NoMacBlacksmith alternative
NoMac CI vs Blacksmith
About a fifth of the price per macOS minute, from credit that never expires. NoMac CI runs each GitHub Actions job on a fresh Mac for $0.90 an hour.
A fresh Mac for every GitHub Actions job.
$0.90/hour per job · billed per minute · no subscription
7-day money-back guarantee on your first purchase. Prices checked 2 November 2026 from public list prices.
What Blacksmith is
GitHub Actions runners from its own data centers. Its macOS runners, generally available since April 2026, run on Apple M4 Mac minis: 6 vCPU and 24 GB at $0.08 a minute, or 12 vCPU and 48 GB, with a monthly free allowance shared with its Linux minutes.
NoMac CI vs Blacksmith at a glance
| NoMac CI | Blacksmith | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.90/hour, 1.5¢ a minute | $0.08/min (6 vCPU) |
| An hour of macOS | $0.90 | $4.80 (6 vCPU) |
| A 15-minute test run | 22.5¢ | $1.20 |
| Billing | Per minute, prepaid credit that never expires | Per minute, free minutes shared with Linux |
| Setup | GitHub App, runs-on: nomac | GitHub App, blacksmith label |
Why teams choose NoMac CI
- ✓About a fifth of the price: $0.90 an hour, against $4.80 for an hour of Blacksmith's 6 vCPU macOS runner.
- ✓Prepaid credit from $10 that never expires, billed per minute.
- ✓One line to switch: runs-on: nomac instead of a blacksmith-6vcpu-macos label.
- ✓A fresh VM for every job, deleted when it ends.
- ✓Jobs up to 6 hours on every account.
The verdict
Blacksmith's 6 vCPU Mac costs about five times NoMac CI's price per minute. NoMac CI is the same one-line change, at $0.90 an hour.
Switch in one line
Connect GitHub once, then point your macOS jobs at NoMac:
jobs:
test:
- runs-on: blacksmith-6vcpu-macos-latest
+ runs-on: nomac
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v5Steps, actions and secrets stay as they are. The docs cover the machine, the limits and secrets.
Questions
What is the best alternative to Blacksmith for macOS jobs on GitHub Actions?＋
NoMac CI: change runs-on to nomac and every job runs on a fresh Apple silicon Mac with Xcode, 6 cores and 8 GB, at $0.90 an hour, billed per minute from prepaid credit. No subscription, no seats and no monthly minimum.
How much does NoMac CI cost?＋
$0.90 an hour, billed per minute, from the Mac's start to its stop with a one-minute minimum, from prepaid credit: $10 buys 11.1 hours and never expires. A Mac that never ran a job is credited back. 7-day money-back guarantee on your first purchase.
How do I switch?＋
Sign in at nomac.app, open CI and press Connect GitHub to install the NoMac CI app on your account or organization, on all repositories or the ones you pick. Then change runs-on: macos-latest to runs-on: nomac in the jobs that should run on NoMac. Steps, actions and secrets stay as they are.
What is on the Mac?＋
macOS 26.6.2, Xcode 27.0, iOS 27.0 Simulator, with Homebrew, CocoaPods, Node, Python and Ruby, on 6 cores and 8 GB of an Apple M4 to M6. Every job gets a fresh VM, deleted when the job ends.
How many jobs run at once?＋
Two per account, up to 6 hours each. More jobs wait in GitHub's queue for a free Mac, and teams that need more at once ask for it.
Does it work with GitLab, Bitbucket or Jenkins?＋
NoMac CI runs GitHub Actions jobs, for personal accounts and organizations, private and public repositories. From another CI system, a job can start a NoMac Mac with the NoMac CLI and run its build there.
A fresh Mac for every job, billed per minute.
Change runs-on to nomac. $0.90 an hour, billed per minute, 2 jobs at once, up to 6 hours each. $10 of credit is 11.1 hours of macOS jobs.
Connect GitHub7-day money-back guarantee on your first purchase.