Zoomies and Cirun¶
Cirun is a managed service. It provisions runners in your own cloud account, or on your hardware through agents, and the control plane is theirs. Zoomies is free software where the control plane is yours too. That difference, rather than a feature list, is the honest place to start.
Written from Cirun's public documentation and pricing page, reviewed in September 2026. Prices change; check Cirun's site first.
Side by side¶
| Cirun | Zoomies | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | A managed service; open-source components do not make the hosted control plane open source | Self-hosted; AGPL-3.0 |
| Software fee | Free for open-source repositories; at review, $29 a month for 3 private repositories and $79 for 10, with infrastructure extra | None |
| Where runners run | Your cloud account, or on-premises machines through agents | Hosts you own or rent; Proxmox VE as a provider |
| Private hardware | Supported, with Linux and macOS VM and Docker executors documented | Supported; agents dial out and Tailcat brings in private hosts |
| Windows | Documented on cloud runners | An agent that is not yet qualified |
| Caching | Automatic on Linux with AWS, and a separate S3-compatible action | Persistent caches per pool |
| Who holds the control plane | Cirun | You |
A software fee and your own compute are different things. Compare Cirun's price against Zoomies' nothing, but remember both leave you paying for machines, and that running Zoomies costs you operator time a service would absorb.
When Cirun is the better choice¶
- You do not want to run a controller. A service takes upgrades, availability and the control plane off your plate.
- You need macOS or a wider platform range today. Cirun documents VM executors for more platforms than Zoomies has qualified.
- Cloud caching is integrated for you on the clouds it supports.
When Zoomies is the better choice¶
- You want the control plane on your side. Your GitHub App, your database and your audit log stay on machines you own. See security.
- You would rather not pay a software fee per repository, and have machines or a home lab already.
- You want to read and change the code.
Private hardware is not exclusive to Zoomies; Cirun does it too. The difference is who runs the controller.