n8n pricing explained: what it costs to run

Executions, not tasks

In Zapier, a Zap that runs through eight steps consumes eight tasks. In n8n, a workflow that runs through eight nodes consumes one execution.

For simple two-step automations the difference is small. Most business workflows have branching, enrichment, several API calls and error handling, and for those the difference is large. A twenty-node workflow running a thousand times a month is a thousand executions on n8n and potentially twenty thousand tasks elsewhere.

So n8n can look expensive per unit and still cost less per month.

The cloud tiers

n8n sells the hosted product in tiers. The tiers differ mainly in included executions, the number of active workflows, and features such as additional environments, SSO, version control integration and longer log retention.

Estimate executions from how often your triggers fire, not from how many workflows you plan to build. Ten workflows that each run once a day is three hundred executions a month. One webhook-triggered workflow on a busy form can exceed that in a week.

What self-hosting really costs

The self-hosted community edition is free under a fair-code licence. That licence permits internal business use and restricts offering n8n itself as a competing hosted service. For most businesses, self-hosting is allowed without restriction.

Running it still costs money and time. A realistic monthly figure includes:

• Server. A small VPS is enough to start. Queue mode and heavy workloads need more.
• Database. Postgres, on the same box or as a managed service.
• Maintenance. Patching, upgrades, certificate renewal, and disk and queue monitoring.
• Backups. Credentials and workflow definitions, with a restore you have tested.
• Someone's time. This is the largest line item and the one most often left out of the comparison.

If you already run servers, the marginal cost is small. If you do not, compare cloud pricing against the cost of managed hosting, not against zero.

An enterprise licence buys governance

Above the standard tiers, licensing adds the things larger organisations need to satisfy their own controls: SSO and SAML, granular permissions, separate development and production environments, audit logging and support commitments.

If a compliance team will review your setup, these are the features it will check.

How to decide

• Few, simple automations, low volume. A per-task tool will likely cost less in total once you count your time.
• Complex workflows at moderate volume. n8n cloud usually costs less on execution-based pricing alone.
• High volume, sensitive data, or internal systems. Self-host, and budget properly for the maintenance.
• Formal governance requirements. Price the enterprise tier. The alternative is building those controls yourself.

The mistake we see most often is choosing self-hosting to save a subscription, then spending more than the subscription costs on engineering time to keep it running. That trade is fine if you choose it knowingly.