Good for / not for
- Technical teams that need complex branching logic and expressions rather than a straight line of steps.
- Anyone whose data has to stay on their own infrastructure; the Community Edition is self-hosted and free to run.
- Workloads with a lot of connectors: pricing is by execution, and every plan includes every integration and unlimited users.
- Teams that need SSO/SAML/LDAP and Git version control, which start on Business — €800 a month, or €667 billed annually.
- Non-technical operations teams who want Zapier-simple setup; reviewers describe a steep learning curve.
- Anyone who needs the widest integration catalogue: roughly 1,000 integrations against Zapier's 8,000-plus.
- Teams whose policy requires an OSI open-source licence, and anyone who wants to resell n8n as a hosted service. The Sustainable Use License permits internal and personal use only.
What it actually does
n8n is a node editor for automation. You drag a trigger onto a canvas, chain steps after it, branch on conditions, and drop in an AI model where you need one. Pricing is by workflow execution rather than by step or by seat: every plan includes every integration and unlimited users, and what you buy is a monthly execution count. Cloud Starter is $24 a month, or $20 billed annually, for 2,500 executions, one shared project and five concurrent executions. Pro is $60, or $50 annually, for 10,000 executions, three shared projects and twenty concurrent. Business is quoted in euros — €800 a month, or €667 annually — for 40,000 executions, and it is where SSO/SAML/LDAP and Git version control appear. Enterprise is quoted. The other way to run n8n is the Community Edition, self-hosted, with no execution ceiling beyond what your hardware allows, and with "Run bash scripts" and custom nodes marked as available in self-hosted deployments. That version is free, but it is licensed under the Sustainable Use License, which allows internal and personal use and does not allow you to sell n8n as a service.
Read both billing cadences on n8n's pricing page.
Starter $24 a month, or $20 billed annually, for 2,500 executions. Pro $60 or $50 for 10,000. Business €800 or €667 for 40,000. n8n quotes Starter and Pro in dollars and Business in euros.
From the vendor's docsPricing and free-plan limits
Free tier: The self-hosted Community Edition is free. The cloud free trial gives 1,000 executions, five concurrent, a 180-second timeout and 800 AI Assistant credits.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Community Edition (self-hosted) | Free |
Free to run, but under the Sustainable Use License, not an OSI open-source licence: internal and personal use only, no paid redistribution and no reselling as a hosted service. |
| Starter | $24/month |
Limits: 1 day of workflow history · 2.5k saved executions and 2.5GB of execution storage · 7 days of execution log retention $20 a month billed annually. Hosted by n8n; the page offers a free trial with no credit card. |
| Pro | $60/month |
Limits: 5 days of workflow history · 25k saved executions and 25GB of execution storage · 30 days of execution log retention $50 a month billed annually. Hosted by n8n. |
| Business | €800/month |
n8n quotes this tier as €800 a month, or €667 billed annually, while Starter and Pro are quoted in dollars. The pricing table lists it as self-hosted. |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing |
Contact sales; no figure is published. The page also advertises a Start-up Plan at 50% off Business for companies under 20 employees. |
Prices checked on Sep 6, 2026 against the vendor's pricing page. Plans change often — confirm before you pay.
Three honest limitations
- The self-hosted edition is not open source. It is under the Sustainable Use License — internal and personal use, no paid redistribution, no reselling as a hosted service — and n8n's own documentation says that because OSI licences cannot limit use, it does not call itself open source. Files with ".ee" in the name need a separate Enterprise licence, and branches other than master are not licensed at all.
- Self-hosting needs real DevOps: Docker, Postgres and Redis, and debugging complex flows gets messy.
- Reviewers describe a steep learning curve around n8n's expressions, with error messages that do not make clear what went wrong.
Alternatives
- Activepieces — Choose Activepieces instead if an MIT licence matters to you and your flows do not need deeply nested logic.
- Dify — Choose Dify instead if what you actually want is a chatbot answering from your own documents.
- Langflow — Choose Langflow instead if you are wiring models and retrieval together rather than automating business apps.
Getting started in 5 minutes
- Start the cloud free trial at n8n.io; the pricing page offers it with no credit card.
- Build one workflow on a real trigger and count its executions — that is the unit every cloud plan is priced in.
- Read the Sustainable Use License before you plan on self-hosting: internal and personal use is allowed, reselling n8n as a service is not.
- If you do self-host, budget for Docker, Postgres and Redis, and for someone to keep them running.
- Pick a tier by executions: Starter $24 a month ($20 annually) for 2,500, Pro $60 ($50) for 10,000, Business €800 (€667) for 40,000 and the first tier with SSO/SAML/LDAP and Git version control.
n8n questions
- Is n8n open source?
- No, and n8n says so itself. Self-hosted n8n is under the Sustainable Use License, and its documentation states that because OSI open-source licences cannot include limitations on use, it does not call itself open source. You may run it for internal or personal use; you may not resell it as a hosted service.
- How much does n8n cost?
- Cloud Starter is $24 a month, or $20 billed annually, for 2,500 workflow executions. Pro is $60 or $50 for 10,000. Business is quoted in euros: €800, or €667 annually, for 40,000. The self-hosted Community Edition costs nothing to licence.
- Can I self-host n8n for nothing?
- Yes. The Community Edition is a standard self-hosted build with no execution ceiling beyond your hardware. It needs Docker, Postgres and Redis to run, and it is bound by the Sustainable Use License.
- What counts as an execution?
- n8n prices by workflow execution, and its pricing page says the count is the same regardless of complexity — Starter's 2,500 executions come "with unlimited steps". That is why plans differ by execution count rather than by task or by seat.
- n8n or Activepieces?
- n8n for the larger integration catalogue and nested logic. Activepieces if you want an MIT licence and a hosted free plan. Both score 4.8 out of 5 on G2.
Sources
- n8n pricing (Starter $24/$20, Pro $60/$50, Business €800/€667)
- n8n Sustainable Use License documentation
- GitHub repository and LICENSE.md (203,568 stars)
- n8n for SMBs: self-hosted vs cloud (DevOps burden, debugging)
- G2 reviews (learning curve, unclear error messages)
- n8n at a $5.2B valuation after SAP's strategic investment (May 2026)
Research-compiled, not hands-on tested. Compiled from official docs, the vendor's pricing page and community reviews as of Sep 6, 2026. We haven't tested it hands-on yet.