n8n hosting providers compared in 2026: who runs it, and what it costs

The only question that matters

Every n8n hosting comparison turns into a feature table, and feature tables hide the actual decision. Below the first line, every option on this page runs the same software — n8n Community Edition, the free open-source build. What differs is who gets paged when it breaks.

So the question is not "which provider has more features." It is: do you want root on the machine?

If yes, you want a VPS and you accept the maintenance. If no, you want something managed and you accept that you can't install system packages next to n8n. Everything else — price, region, dashboard quality — is a detail that follows from that answer.

Prices below were checked in August 2026.

1. n8n Cloud — first-party, metered

n8n runs it, you never see a server, and you pay for a monthly execution quota.

Pricing (billed annually): Starter €20/month for 2,500 executions. Pro €50 for 10,000. Business €667 for 40,000, which is also the tier where a self-hosting licence appears. Enterprise is custom. Companies under 20 employees can apply for a Startup plan at 50% off Business.

Where it genuinely wins. It is the only option with SSO, separate environments, Git-based version control and a support SLA — those are licensed features, not something self-hosting unlocks. If you need any of them, this list is one item long.

The catch. One execution is one workflow run regardless of node count, which sounds generous until a polling trigger fires every minute. Three polling triggers at one-minute intervals is over 129,000 executions a month — past Business, on three workflows. And the ladder above Pro jumps from €50 straight to €667 with nothing in between.

Pick it if you're under ~2,500 executions a month, or you need the governance features. The full pricing breakdown is here.

2. Managed n8n specialists — flat fee, no meter

Companies that run Community Edition for you on dedicated infrastructure. You get unlimited executions, because Community Edition has no meter, and someone else handles certificates and updates.

Elestio — from around $11/month for n8n on a dedicated VM, with automated backups, auto SSL, auto updates, monitoring and alerts, and human support included. Billing is hourly against that reference price.

Sliplane — priced per server rather than per app: €9/month for 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM and 20 GB storage on the Starter, €17.80 for 2 vCPU and 2 GB, and up from there. Each server runs as many containers as fit, at no extra cost. Managed Postgres is separate, starting at €19/month — worth adding to the total if you're comparing like for like.

livemy.app — a one-click n8n template at $10/month flat on Maker, with a custom domain and free SSL included and backups as a $5/month add-on. No execution meter. The deliberate limitation: no shell access to the underlying box, so if your workflows need to call a system binary you installed yourself, this is the wrong category.

Pick this category if you want unlimited executions without owning a server. It is the answer for most people who outgrow Cloud but don't want to become an administrator.

3. General PaaS — Railway, Render and friends

Container platforms not built for n8n specifically. You deploy the image; they run it.

Railway — Hobby at $5/month including $5 of usage, then metered on RAM, CPU and egress. Render — Starter instances from $7/month on the free Hobby workspace.

The thing to understand. Metered compute and an always-on automation host are an awkward pair. n8n holds a process up around the clock waiting for triggers, so you're billed for the waiting, not just the work. A Railway-hosted n8n realistically lands nearer $15–25/month once it's genuinely always on — the Railway pricing math covers why.

Also worth knowing. These platforms give you no n8n-specific help. The encryption key, the webhook URL, the Postgres decision, the volume for the data directory — all yours to get right, exactly as on a VPS, minus the server access that would let you debug it properly.

Pick it if you already run other services there and want n8n in the same account. Otherwise a specialist is less work for similar money.

4. VPS with a one-click image

Several providers ship an n8n marketplace image — Contabo, DigitalOcean and Hostinger among them, and Contabo's now carries n8n 2.0. Choose n8n instead of a bare OS at server creation and you have a running instance in minutes.

What it actually saves: installing Docker and writing the first Compose file. Perhaps thirty minutes.

What it does not save: the domain, the certificate, the encryption key, the backups, and every upgrade from here to forever. This is the category people most often mistake for managed hosting, and the misunderstanding shows up two months later as "why is my n8n on an expired certificate."

Pick it if you want a VPS and would rather skip the first half hour. It is a faster start on the self-managed path, not a different path.

5. Bare VPS, self-managed

Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode — $5–20/month depending on size and provider. Cheapest possible cash cost, unlimited executions, complete control.

The real bill. Server plus about $1/month amortised for a domain, $0 for Let's Encrypt, $0–5 for backup storage — so $6–26 in cash — and roughly an hour a month of attention once it's stable, more in the first week. Sizing, the proxy config, the firewall and the five things that break are in the VPS setup guide.

Pick it if you're comfortable in a terminal, you already maintain a server, or you need root. That last one is the honest reason: if a workflow shells out to something you installed yourself, no managed host will do.

Same instance, five bills

One production n8n with a custom domain, moderate workflow volume, always on:

• n8n Cloud Pro: €50/month — 10,000 executions, zero maintenance, SSO and environments available above.

• Elestio: from ~$11/month — unmetered executions, backups and updates included.

• Sliplane: €9/month for the server, plus €19 if you want managed Postgres — so €9–28 depending on how you handle the database.

• livemy.app Maker: $10/month flat, $15 with backups — unmetered, domain and SSL included, no shell.

• Railway: ~$15–25/month once always-on, metered.

• Bare VPS: $6–26/month in cash, plus your hour a month.

The spread across every self-hosted option is roughly $10 a month. That is small enough that price should not decide this — which is why the root-access question does.

Two things people get wrong

"Self-hosting unlocks the paid features." It doesn't. SSO, SAML, separate environments, Git version control and log streaming are licensed features that live in Cloud Business and Enterprise. Community Edition is the same regardless of who hosts it — moving it to a fancier host adds nothing to the feature set.

"A one-click image is managed hosting." Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the most expensive misunderstanding on this page. The image installs the software. Everything after installation is still yours.

FAQ

What is the best n8n hosting provider?

It depends on one thing: whether you want to administer a server. Under ~2,500 executions a month with no appetite for maintenance, n8n Cloud Starter at €20 is the simplest answer. Want unlimited executions without a server: a managed specialist — Elestio from ~$11/month, Sliplane from €9, livemy.app at $10 flat. Comfortable with Linux and want root: a $5–20 VPS is the cheapest and most flexible.

Is self-hosted n8n really free?

The software is, under the Sustainable Use License. The hosting is not. Realistic all-in cost is $6–26/month on a self-managed VPS or $9–15 on a managed host — plus, on the VPS route, your own maintenance time, which is the line nobody puts in the comparison.

Which n8n hosting has no execution limits?

Every self-hosted option, because Community Edition has no execution meter — managed specialists, general PaaS, one-click images and bare VPS alike. Only n8n Cloud meters executions. The practical limit on self-hosted becomes the capacity of your server, which is cheap to increase.

Can I move from n8n Cloud to self-hosted later?

Yes. Export your workflows from Cloud, import them into the self-hosted instance, re-enter credentials — they are encrypted and don't travel. Plan a few hours for a small team's worth of automations, and do it before the volume that makes it urgent.

Does a managed n8n host give me server access?

Usually not, and that is the trade-off you are making. Elestio's dedicated-VM model gives more access than most; container-based platforms including livemy.app give none. If a workflow needs to call a binary you installed on the host, you need a VPS.

What about running n8n in queue mode with workers?

Queue mode splits execution across worker processes and needs Redis plus multiple containers. It matters at genuinely high volume and it rules out the simplest managed options, since you need to run several coordinated services. On a VPS or a per-server host like Sliplane it is straightforward; below a few tens of thousands of executions a month, it is complexity you don't need yet.

Decide the access question first

Pick the category before the vendor. Root access and a willingness to maintain a machine points at a VPS. No appetite for that points at managed. A quota you'll never exceed plus a need for SSO points at Cloud. Within each category the prices are close enough that the choice is genuinely low-stakes.

→ Deploy the n8n template on livemy.app · Community Edition, no execution meter · Custom domain and SSL on Maker at $10/month flat · Backups add-on $5/month · No shell access, by design.

Not sure which category you're in? Email hello@livemy.app with your execution volume and whether any workflow needs system access. Replies inside one business day.

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