GitHub Actions Cache Service Goes Dark: What DevOps Teams Need to Know

What Changed

On February 1, 2025, GitHub officially deprecated the legacy backend powering its Actions cache service. The replacement — a new, faster, more reliable backend — is not backward-compatible. Workflows using outdated actions/cache versions, older runners, or certain third-party integrations began failing shortly after the deprecation.

GitHub strongly urged teams to upgrade to the latest supported versions of actions/cache (v3 or v4) and update any custom or manual cache configurations. If you didn’t? Your builds may have already broken — or they’re about to.

‍

Who’s Affected

This change impacted a wide range of users:

• Workflows using actions/cache@v1 or @v2
  
  
• Self-hosted runners older than version v2.320.1
  
  
• CI pipelines with manual cache service overrides (like ACTIONS_CACHE_URL)
  
  
• Third-party tools or custom integrations built against the legacy cache API
  
  

These configurations are no longer supported. GitHub has stated clearly: “If you do not upgrade, all workflow runs using any of the deprecated actions/cache will fail.”

‍

What to Do Now

To keep your pipelines running, here’s what GitHub recommends — and what we echo:

• Update all workflows to use actions/cache@v3 or @v4
  
  
• Upgrade all self-hosted runners to version v2.320.1 or higher
  
  
• Audit your use of third-party actions, custom caching logic, or integrations that might be pinned to deprecated endpoints
  
  
• Remove any manual overrides for cache URLs or environment variable
  ‍
  
  

This Isn’t Just About Cache

When one deprecated service breaks hundreds of pipelines, that’s not just a caching issue — it’s a systems reliability problem. Most teams didn’t architect their CI/CD pipelines expecting a foundational service to disappear. But it did.

This is what dependency risk looks like in practice:

• The service wasn’t yours to control
  
  
• The timeline wasn’t yours to set
  
  
• The fallout is yours to manage
  
  

And it's not unique to GitHub. It’s happening across the stack, from frameworks to infrastructure.

‍

A Strategic Reminder

If your CI pipeline failed in February or March, it wasn’t your code. It was your environment shifting under you.

This is the cost of convenience. Cloud tools are fast, integrated, and powerful — but when they change, they change on their terms. And when they go dark, you go with them unless you’ve planned ahead.

It’s not about blaming GitHub. It’s about building smarter next time.

‍

Planning for Change

Here’s how to stay ahead:

• Maintain a central record of third-party service dependencies
  
  
• Treat your CI/CD as a critical product, not just a background tool
  
  
• Monitor changelogs, deprecation timelines, and service announcements
  
  
• Automate dependency and action upgrades across repos, not just per-project
  
  
• Design your infrastructure knowing that even core services can be deprecated
  
  

One Last Thought

At HeroDevs, we’ve built a business around this very problem. We see it with legacy frameworks every day — AngularJS, Vue 2, Bootstrap 3. The tools that power your app today might be unsupported tomorrow.

The GitHub cache shutdown? That’s just one example of what happens when the clock runs out. Our Never-Ending Support exists to keep your stack secure when vendors move on — and your team can’t afford to yet.

‍