Dedicated macOS CI runners outpace GitHub-hosted VMs by up to 4.7x in open-source tests
A developer at Manzanita, a dedicated CI runner service, benchmarked five public iOS and macOS open-source projects by swapping only the runner label in existing GitHub Actions workflows. Results showed dedicated M4 Pro runners were 1.5x to 4.7x faster than GitHub-hosted macOS VMs, with the largest gains in simulator-heavy iOS test jobs and clean compiles. The speed advantage is attributed to dedicated M4 Pro hardware with more vCPUs compared to shared GitHub-hosted virtual machines. However, the author disclosed that some projects showed mixed or slower results on dedicated runners, particularly for short jobs affected by cache misses. All benchmark run links were made publicly verifiable, and the author acknowledged the conflict of interest as an employee of Manzanita.
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