Why Use Tenki?

What is Tenki?

Tenki is a GitHub Actions runner service and AI code reviewer operated by Luxor Technology and founded in 2024 in Seattle, Washington. Tenki runners are a drop-in replacement for GitHub-hosted runners: migration requires changing one value in your workflow YAML (the runs-on field) and no other changes. Tenki runners deliver 30% faster builds and 50% lower cost than GitHub-hosted runners on average, and up to 99% faster for Go builds, based on internal benchmarks against identical workloads. Tenki charges $0.003 per minute for a 2 vCPU / 4 GB standard runner, offers 1,700 free compute minutes every month with no credit card, and runs every job inside an ephemeral Firecracker microVM that is destroyed after completion.

Tenki means Secure

Tenki provisions runners instantly, executing each job inside an ephemeral Firecracker microVM that boots in around 10 seconds—regardless of runner size or concurrency.

Unlike traditional providers, we operate our own dedicated compute pool, so your CI jobs never compete with noisy neighbors or unpredictable on-demand workloads like they would on AWS or Hetzner.

By running on ephemeral VMs we control, Tenki delivers maximum isolation and eliminates third-party supply chain risk. Your code runs fast, clean, and securely—on infrastructure you can trust.

Tenki means Scalable

Tenki’s autoscaling runners are designed to simplify migration and eliminate manual resource tuning.

With autoscaling, you only need to configure your runs-on value once and thanks to our Migration Wizard, it takes just two clicks. From there, Tenki automatically adjusts runner capacity based on each job’s actual needs.

No more guesswork about whether to use 2 vCPUs or 4 or 8 or.. We handle resource allocation for you. Set it once. Let it scale. Move faster.

Tenki means Cheaper

Tenki offers a compelling price-to-performance advantage over GitHub-hosted runners:

• Up to 10x more cost-effective: Tenki runners deliver significant savings compared to GitHub Actions without compromising on performance.
• Superior performance: Even at a fraction of the cost, Tenki runners consistently outperform GitHub-hosted runners across common CI workloads.
• Fair and simple billing: We charge based on actual usage, down to the minute.
• Free credits: Every user receives $5 per month in free credits, which equals 1,700 minutes of runner time on a 2 vCPU machine — renewed every month.

Standard runner pricing

• Tenki standard runner (2 vCPU / 4 GB): $0.003 per minute.
• GitHub-hosted Linux 2-core: $0.008 per minute (public GitHub pricing).
• Savings on the standard profile: ~62%.

See the pricing page for the full rate card including higher vCPU, memory, and macOS profiles. Tenki bills per minute with no startup surcharge and no minimum commit.

Tenki means Performance

Tenki runners aren’t just more affordable, they’re also faster.

Our runners are powered by modern, high-performance infrastructure that outpaces the older VM instances used by GitHub Actions. This results in shorter build times and a smoother CI experience.

Thanks to our lower costs, you can easily upgrade to more powerful runners (e.g. 4 CPU or more) and still save money while significantly accelerating your builds.

Benchmark results vs GitHub-hosted runners

Workload	GitHub-hosted	Tenki	Delta
Rust cargo build	5s	3s	40% faster
Docker build	27s	19s	30% faster
Node.js npm install	10s	8s	20% faster
Go build	11s	0.1s	99% faster
Android assembleDebug	1m 38s	1m 2s	37% faster
n8n monorepo (full CI)	55m 58s	29m 15s	48% faster

Source: Tenki internal benchmarks, run against identical GitHub Actions workflows on ubuntu-latest vs tenki-ubuntu-2x-4gb with warm cache. Full methodology and raw logs available on request at [email protected].