When to swap from GitHub-hosted to self-hosted runners?

[drydenwilliams]

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Question

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For those running GitHub Enterprise at scale: what factors do you consider when deciding whether to stick with GitHub-hosted runners or move to self-hosted?

I imagine cost is the obvious one, but what else makes it onto your checklist?

• Performance?
• Security or compliance requirements?
• Regional placement and data residency?
• Sustainability or ESG reporting needs?
• In Europe any CDSR considerations?

Curious to know how other enterprise admins weigh these trade-offs before making the jump.

[azxigen]

Topic Area: GitHub Enterprise Runners – Scaling Considerations

Question: For those running GitHub Enterprise at scale: what factors do you consider when deciding whether to stick with GitHub-hosted runners or move to self-hosted?

Body (Answer):
Cost is always the first factor, but in practice, enterprises usually weigh multiple dimensions before making a decision:

Performance & Scalability: GitHub-hosted runners are easy to spin up, but for heavy workloads (large builds, GPU/ARM dependencies, or high concurrency), self-hosted gives tighter control over hardware specs and scaling.

Security & Compliance: Self-hosted runners allow enterprises to run jobs inside their own network boundaries, meeting internal security policies, SOC2/ISO standards, or industry regulations like HIPAA/PCI. This also helps with access to internal resources without exposing them externally.

Data Residency & Regional Placement: Especially in Europe, where GDPR and data residency rules are strict, self-hosted runners provide certainty about where the code and artifacts are processed.

Integration with Existing Infrastructure: Enterprises often have existing CI/CD pipelines, artifact storage, or monitoring/logging tools. Self-hosted runners can be integrated into that ecosystem for consistency.

Sustainability & ESG Reporting: Some organizations track carbon footprint or prefer to run workloads in greener data centers. Self-hosted can give visibility and control here.

Operational Overhead: GitHub-hosted minimizes maintenance, patching, and upgrades. Self-hosted shifts responsibility to the enterprise, so orgs must balance flexibility against ongoing ops costs.

In practice, most enterprises end up with a hybrid model—using GitHub-hosted runners for general workloads and self-hosted for sensitive, high-performance, or region-specific jobs.