Cache action
This action allows caching dependencies and build outputs to improve workflow execution time.
Two other actions are available in addition to the primary cache action:
Documentation
See
"Caching dependencies to speed up workflows"
.
What's New
⚠️ Important changes
Important
actions/cache@v5 runs on the Node.js 24 runtime and requires a minimum Actions Runner version of 2.327.1. If you are using self-hosted runners, ensure they are updated before upgrading.
The cache backend service has been rewritten from the ground up for improved performance and reliability.
now integrates with the new cache service (v2) APIs.
The new service will gradually roll out as of February 1st, 2025. The legacy service will also be sunset on the same date. Changes in these releases are fully backward compatible.
We are deprecating some versions of this action. We recommend upgrading to version v4 or v3 as soon as possible before February 1st, 2025. (Upgrade instructions below).
If you are using pinned SHAs, please use the SHAs of versions v4.2.0 or v3.4.0.
If you do not upgrade, all workflow runs using any of the deprecated
will fail.
Upgrading to the recommended versions will not break your workflows.
Additionally, if you are managing your own GitHub runners, you must update your runner version to 2.231.0 or newer to ensure compatibility with the new cache service. Failure to update both the action version and your runner version may result in workflow failures after the migration date.
Read more about the change & access the migration guide:
.
v6
Updated @actions/cache, @actions/core, @actions/exec to latest major versions
Migrated to ESM module system
v5
Updated to node 24
Requires a minimum Actions Runner version of 2.327.1
v4
Integrated with the new cache service (v2) APIs.
Updated to node 20
v3
Integrated with the new cache service (v2) APIs.
Added support for caching in GHES 3.5+.
Fixed download issue for files > 2GB during restore.
Updated the minimum runner version support from node 12 -> node 16.
Fixed avoiding empty cache save when no files are available for caching.
Fixed tar creation error while trying to create tar with path as ~/ home folder on ubuntu-latest.
Fixed zstd failing on amazon linux 2.0 runners.
Fixed cache not working with github workspace directory or current directory.
Fixed the download stuck problem by introducing a timeout of 1 hour for cache downloads.
Fix zstd not working for windows on gnu tar in issues.
Allowing users to provide a custom timeout as input for aborting download of a cache segment using an environment variable SEGMENT_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT_MINS. Default is 10 minutes.
New actions are available for granular control over caches -
and
.
Support cross-os caching as an opt-in feature. See
for more info.
Added option to fail job on cache miss. See
for more info.
Fix zstd not being used after zstd version upgrade to 1.5.4 on hosted runners
Added option to lookup cache without downloading it.
Reduced segment size to 128MB and segment timeout to 10 minutes to fail fast in case the cache download is stuck.
See the
for older updates.
Usage
Pre-requisites
Create a workflow .yml file in your repository's .github/workflows directory. An
is available below. For more information, see the GitHub Help Documentation for
.
If you are using this inside a container, a POSIX-compliant tar needs to be included and accessible from the execution path.
Note: actions/cache@v5 runs on Node.js 24 and requires a minimum Actions Runner version of 2.327.1.
If you are using a self-hosted Windows runner, GNU tar and zstd are required for
to work. They are also recommended to be installed in general so the performance is on par with hosted Windows runners.
Inputs
key - An explicit key for a cache entry. See
.
path - A list of files, directories, and wildcard patterns to cache and restore. See
for supported patterns.
restore-keys - An ordered multiline string listing the prefix-matched keys, that are used for restoring stale cache if no cache hit occurred for key.
enableCrossOsArchive - An optional boolean when enabled, allows Windows runners to save or restore caches that can be restored or saved respectively on other platforms. Default: false
fail-on-cache-miss - Fail the workflow if cache entry is not found. Default: false
lookup-only - If true, only checks if cache entry exists and skips download. Does not change save cache behavior. Default: false
Environment Variables
SEGMENT_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT_MINS - Segment download timeout (in minutes, default 10) to abort download of the segment if not completed in the defined number of minutes.
Outputs
cache-hit - A string value to indicate an exact match was found for the key. If there's a cache hit, this will be 'true' or 'false' to indicate if there's an exact match for key.
If there's a cache miss, this will be an empty string.
See
Skipping steps based on cache-hit
for info on using this output
Cache scopes
The cache is scoped to the key,
, and branch. The default branch cache is available to other branches.
See
for more info.
Read-only access
Some workflow runs only have read-only access to the cache. A common case is a workflow triggered by a pull request from a fork: such runs can restore existing caches but may not be permitted to save new ones.
When the cache token is read-only, the save step does not fail the job. Instead, @actions/cache reports the denial once as a warning (for example, Failed to save: ... cache write denied: ...) and the step completes successfully without writing a cache entry. Restores in the same run continue to work as usual.
Note This applies to the action's normal save path as well as the standalone
. If you intentionally want a restore-only setup, see
Make cache read only / Reuse cache from centralized job
.
Example cache workflow
Restoring and saving cache using a single action
name: Caching Primeson: pushjobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-lateststeps: - uses: actions/checkout@v6 - name: Cache Primesid: cache-primesuses: actions/cache@v6with: path: prime-numberskey: ${{ runner.os }}-primes - name: Generate Prime Numbersif: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'run: /generate-primes.sh -d prime-numbers - name: Use Prime Numbersrun: /primes.sh -d prime-numbersThe cache action provides a cache-hit output which is set to true when the cache is restored using the primary key and false when the cache is restored using restore-keys or no cache is restored.
Using a combination of restore and save actions
name: Caching Primeson: pushjobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-lateststeps: - uses: actions/checkout@v6 - name: Restore cached Primesid: cache-primes-restoreuses: actions/cache/restore@v6with: path: | path/to/dependencies some/other/dependencieskey: ${{ runner.os }}-primes.. //intermediate workflow steps. - name: Save Primesid: cache-primes-saveuses: actions/cache/save@v6with: path: | path/to/dependencies some/other/dependencieskey: ${{ steps.cache-primes-restore.outputs.cache-primary-key }}Note You must use the cache or restore action in your workflow before you need to use the files that might be restored from the cache. If the provided key matches an existing cache, a new cache is not created and if the provided key doesn't match an existing cache, a new cache is automatically created provided the job completes successfully.
Caching Strategies
With the introduction of the restore and save actions, a lot of caching use cases can now be achieved. Please see the
document for understanding how you can use the actions strategically to achieve the desired goal.
Implementation Examples
Every programming language and framework has its own way of caching.
See
for a list of actions/cache implementations for use with:
Swift, Objective-C - CocoaPods
Creating a cache key
A cache key can include any of the contexts, functions, literals, and operators supported by GitHub Actions.
For example, using the
function allows you to create a new cache when dependencies change.
- uses: actions/cache@v6with: path: | path/to/dependencies some/other/dependencieskey: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}Additionally, you can use arbitrary command output in a cache key, such as a date or software version:
# http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/date.1.html - name: Get Dateid: get-daterun: | echo "date=$(/bin/date -u "+%Y%m%d")" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUTshell: bash - uses: actions/cache@v6with: path: path/to/dependencieskey: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ steps.get-date.outputs.date }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}See
Using contexts to create cache keys
Cache Limits
A repository can have up to 10GB of caches. Once the 10GB limit is reached, older caches will be evicted based on when the cache was last accessed. Caches that are not accessed within the last week will also be evicted.
Skipping steps based on cache-hit
Using the cache-hit output, subsequent steps (such as install or build) can be skipped when a cache hit occurs on the key. It is recommended to install missing/updated dependencies in case of a partial key match when the key is dependent on the hash of the package file.
Example:
steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v6 - uses: actions/cache@v6id: cachewith: path: path/to/dependencieskey: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }} - name: Install Dependenciesif: steps.cache.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'run: /install.shNote The id defined in actions/cache must match the id in the if statement (i.e. steps.[ID].outputs.cache-hit)
Cache Version
Cache version is a hash
for a combination of compression tool used (Gzip, Zstd, etc. based on the runner OS) and the path of directories being cached. If two caches have different versions, they are identified as unique caches while matching. This, for example, means that a cache created on a windows-latest runner can't be restored on ubuntu-latest as cache Versions are different.
Pro tip: The
API can be used to get the version of a cache. This can be helpful to troubleshoot cache miss due to version.
Example The workflow will create 3 unique caches with same keys. Ubuntu and windows runners will use different compression technique and hence create two different caches. And `build-linux` will create two different caches as the `paths` are different. jobs: build-linux: runs-on: ubuntu-lateststeps: - uses: actions/checkout@v6 - name: Cache Primesid: cache-primesuses: actions/cache@v6with: path: prime-numberskey: primes - name: Generate Prime Numbersif: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'run: ./generate-primes.sh -d prime-numbers - name: Cache Numbersid: cache-numbersuses: actions/cache@v6with: path: numberskey: primes - name: Generate Numbersif: steps.cache-numbers.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'run: ./generate-primes.sh -d numbersbuild-windows: runs-on: windows-lateststeps: - uses: actions/checkout@v6 - name: Cache Primesid: cache-primesuses: actions/cache@v6with: path: prime-numberskey: primes - name: Generate Prime Numbersif: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'run: ./generate-primes -d prime-numbersKnown practices and workarounds
There are a number of community practices/workarounds to fulfill specific requirements. You may choose to use them if they suit your use case. Note these are not necessarily the only solution or even a recommended solution.
Use cache across feature branches
Force deletion of caches overriding default cache eviction policy
Windows environment variables
Please note that Windows environment variables (like %LocalAppData%) will NOT be expanded by this action. Instead, prefer using ~ in your paths which will expand to the HOME directory. For example, instead of %LocalAppData%, use ~\AppData\Local. For a list of supported default environment variables, see the
Learn GitHub Actions: Variables
page.
Note
Thank you for your interest in this GitHub repo, however, right now we are not taking contributions.
We continue to focus our resources on strategic areas that help our customers be successful while making developers' lives easier. While GitHub Actions remains a key part of this vision, we are allocating resources towards other areas of Actions and are not taking contributions to this repository at this time. The GitHub public roadmap is the best place to follow along for any updates on features we’re working on and what stage they’re in.
We are taking the following steps to better direct requests related to GitHub Actions, including:
We will be directing questions and support requests to our
High Priority bugs can be reported through Community Discussions or you can report these to our support team
https://support.github.com/contact/bug-report
.
Security Issues should be handled as per our
.
We will still provide security updates for this project and fix major breaking changes during this time.
You are welcome to still raise bugs in this repo.
License
The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the