Runners
Snapshot runners
Boot a job from a filesystem snapshot taken after your dependencies were installed. Skip install entirely on every subsequent run.
Specifications
- Restore time
- ~4s
- Captures
- Whole filesystem plus warm page cache
- Invalidation
- Lockfile hash or manual
- Retention
- 14 days, then rebuilt on demand
Runner labels
runnerhut-snapshot-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404
A cache restores files. A snapshot restores the machine — installed packages, built native extensions, warmed page cache, populated toolchain directories. For workloads where install dominates, it removes the step rather than speeding it up.
| Workload | Install step before | After snapshot |
|---|---|---|
| npm ci, 2,200 deps | 95s | 0s |
| bundle install | 140s | 0s |
| cargo fetch + build deps | 260s | 0s |
| pip install with native wheels | 180s | 0s |
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
Local NVMe scratch disksEvery runner gets a local NVMe scratch disk instead of network-attached storage — the difference shows up in every checkout, install and test run.Preinstalled software on runnersThe full toolchain list on every runner image, and how it maps to the GitHub-hosted image so nothing breaks when you switch.