--- title: StarSling: AI-Native CI for GitHub Actions, up to 6x Faster description: StarSling Runners are AI-native GitHub Actions runners: a drop-in replacement for ubuntu-latest with agents that open CI optimization PRs. Up to 6x faster. url: https://starsling.dev canonicalUrl: https://starsling.dev --- # StarSling > Self-driving CI for GitHub Actions. **Website:** [starsling.dev](https://starsling.dev) **Backed by:** Y Combinator ## Self-driving CI StarSling is AI-native CI for GitHub Actions: drop-in Ubuntu runners plus agents that open optimization PRs for your workflows. - [We've launched on Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/R7B-starsling-runners-self-driving-ci) - [Get Started For Free](https://github.com/apps/starslingdev) - [Install the ci-speedup skill](https://starsling.dev/ci-speedup) --- ## Trusted by fast-moving teams Powering CI for startups and fast-moving engineering teams. - [Better Auth](/customers/better-auth) - [Mastra](/customers/mastra) - [Partcl](/customers/partcl) - [OrgOrg](https://orgorg.com) --- - **6x** Faster CI - **1M+** CI jobs run --- ## What customers are saying Real teams shipping faster with StarSling Runners. > "Within a day of migrating to StarSling Runners, their agents opened up a PR that literally made our Rust CI tests 2x faster!" > > Vamshi Balanaga, Co-founder & CTO, Partcl - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/partcl) > "Most CI providers just give you faster machines. StarSling gives us that and made our tests faster, so we could stay focused on making Better Auth even better." > > Bereket Engida, Founder & CEO, Better Auth - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/better-auth) > "Our team is really loving StarSling. The runners are just handled, so nobody on my team thinks about CI infrastructure anymore, and the agents keep optimizing for the one thing I care about, minutes saved." > > Abhi Aiyer, Co-founder & CTO, Mastra - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/mastra) > "Most CI vendors just bill you for faster machines. StarSling's agents actively find ways to cut what each minute costs you, and those savings compound as your volume grows, while you stay focused on your product." > > Vamshi Balanaga, Co-founder & CTO, Partcl - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/partcl) > "StarSling agents are like a CI engineer we never had to hire. They find the slow spots, test out fixes, find the ones that work and open the PRs themselves." > > Bereket Engida, Founder & CEO, Better Auth - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/better-auth) > "At Mastra we move so fast that the bottleneck becomes reviews and CI. Time spent compounds, and StarSling helps you realize how much time you're losing." > > Abhi Aiyer, Co-founder & CTO, Mastra - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/mastra) > "We build chip design and simulation software that's far faster than traditional methods. StarSling is the same idea pointed at CI." > > Vamshi Balanaga, Co-founder & CTO, Partcl - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/partcl) > "Before StarSling, speeding up CI was the sort of work that didn't make it into a release. There was always a feature that mattered more than shaving a minute off the test suite. Now we can actually ship CI improvements with new releases." > > Bereket Engida, Founder & CEO, Better Auth - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/better-auth) > "Our test suite grows every week. It used to mean someone had to stop and make it fast again; now that just happens in the background while we keep shipping." > > Abhi Aiyer, Co-founder & CTO, Mastra - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/mastra) > "The agents went through every workflow we had and did the annoying but valuable work we'd never gotten to: caching builds across shards, parallelizing our tests, right-sizing each job to the machine it actually needed. All on their own. I just reviewed the PRs and merged." > > Vamshi Balanaga, Co-founder & CTO, Partcl - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/partcl) > "We've been using StarSling for Better Auth CI. It's been saving us countless hours, both with fast runners and their agent optimizing our CI." > > Bereket Engida, Founder & CEO, Better Auth - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/better-auth) > "On a busy day, a job could sit close to fifteen minutes in the queue before a single test even ran, and across the matrix that was real time gone every day. Now it's a minute or two." > > Abhi Aiyer, Co-founder & CTO, Mastra - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/mastra) > "We're a chip company, not a DevOps team. We'd been throwing the most powerful machines we could get at our CI and we didn't have time to sit there and optimize it. When it comes down to priorities, our product always comes first so CI just didn't make the cut." > > Vamshi Balanaga, Co-founder & CTO, Partcl - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/partcl) > "Better Auth is growing fast. We've almost doubled our GitHub Actions usage in the past few months without CI becoming a bottleneck thanks to StarSling." > > Bereket Engida, Founder & CEO, Better Auth - [Read the case study](https://starsling.dev/customers/better-auth) --- ## CI is the new bottleneck AI made coding 10x faster. CI hasn't kept up, until now. --- ## Product Demo [Watch Video](https://starsling.dev/#video-heading) --- ## AI in your CI: how StarSling self-drives Fast on day one, faster as time goes on. ### Faster Builds 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors, faster than GitHub-hosted runners - 5th Gen AMD EPYC (30% faster than GitHub) - Compatible with actions/cache, zero config - Unlimited concurrency ### Self-driving AI agents deep-scan your workflow runs and ship optimization PRs - Caching: detect missing or misconfigured caches - Dependency installation: implement faster install strategies (e.g., frozen lockfiles, parallel installs) - Build steps: parallelize, remove redundant and optimize slow steps - Tests: detect misconfigured test jobs and test database interactions - Workflow structure: implement job splitting, matrix strategies, and dependency ordering ### Cheaper Than GitHub 4 vCPU Linux runners with 16 GB RAM at usage-based pricing - $0.008/min vs GitHub's $0.012/min (33% cheaper) - Queue time never billed - No seat fees --- ## Real results from customers Per-workflow breakdown across Better Auth and Mastra. - [Combined Store Tests](https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra/blob/246242b68b72a63b7e38e48d62713f2e2988f322/.github/workflows/test-combined-stores.yml) - Mastra: GitHub Actions 9m 22s, StarSling 2m 49s (3.3x faster) - [E2E](https://github.com/better-auth/better-auth/blob/1a15dc79f86dea9c34ff77cd320a4418840937e7/.github/workflows/e2e.yml) - Better Auth: GitHub Actions 7m 3s, StarSling 3m 11s (2.2x faster) - [CI](https://github.com/better-auth/better-auth/blob/cac8d2ae7b04c82cdc03e8d52439d5e1f4d5c3c0/.github/workflows/ci.yml) - Better Auth: GitHub Actions 5m 55s, StarSling 4m 1s (1.5x faster) --- ## Real PRs from StarSling agents Pull Requests merged by customers. StarSling agents analyze and optimize your CI automatically. - **Mastra** - [ci: shard E2E kitchen-sink across 3 parallel jobs](https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra/pull/15888) - **Better Auth** - [chore(ci): optimize Playwright browser installs in E2E](https://github.com/better-auth/better-auth/pull/8073) - **Better Auth** - [chore: fix turbo cache configuration in ci](https://github.com/better-auth/better-auth/pull/7950) - **Mastra** - [test(chroma): reduce fixed 2000ms waitForIndexing sleep to 200ms and add Docker healthcheck](https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra/pull/13866) - **Mastra** - [test(couchbase): optimize vector test suite by replacing fixed sleeps with bucket.ping()](https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra/pull/13965) --- ## Install with a one-line change Drop-in replacement for ubuntu-latest. ### Agent path Install with one prompt Copy the prompt into your coding agent. No config, no manual edits. - Checks the GitHub App is installed - Migrates supported workflows - Opens a PR for you to review ### Manual path ### Step 1 - Install the GitHub App One click to connect your repository. No config files needed. CTA: [Install App](https://github.com/apps/starslingdev) ### Step 2 - Update one line in your workflow Swap `ubuntu-latest` for `starsling-ubuntu-24.04`. ```yaml # .github/workflows/ci.yml build: - runs-on: ubuntu-latest + runs-on: starsling-ubuntu-24.04 ``` --- 2,000 free minutes. Then $0.008/min. ### Free Trial Free 2,000 minutes your first month - 2,000 minutes included - Unlimited concurrency - No credit card required ### Usage-Based $0.008/min 33% cheaper than GitHub Actions - Queue time never billed - Unlimited concurrency - 99.99% SLA ### Enterprise Custom Volume discounts available - Custom minute allocation - SSO/SAML + dedicated account manager - <1hr incident response - Custom SLAs ### Alum Discount ### Compared to GitHub Actions - 2 vCPU / 8 GB: GitHub $0.006/min, StarSling $0.004/min (33% less) - 4 vCPU / 16 GB: GitHub $0.012/min, StarSling $0.008/min (33% less) - 8 vCPU / 32 GB: GitHub $0.022/min, StarSling $0.016/min (27% less) - 16 vCPU / 64 GB: GitHub $0.042/min, StarSling $0.032/min (24% less) - 32 vCPU / 128 GB: GitHub $0.082/min, StarSling $0.064/min (22% less) - 64 vCPU / 256 GB: GitHub $0.162/min, StarSling $0.128/min (21% less) --- ## Frequently asked questions Everything you need to evaluate StarSling for your CI. ### What is StarSling? StarSling is AI-native CI for GitHub Actions: drop-in Ubuntu runners plus agents that open optimization PRs for your workflows. The runners replace ubuntu-latest and ubuntu-24.04 to make GitHub Actions up to 6x faster in public customer examples and up to 33% cheaper than equivalent GitHub-hosted runners, and the agents continuously analyze your workflows to keep the pipeline improving. ### What does Self-Driving CI mean? Self-driving CI is CI that improves itself. Beyond running your workflows on faster hardware, AI agents continuously analyze your jobs, run logs, and machine telemetry, then open pull requests that optimize your pipeline: caching, parallelization, dependency installs, test sharding, and workflow structure. Traditional CI is static; self-driving CI gets faster the longer you use it. Read more about [AI-native CI](/ai-native-ci). ### How do I speed up GitHub Actions builds? Two things move the needle: faster hardware and removing redundant work. Swap `ubuntu-latest` for a runner with stronger CPUs (StarSling public customer examples show up to 6x faster CI), then let AI agents find dead steps, cache fixes, and parallelization opportunities your team hasn't had time to fix. For a deeper guide, read [fast GitHub Actions](/fast-github-actions). You can also work through the [GitHub Actions CI best practices](/best-practices/github-actions) yourself, without StarSling. ### Why are GitHub Actions runs so slow? Usually the runner. GitHub-hosted `ubuntu-latest` runs on older shared hardware, so even simple builds spend time waiting on CPU. Switching to faster CPUs (StarSling Runners use 5th Gen AMD EPYC) typically cuts wall-clock time significantly before any workflow optimization. ### Are StarSling Runners a drop-in replacement for ubuntu-latest? Yes. Change `runs-on: ubuntu-latest` (or `ubuntu-24.04`) to `runs-on: starsling-ubuntu-24.04` in your GitHub Actions workflow files. No other config changes required. See [StarSling vs GitHub Actions](/compare/github-actions) and [GitHub Actions alternatives](/github-actions-alternatives). ### Is StarSling a GitHub Actions alternative? StarSling is not a full replacement for GitHub Actions. It is a GitHub Actions runner alternative for supported Ubuntu/Linux jobs: you keep GitHub Actions workflows and change the runner label. If you are comparing full CI/CD platforms, read [GitHub Actions alternatives](/github-actions-alternatives). ### How much do StarSling Runners cost? $0.008 per minute for 4 vCPU Linux runners with 16 GB RAM, 33% cheaper than GitHub Actions' $0.012/min. Queue time is never billed. New accounts get 2,000 free minutes the first month. ### How do StarSling's AI optimizations work? After installing the StarSling GitHub App, AI agents continuously analyze your workflows, jobs, run logs, and machine telemetry, then open pull requests that optimize your setup: cache fixes, faster install strategies, Docker health checks, test sharding, parallelization, workflow structure, and job ordering. You review and merge. For new accounts, AI-powered optimization PRs are only available to customers on paid plans and are not enabled by default. ### What's the best GitHub Actions runner for AI-assisted development? Coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) push PR volume up several-fold, which compounds CI cost and queue times fast. The right fit is a runner with unlimited concurrency, continuous AI optimization (so the pipeline gets faster as PR volume grows), and per-minute pricing with no seat fees. StarSling Runners are built for this pattern. ### Do I pay for failed jobs? Yes, but failed jobs typically exit quickly so the cost is minimal. Queue time is never billed, and the 2,000 free minutes give you room to experiment. ### How does StarSling handle security and isolation? Each job runs in its own single-use, hardware-isolated microVM that's destroyed after the run. That's the same isolation model GitHub-hosted runners use, so there's nothing for a later job or a fork PR to persist on or reach. Secrets pass directly from GitHub to your job and are never stored by StarSling. More details in [our docs](https://docs.starsling.dev/security/data-handling). --- ## Supercharge your CI with AI Join AI-native teams that have switched to StarSling Runners - [Get Started For Free](https://github.com/apps/starslingdev) - [Install the ci-speedup skill](https://starsling.dev/ci-speedup) --- Self-driving CI for GitHub Actions. ### Product - [Features](https://starsling.dev/#features) - [Pricing](https://starsling.dev/#pricing) - [GitHub App](https://github.com/apps/starslingdev) - [ci-speedup](https://starsling.dev/ci-speedup) - [ci-score](https://starsling.dev/ci-score) - [Agent skills](https://starsling.dev/skills) - [Book a Demo](https://cal.com/team/starsling/starsling-founders-chat) ### Resources - [Blog](https://starsling.dev/blog) - [GA launch](https://starsling.dev/blog/starsling-runners-are-now-generally-available) - [Fast GitHub Actions](https://starsling.dev/fast-github-actions) - [GitHub Actions too slow](https://starsling.dev/github-actions-too-slow) - [GitHub Actions alternatives](https://starsling.dev/github-actions-alternatives) - [CI best practices](https://starsling.dev/best-practices/github-actions) - [Customers](https://starsling.dev/customers) - [Docs](https://docs.starsling.dev) - [YC Launch](https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/R7B-starsling-runners-self-driving-ci) ### Company - [About Us](https://starsling.dev/about) - [Careers](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/starsling/jobs) - [Privacy](https://starsling.dev/privacy) - [Terms](https://starsling.dev/terms) (c) 2026 StarSling, Inc. All rights reserved.