Where the money actually goes
The BYOC cost model
How BYOC billing splits between your cloud provider and runnerhut, and the line items business cases usually forget.
BYOC moves cost rather than removing it. Understanding the split is what makes the comparison against fully hosted runners honest.
| Line item | Billed by | Frequently forgotten? |
|---|---|---|
| Runner compute | Your cloud provider | No |
| NAT gateway data processing | Your cloud provider | Yes — often the largest single item |
| Cross-AZ and egress transfer | Your cloud provider | Yes |
| Cache storage | Your cloud provider | Sometimes |
| Idle warm-pool capacity | Your cloud provider | Yes |
| Control plane fee | runnerhut | No |
When BYOC is cheaper
Broadly, above a few thousand CI hours a month, and especially if you already have committed spend with your cloud provider that runner compute can draw down. Below that, fully hosted is usually cheaper once you include the endpoints and transfer above.
Your next build could be twice as fast, at half the price
Start free. Migrating away is the same one line, and we publish that diff too.