GitHub - CamdenClark/gcrunner: Run self-hosted github actions on google cloud

Self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on Google Cloud. Drop-in replacement for GitHub-hosted runners at 80%+ cost savings.

How it works

gcrunner receives GitHub Actions workflow_job webhooks via a Cloud Run service, provisions an ephemeral Compute Engine VM with your requested specs, runs the job, and self-destructs the VM when done.

GitHub Actions → Webhook → Cloud Run (Go) → Compute Engine VM → Self-destruct

Quick start

All configuration lives in your workflow's runs-on field:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: gcrunner=${{ github.run_id }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: echo "Running on gcrunner!"

Labels

Label	Default	Description
`machine`	`n2d-standard-2`	GCE machine type
`spot`	`true`	Spot VMs (60-91% cheaper), auto-fallback to on-demand
`disk`	`75gb`	Boot disk size
`disk-type`	`pd-ssd`	Boot disk type
`image`	`ubuntu24-full-x64`	Runner image family

# Bigger machine, more disk
runs-on: gcrunner=${{ github.run_id }}/machine=c3-standard-8/disk=200gb

# No spot for production deploys
runs-on: gcrunner=${{ github.run_id }}/spot=false

Deploying

Clone the latest release and deploy with Terraform:

git clone --branch v0.2.0 https://github.com/camdenclark/gcrunner
cd gcrunner/terraform
gcloud storage buckets create gs://YOUR_PROJECT_ID-gcrunner-tfstate --location=us-central1
terraform init -backend-config="bucket=YOUR_PROJECT_ID-gcrunner-tfstate" -backend-config="prefix=gcrunner"
terraform apply -var="project_id=YOUR_PROJECT_ID"

Then visit the setup URL from the Terraform output to create and install the GitHub App.

For a guided walkthrough, use the Open in Cloud Shell button above.

Attribution

gcrunner was heavily inspired by runs-on and was mostly written to see if it was possible to build a similar solution on Google Cloud.

Documentation

Visit gcrunner.com for full documentation.