Latchkey vs Depot: Managed GitHub Actions Runners Compared
Both Latchkey and Depot give you faster, cheaper GitHub Actions runners than GitHub-hosted. The biggest difference: Latchkey adds self-healing so transient failures recover automatically.
Depot is known for accelerated Docker builds and remote build caching, and also offers GitHub Actions runners. Latchkey runs your GitHub Actions on managed runners that are cheaper than GitHub-hosted and adds self-healing CI - transient and mechanical failures are detected, fixed, and retried automatically, so flaky builds stop failing your pipeline. Here is how they compare.
At a glance
| Capability | Depot | Latchkey |
|---|---|---|
| Drop-in managed runners | Yes | Yes |
| Cheaper than GitHub-hosted | Yes | Yes (~70% less per minute) |
| Built-in caching | Yes | Yes (dependency + Docker layer) |
| Self-healing CI (auto-retry transient failures) | No | Yes |
| Best known for | Fast Docker builds + remote cache | Self-healing + low-cost managed runners |
What Depot is good at
Depot is excellent at accelerating container image builds with a remote BuildKit cache and fast runners, which is compelling for Docker-heavy pipelines.
What Latchkey adds
Latchkey is built around self-healing CI. On its managed runners, out-of-memory kills, disk-full errors, registry timeouts, and other transient/mechanical failures are detected and retried automatically - so you stop paying for re-runs and stop babysitting red builds. It pairs that with managed runners at roughly 70% lower per-minute cost than GitHub-hosted.
Choosing between Depot and Latchkey
- Pick Depot if your pipeline is dominated by Docker image builds and you want best-in-class remote build caching.
- Pick Latchkey if you want the lowest-cost managed runners plus self-healing that removes flaky re-runs automatically.
The verdict
If your priority is raw Docker build speed, Depot is a solid choice. If you want cheaper runners and pipelines that recover from transient failures on their own, Latchkey is the stronger fit - start free and compare against your real builds.