Cheap Dedicated CI/CD Runners for GitLab: Shared vs Self-Hosted vs Rented

If your GitLab pipelines are slow, flaky, or eating into your SaaS bill, you've probably looked at your runner setup. There are three ways to run GitLab CI jobs, and the cost difference between them is bigger than most people realise. The shared runner problem GitLab's shared runners are the path of least resistance. You don't set anything up, and they work. Until they don't. The issues show up gradually: Jobs queuing behind other users' workloads Inconsistent build times No control over the har