GitHub Actions spend — what we actually pay

The daily Slack report shows a dollar figure that is list price, not money. Here is the real series: minutes burned, value consumed, and what GitHub actually billed.

2026-09-08 · source: GET /organizations/PropFlow-Technologies/settings/billing/usage · Jul 14 – Sep 8 · read-only

We have paid $0.00 for GitHub Actions since 2026-08-18. Every usage line since then carries a discount equal to its gross amount. Before that we were paying for real — $1,734 across Jul 14 – Aug 17.

Daily runner-minutes

Amber bars are days over the 12,000-minute target. The dashed red line is the target.

0k10k20k30k40k 2026-07-14 — 7,540 min2026-07-15 — 17,527 min2026-07-16 — 14,209 min2026-07-17 — 18,091 min2026-07-18 — 9,294 min2026-07-19 — 6,351 min2026-07-20 — 5,504 min2026-07-21 — 8,849 min2026-07-22 — 11,415 min2026-07-23 — 12,087 min2026-07-24 — 6,299 min2026-07-25 — 8,492 min2026-07-26 — 6,975 min2026-07-27 — 6,635 min2026-07-28 — 11,716 min2026-07-29 — 16,646 min2026-07-30 — 24,243 min2026-07-31 — 14,541 min2026-08-01 — 9,847 min2026-08-02 — 8,494 min2026-08-03 — 7,790 min2026-08-04 — 10,940 min2026-08-05 — 18,603 min2026-08-06 — 9,649 min2026-08-07 — 25,417 min2026-08-08 — 9,457 min2026-08-09 — 19,968 min2026-08-10 — 21,958 min2026-08-11 — 17,782 min2026-08-12 — 8,404 min2026-08-13 — 4,118 min2026-08-14 — 11,534 min2026-08-15 — 10,213 min2026-08-16 — 7,329 min2026-08-17 — 8,121 min2026-08-18 — 13,190 min2026-08-19 — 22,390 min2026-08-20 — 25,929 min2026-08-21 — 19,978 min2026-08-22 — 8,032 min2026-08-23 — 11,758 min2026-08-24 — 15,207 min2026-08-25 — 9,586 min2026-08-26 — 19,404 min2026-08-27 — 15,968 min2026-08-28 — 20,221 min2026-08-29 — 18,295 min2026-08-30 — 12,497 min2026-08-31 — 19,908 min2026-09-01 — 7,503 min2026-09-02 — 9,416 min2026-09-03 — 42,315 min2026-09-04 — 33,227 min2026-09-05 — 10,555 min2026-09-06 — 20,425 min2026-09-07 — 27,964 min2026-09-08 — 1,687 min 07-1507-2207-2908-0108-0808-1508-2208-2909-0109-08

under targetover 12k12k target line

Consumed vs actually billed

The grey line is what the Slack report calls "consumed" — list price. The red line is money. They tracked each other all through late July and August, then the red line hits the floor on Aug 18 (green marker) and has not come off it since.

$0$100$200$300 07-1507-2207-2908-0108-0808-1508-2208-2909-0109-08

consumed (list price)actually billedAug 18 — discount goes to 100%

By month

PeriodRunner-minutesConsumedActually billedPaid share
Jul (from the 14th)206,414$1,202.22$901.0475%
August441,987$2,722.00$832.9631%
Sep to date153,092$1,079.79$0.000%
Total801,493$5,004.01$1,734.0035%

June and earlier return no usage rows from this endpoint, so the series starts 2026-07-14.

The bug in the daily report

The reporter is measuring the free-tier 50,000-minute pool. That is not the pool covering us. The org is on plan: enterprise, and since Aug 18 the discount has covered 100% of every line — storage, Linux, ARM, ARM 8-core, every repo. The alert should read the netAmount the API already returns instead of simulating a pool.

What is actually worth watching

Not the dollars — the minutes. September is averaging 19,136 min/day against a 10–12k target, and Sep 3 hit 42,315. The cost of that is queue latency and the risk that the discount arrangement changes, not a bill today.

Where September's minutes went

RepositoryMinutes (Sep MTD)Share
propflowai140,34891.7%
propflow-docs5,3393.5%
agent-smith3,4732.3%
sales-machine2,4551.6%
agentflow-relay1,0440.7%
appfolio-browser-agent3910.3%
ccswitch420.0%

It is one repo. propflowai is 91.7% of everything, and on Sep 7 its heaviest workflows by run count were Auto-merge on green (15), Claude Code (13), Docs-only fence (8) and CI (8) — the agent loop's own review-and-merge machinery, not product tests.

How to re-check this

gh api "/organizations/PropFlow-Technologies/settings/billing/usage?year=2026&month=9"

The older /settings/billing/actions endpoint returns HTTP 410 — it was retired. Sum netAmount for money and grossAmount for list price; the daily report's "consumed" figure is the latter.

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