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Cache hit savings estimator

A cache hit makes a job shorter. Enter your cold and warm times and your hit rate to see what the cache saves a month.

Minutes saved a month
8,400
Saved on GitHub
$185
8 vCPU list price
Saved on compiler.dev
$101
Minutes a monthGitHubcompiler.dev
No cache21,000$462$252
With your cache12,600$277$151

Plus 10 points of hit rate would save another 1,200 minutes a month. Prices as of October 2026.

Prices as of October 2026, from the provider's published rates. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.

How to use it

  1. Enter how many CI runs you have a month and how long one takes with a cold cache and with a warm cache.
  2. Enter your cache hit rate. The Actions cache page or your logs show how often a restore succeeds.
  3. Read the minutes and dollars saved. Try a higher hit rate to see what better cache keys are worth.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find my hit rate?

Count runs where the cache step says it restored a cache, and divide by all runs. Keys that change on every commit give a low rate.

What is a cold and a warm time?

Cold is a run with no cache. Warm is a run that restored everything. Run each once and read the job time.

Why raise the hit rate?

Each extra point of hit rate moves your average toward the warm time. Use restore-keys and stable lockfile hashes.

Is the dollar number exact?

It uses list prices per minute and your inputs. Jobs are billed in whole minutes, so real bills differ a little.

Embed this calculator on your site

Free to embed on blogs and docs. Paste this HTML where you want it to appear:

<iframe src="https://compiler.dev/embed/cache-hit-savings-estimator" title="Cache hit savings estimator" width="100%" height="560" style="border:1px solid #e5e7eb;border-radius:12px" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:12px">Calculator by <a href="https://compiler.dev/tools/cache-hit-savings-estimator">compiler.dev</a></p>

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