache-2.0 | Hetzner Cloud servers | You want cheap, standby cloud runners on Hetzner |
| Cirun | Managed service | Your cloud account, or on-premises agents | You would rather have a service run the control plane |
| Blacksmith, WarpBuild and RunsOn | Services and a licensed AWS tool | Their cloud, or yours | You do not want machines to look after, or you need macOS |
| GitHub-hosted runners | GitHub's service | GitHub's virtual machines | The jobs are public, or the free minutes cover you |
How to choose¶
- Do you already run Kubernetes? If someone on the team is comfortable operating it, ARC is likely the answer.
- Is your infrastructure one cloud, described in code? A cloud-native module such as the AWS one puts CI inside the account and the tooling you already use.
- Do you have machines already, in a rack, an office or a home lab? That is the case Zoomies is built for. Runners in your home lab and runners without Kubernetes plan it.
- Would you rather pay to not run it? A hosted service trades money for not looking after hosts. Costs has the sums.
If it is still unclear, the FAQ answers what people ask before they self-host runners, and the quick start takes a fresh host to a running job in about five minutes.