How I Run 24/7 Automations for FREE Using GitHub Actions (No Servers Needed)

The author was tired of paying for servers to run simple scheduled scripts and discovered that GitHub Actions offers 2,000 free minutes per month on the free tier. This is sufficient to run a script every 2 hours, 24/7, at no cost. The author created a workflow file called automation.yml to automate tasks using GitHub Actions. The workflow file includes a schedule to run the script every 2 hours and allows for manual triggers. The script can be used for various tasks such as price monitoring, content aggregation, health checks, and data backups. However, there are limits to the free tier, including a maximum of 2,000 minutes per month and 20 concurrent jobs. To work around these limits, the author suggests keeping scripts under 5 minutes each and using workflow_dispatch to queue jobs. The author also uses ntfy.sh for free push notifications to receive mobile alerts when automations detect something important. The author has packaged their production-tested workflows into a template pack, which is available for free or for purchase, to help others get started with automating tasks using GitHub Actions. The template pack includes a guide and Python scripts to make it easy to set up and customize the automations.