how long can github actions run for

GitHub Actions workflow jobs can run for up to 6 hours on GitHub-hosted runners. For self-hosted runners, the runtime is not capped by GitHub in the same way, but the job is still subject to your own infrastructure limits and any workflow timeouts you set.

What that means

• GitHub-hosted runners: up to 6 hours per job.
• Self-hosted runners: no fixed GitHub-hosted-style cap, but practical limits depend on your machine, network, and workflow configuration.

Common gotchas

• A job can end earlier if it hits a step timeout or a workflow-level timeout.
• Long-running jobs are often split into smaller jobs to avoid failures and reduce wasted compute.
• If you meant a different limit, such as repository minutes , that’s a separate billing/quota topic, not the per-job runtime limit.

In one line

For most users, the answer is: up to 6 hours per GitHub Actions job on GitHub-hosted runners.