Hi Darren here PM for Runner.

Yes if you compare just the price of a compute minute, then it is fair to state that the per-minute price is more than other services or do-it-yourself Runner on public clouds. And, of course, with GitLab, you can easily attach a self-managed Runner to a group or project, as there are no limitations or additional pricing that would prevent you from doing so.

However, we believe that the value of the GitLab SaaS solution will save you additional overhead costs over the long term compared to a do-it-yourself build environment. And we will continue to add more value to GitLab SaaS in the coming months, which your developers will immediately be able to use.