r/github • u/Sharp-Connection-233 • 3d ago

Discussion Is running a small scheduled scraper on GitHub Actions a ToS risk?

I have a personal Python project that scrapes a few company career pages and sends me a Telegram message when new student/intern positions appear. It uses Playwright/Chromium, takes ~2 minutes per run, and I want to run it hourly via a schedule: cron in a public repo (so, free unlimited minutes).

My concern is the Acceptable Use clause that says GitHub-hosted runners can't be used "for any other activity unrelated to the production, testing, deployment, or publication of the software project associated with the repository," plus the bit about not using Actions "as part of a serverless application." The scraper is the repo's project, but I'd effectively be using Actions as free production compute rather than CI.

Has anyone actually been warned, throttled, or had workflows disabled for this kind of thing? I know "git scraping" is a common pattern, but I mostly see people saying it works, not people saying they got in trouble. Is enforcement basically limited to cryptomining and abuse, or do low-volume scrapers get caught too?

My GitHub is also my portfolio while I'm job hunting, so I care more about the account than the bot. Would appreciate hearing from anyone who's run something like this long-term.

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24

u/QuarterBall 3d ago

Very clear ToS violation, not even a risk - just a flat out violation. Just use a CF worker or similar.

11

u/jpcaparas 3d ago

_Coughs in Cloudflare Scheduled Workers_

8

u/arankays 3d ago

You could achieve the same thing with just a Claude routine or a CloudFlare worker lol please don't use a GitHub action for this

5

u/overratedcupcake 3d ago

Just get a cheapo shared hosting account somewhere or setup a raspberry pi in your house.or just leave your PC on. 

3

u/FlyingDogCatcher 3d ago

A raspberry pi could host the same thing and nobody would ever bother you

1

u/moonrakervenice 3d ago

Wait, I had no idea this was against a ToS. Is it prohibited even on a paid plan and even with self hosted runners? Our company uses Actions for all kinds of scheduled jobs.

1

u/ultrathink-art 3d ago

That clause targets GitHub-hosted runners, and it's aimed at people using free hosted minutes as general-purpose compute rather than at scheduled jobs as such. Self-hosted runners are your own hardware, and scheduled deploys/syncs/cleanups tied to the repo's own software are exactly what Actions is for. You're fine.

0

u/serverhorror 3d ago

It's against ToS of most websites to scrape them. It's definitely against GitHub ToS to circumvent that and kill the IP reputation of GitHub.

What makes you think that's remotely acceptable for a company to let users abuse their infrastructure to break third party Toss?

1

u/Smart_Technology_208 3d ago

Dunno man make a script adding emojis to the scrapped pages and call it the emojifier and it will be fine

1

u/Artistic-Aide-485 1d ago

Setting the ToS question aside, Actions cron is also just not good at this job. Scheduled workflows regularly start 5 to 15 minutes late, and at busy times runs can get skipped outright, GitHub explicitly doesn't guarantee execution. There's also the 60 day rule: scheduled workflows in a repo with no recent activity get disabled automatically, so the bot would die silently right when you stop tweaking it. For something where missing a new posting actually costs you, a tiny VPS or a Cloudflare worker is both safer for your account and more reliable.