GitHub Actions vs Loops
CI/CD native to GitHub — workflows + marketplace + hosted runners
vs. Email marketing for SaaS — loops, transactional, campaigns in one
Pricing tiers
GitHub Actions
Public Repos
$0. Free unlimited minutes on hosted runners (Linux). No private runners.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free (Personal)
$0. 2,000 minutes/mo private repos (Linux). 500MB Packages storage.
Free
Per-minute Overage
$0.008/min Linux ($0.08 macOS, $0.016 Windows) after included minutes.
$0/mo
Team
$4/user/mo. 3,000 minutes/mo. 2GB storage. Org management.
$4/mo
Enterprise
$21/user/mo. 50,000 minutes/mo. 50GB storage. SAML SSO, audit.
$21/mo
Loops
Free
1,000 subscribed contacts. 4,000 sends/month. All features. Loops footer on emails.
Free
Paid — 1.5k
1,500 contacts. Unlimited sends. No footer.
$15/mo
Paid — 5k
5,000 contacts. Unlimited sends.
$49/mo
Paid — 10k
10,000 contacts.
$99/mo
Paid — 25k
25,000 contacts.
$199/mo
Paid — 50k
50,000 contacts.
$349/mo
Custom
>100k contacts — contact sales.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on GitHub Actions vs free on Loops.
| Metric | GitHub Actions | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
GitHub Actions · 18 features
- Actions Cache — Persistent cache across runs.
- Actions Marketplace — 20K+ reusable actions.
- ARC (K8s Controller) — Autoscale self-hosted on K8s.
- Artifacts — Upload/download job outputs.
- Composite Actions — Actions made of other actions.
- Concurrency Groups — Cancel / queue overlapping runs.
- Container Jobs — Run a whole job in a Docker image.
- Environments + Approvals — Gate deploys with manual approval.
- Job Summaries — Markdown summaries in UI.
- Larger Runners — 4-64 vCPU, ARM, GPU.
- Matrix Strategy — Fan out over axes.
- OIDC Cloud Auth — Exchange JWT for cloud credentials.
- Reusable Workflows — workflow_call.
- Secrets + Variables — Encrypted org/repo/env secrets.
- Self-Hosted Runners — Your own runners.
- Service Containers — Sidecar containers (DBs, Redis) per job.
- Triggers — push, pull_request, schedule, workflow_dispatch, etc.
- Workflows — Event-driven YAML workflows.
Loops · 12 features
- API Keys — Scoped keys for testing vs production.
- Audiences (Segments) — Filter contacts by properties + event behavior.
- Campaign Analytics — Open/click/unsubscribe rates, heatmaps, A/B significance.
- Campaigns — One-off broadcasts to audience segments. Schedule + A/B test subject.
- Contacts — Contact records with custom properties (strings, numbers, booleans, dates).
- Email Editor — Visual block-based + Markdown + HTML modes.
- Events — Send events to trigger loops/journeys or filter audiences.
- Loops (Automations) — Event-triggered automation flows with delays + conditions.
- Mailing Lists — Opt-in lists with subscribe/unsubscribe preferences per list.
- Template Library — Pre-built templates for SaaS use cases (onboarding, digest, launch).
- Transactional API — Send transactional emails (receipts, password resets) via /transactional endpoin…
- Webhooks — Subscribe to contact/event changes.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | GitHub Actions | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | gh run CLI | — |
| SDK | @actions/* toolkit | @loops/loops, loops-py |
| REST | GitHub Actions REST API | Loops REST API |
| GRAPHQL | GitHub GraphQL (Actions) | — |
| OTHER | Actions Marketplace, Actions Tab (Web), workflow_* webhooks, Workflow YAML | Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to GitHub Actions and Loops are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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