Announcing powerful upgrades & a new pricing model for self-hosted runners

[Benjamin Löffler]

@Ash Moosa we NEED a update NOW!

[Angga Kusumandaru]

We’ve reversed our decision to deprecate free runner versions. We will continue to provide a free self-hosted runners option going forward.

First of all, thanks for listening to our feedback and for continuing to support the free Runner version.​

On the other hand, could you clarify whether the free version will stay on the locked Version 4, or if it will use a different tag than the premium version going forward?

[Liam Nunns]

@Angga Kusumandaru we will provide a better update as soon as we can, we want to make sure we get this right.
It's safe to say though that the V4/V5 tag as a method of differentiating the paid/free runner is being reconsidered in favour of a longer term approach; one model under consideration is a user could declare whether the runner is paid or free at time of registration, either via UI or API https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/bitbucket/rest/api-group-pipelines/#api-workspaces-workspace-pipelines-config-runners-post

[Benjamin Löffler]

If I understand this correctly:

You will update the runners, but only the currently available one (v4) is free of charge. Any future updates, fixes, or improvements will only be available if we pay for them?

So effectively, everyone will end up stuck on an increasingly outdated runner unless we pay Atlassian for the privilege of using our own hardware?

Regarding your statement:

“Additionally, many of our customers want us to continue to innovate in this space, which comes with real costs on our end. So we will continue to offer a premium tier, which we will charge for per the announced pricing.”

I have a simple question: What exactly are we paying our regular Bitbucket license for then? And on top of that, our already expensive Jira and Confluence licenses?

The pricing model as it stands seems to be:

• we pay monthly for the products we already use, and
• we have to pay extra again if we want to receive updates and improvements in this area.

This feels like we are being charged twice for the same product evolution. Honestly, the situation with Atlassian’s pricing these days comes across as increasingly unreasonable.

[Bob Eckert]

I'm still confused on how queue slots cost money.  

Basically why couldn't I run my own self-hosted fleet and have more jobs being able to be run? 

Count someone please explain why additional concurrency impacts my use of self.hosted runners?

Thanks for not charging us for using our own hardware, but you're still charging us to effectively use our own hardware.

[Edmund Munday]

Hi everyone, we've finalised our plans for the implementation of a premium runners tier and have published all the details via a dedicated Bitbucket Cloud blog post. There are important details contained in the update that relate to the migration from the existing runners implementation to the new free/premium tiered model, so please familiarise yourself with the upcoming changes.

Thank you to everyone for your engagement with this process as we work towards a model that allows us to grow our investment in this critical piece of functionality.

[Christian Fares]

Hi @Edmund Munday The blog post only mentions that V3 runners will continue to work on the free tier, is that the case also for V4 runners?

Also what kind of security updates can we expect for V3 / V4 runners in the future?

Do you have any plans to deprecate these runners in the future?

[Liam Nunns]

Hi @Christian Fares 

After the migration period is complete and we shift people to paid or free workspaces on June 3rd we will release a new version that is the base runner for both free and paid customers. Security updates, patches and bug fixes we identify will be regularly patched in that common version.

Thanks for your question.

[Andreas]

What will happen for those that are running V4 runners?

[Solomon Chen]

@Ash Moosa could atlassian announce clearly?

• is there a EOL date for v3/v4(old) ver runners already? 
  https://www.atlas-bench.com/blog/announcing-powerful-upgrades-a-new-pricing-model-for-self-hosted-runners
  this partner articale said that it's 6/4 for monthly paid and 12/3 for annual paid, and my accout manager said that there's no EOL right now but atlassian will announce something in SEP 2026
• I think there are no concurrent limit for self-hosted runner (not sure) before atlassian announce v5 last year, so as article said if we stayed in v4 (old) runner
  https://www.atlassian.com/blog/bitbucket/announcing-the-next-chapter-for-bitbucket-pipelines-runners
  this article said that we can use 100 free old runners, do they have concurrent limit? cause my support and accout manager can't give us an ACCURATE answer, my support eng said that after 6/3 if we use old runners, our concurrent limit is 1 ?????!! this make no sense at all, if so, why you keep old ver runners? 

[Liam Nunns]

@Solomon Chen the pathway for you should be fairly straightforward
If you do not wish to use premium runners, stay on V3/V4 for now, do not use V5 runners or change the concurrency limit.

After June 3rd, the runner version stops being relevant, you will be either a premium runner workspace, or a free runner workspace, which controls accessible functionality in the runner. You can install the latest released runner version once that migration is complete.

Free runners do not utilise the concurrency limit, instead we restrict you to installing up to 100 runners, which enables up to 100 concurrent steps, you will not need to set the limit, nor will it be exposed to you unless you opt in to premium runners.
Step concurrency is a billing control for premium runners.

The Annual plan billing models will be announced separately, for now annual plans are not charged, however if you have no intention of using premium runners, I suggest you stick with the free runners in order to simplify your migration later.

I suggest speaking to your support engineer and clarifying this message with them.

[Solomon Chen]

@Liam Nunns 

We are annual-plan customers, and we have confirmed that our runners-autoscaler-job-template is still running the legacy version (4.3.0). However, we are now being affected by concurrency rate limiting.

I have already replied to support case BBS-249452 and also reached out to our Account Manager, but we have not received a response yet.

Is there any way you could help us investigate this issue or provide guidance on how to proceed? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[Olimpiu Scheau]

We also selected the Free tier and downgraded all our on-premise runners to v3, however all pipelines seem to be limited to 1 concurrent step.

How to make sure we are on free or premium workspace runners tier @Ash Moosa ?

[Liam Nunns]

@Olimpiu Scheau - please raise a support case. If you did in fact use the workspace settings to select the free runner workspace option and this isn't working, then the Customer Support team will need to assist.

[Ronczka Stefan]

Lol so i read this comments now starting from 2025 an it's somehow interessting that the cost did not changed while there was this big disscusion. And als result you instead just renamed this issue from premium to a free tier variant while there is still just one slot included. ...

I found some source that it maybe changed. So my question to this .

Can you please once and for all add this importent information in the real price listing? 

What is a concurrent build slot ? Does it mean all self-host-runner only share this Build slots or not? 

You guy have created so much sources for different paying models in different channels that nobody understand what it actually means now!

[Ash Moosa]

Hi @Ronczka Stefan as a result of this thread, we introduced a free forever plan for up to 100 self-hosted runners. The premium tier has additional features and allows for up to 1000 runners.

This blog linked at the top of the page should give you more details on how free and premium runners compare - https://www.atlassian.com/blog/bitbucket/premium-self-hosted-runners-are-generally-available. The pricing section of the blog explains what a concurrent build slot is and how we bill for it. 

You're right that our pricing page is not clear on the 1/2 free slots - those refer to premium runner slots - we'll work on making that more clear. On the free tier, you can register up to 100 runners.