What does a red CI build cost? Separate runner usage, active work and blocked time

Start with a period and three separate ledgers

Choose a period and named workflows. Keep runner/storage usage, active human investigation and review, and delivery interruption separately. Include passing and failed attempts relevant to the comparison, but do not call every red run a distinct fault. A half-hour blocked release can overlap with work on another task; it is not automatically half an hour of lost salary for the whole team.

• Runner ledger: each executed job/attempt, runner category and actual account billing treatment.
• Effort ledger: actual active diagnosis, implementation, review and coordination time.
• Delay ledger: observed blocked interval and affected milestone, without inventing lost revenue.

Workflow duration is not billable usage

If two invented parallel jobs each run for five minutes, the workload contains ten job-minutes even though its wall-clock span may be about five minutes. Billing still depends on the applicable runner category, allowances and provider rules; this arithmetic is not a GitHub bill. Standard public hosted runs and self-hosted usage have different Actions charge treatment from private or larger runners. Free Actions usage does not make self-hosted infrastructure or staff effort free. Check your current account's usage report rather than copying another plan's rate.

• Included usage means a saved minute need not reduce the current bill.
• Storage retention, including failure artifacts, is a separate cost boundary.
• Do not delete diagnostic artifacts simply to create an apparent saving.

Calculate a conditional comparison, not ROI proof

Value measured active hours at a rate the budget holder chooses and label that as time value, not cash received. Keep supplier fees and incremental provider charges separate. Do not add active hours and the same hours counted again as blocked time. The related worked comparison shows how existing offer prices can be compared without assuming equivalent scope or guaranteed repairs. No usage, customer time, lost sales or savings were measured for this guide.

• Unknown account charges or effort stay unknown, not zero.
• A repair must preserve assertions and triggers; bypassed checks are not cost reduction.
• Include customer review/merge effort when comparing tools and services.

Match the purchase to the missing work

DIY documentation and the current engineer may be the cheapest adequate answer. The £149 offer addresses one eligible repeatable job; the £295/month offer addresses agreed workflows on one default branch, up to four fixes, with customer-held merges and no guaranteed response time. Neither is an unrestricted pipeline project or substitute for account administration. Ask whether actual interruptions recur, who accepts repairs and what the posted price excludes. Prices remain untested; agreement on scope, access, tax and payment terms precedes work. Send redacted context and your own assumptions, never billing exports with personal data, source code or credentials.