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runnerhut vs Blacksmith
A YC-backed managed runner platform positioned as a drop-in GitHub Actions replacement, advertising up to 2× faster CI with faster caching and lower cost. Raised a Series B led by Peak XV and is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant.
What Blacksmith does well
- Strong engineering brand — genuinely good writing on Docker caching and CI economics
- Gaming-grade bare-metal CPUs for single-threaded build speed
- SOC 2 Type 2, plus a Tailscale integration for private network access
- Well-known logos and a mature customer-story programme
Where we differ
- No comparison, glossary or solution pages — thin coverage for teams researching options
- No bring-your-own-cloud option: builds run on their infrastructure or not at all
- Fewer published runner families than platforms offering Windows and GPU tiers
| Blacksmith | runnerhut | |
|---|---|---|
| Drop-in runs-on | Yes | Yes |
| Docker layer cache | Yes | Yes |
| macOS runners | Yes | Yes |
| Windows runners | Not published | Yes |
| Bring your own cloud | No | AWS, GCP, Azure |
| EU-only data residency | Not published | Yes |
| GPU runners | Not published | Yes |
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.
Related
runnerhut vs GitHub-hosted runnersThe default runners built into GitHub Actions. Zero setup, billed per minute against your GitHub plan, with larger runners and native arm64 available on paid tiers.runnerhut vs WarpBuildA hosted runner platform offering Linux, macOS and Windows runners plus bring-your-own-cloud deployments on AWS, GCP and Azure. Advertises roughly 2× faster builds at about half the cost of GitHub-hosted runners.runnerhut vs NamespaceEphemeral compute for CI and development: drop-in GitHub runners alongside devboxes, sandboxes and ephemeral Kubernetes clusters, with Bazel remote execution and egress filtering.runnerhut vs UbicloudAn open-source cloud that runs managed GitHub Actions runners alongside managed Postgres and Kubernetes, competing primarily on price-performance and on being open and portable.