How Long Will the Current CI Job Queue Take to Clear?

How to Use This Tool

Estimate the minimum wave time for queued jobs at available runner concurrency. Pull requests remain blocked even when individual jobs are fast because too many workflows compete for a fixed runner pool.

Why CI Queue Clearance needs more than a raw total

Rounding jobs into concurrency waves gives a best-case clearance time and makes additional runner capacity testable before purchase. For this page, the useful comparison is minimum queue clearance time, not whichever input happens to be largest. The CI Queue Clearance result answers the decision in the heading and should not be reused as a score for a different workflow.

The exact CI Queue Clearance formula

Clearance minutes equal queued jobs divided by concurrent slots, rounded up to waves, multiplied by average duration. The visible fields are Jobs waiting or ready, Concurrent runner slots and Average job duration. For CI Queue Clearance, read each printed unit before entry and make the values describe one transaction, cohort or reporting window. If those scopes differ, the displayed minimum queue clearance time may be arithmetically valid but operationally meaningless.

Interpreting minimum queue clearance time

Compare the result with delivery targets, then reduce redundant jobs, stagger schedules or add runner slots where the queue—not execution—is limiting. The ten-percent comparison is deliberately narrow: it tests the influence of jobs waiting or ready and is neither a forecast nor a confidence interval. Preserve the values used, their dates and the resulting decision so a later reviewer can reproduce why CI Queue Clearance supported the choice.

What this CI Queue Clearance model leaves out

This best case assumes equal durations and immediate slot reuse; it excludes new arrivals, setup, priorities, dependencies and unavailable runners. That is where CI Queue Clearance stops being trustworthy. If an excluded factor could reverse minimum queue clearance time, extend the model explicitly or use the authoritative account system instead of hiding the factor inside an unexplained adjustment.

Evidence and independent verification

The reference reviewed for CI Queue Clearance is GitHub Docs — Choosing the runner for a job. GitHub Docs — Choosing the runner for a job supports the named definition or rule but does not supply private values for minimum queue clearance time. Before acting on the result, reconcile the worked example with the relevant dashboard, invoice, export or measurement.

Private, reproducible calculation

CI Queue Clearance runs its arithmetic in the current browser tab and requests no login or API key. That keeps the CI Queue Clearance inputs away from the site's calculation server, while leaving the user responsible for detecting stale data or a changed platform rule. When an assumption changes, reopen GitHub Docs — Choosing the runner for a job and rerun the saved CI Queue Clearance scenario.