n8n pricing explained: Cloud vs self-hosted, what you'll actually pay in 2026

How n8n pricing actually works

n8n prices one thing: workflow executions per month. Not steps, not tasks, not seats. A workflow that fires once and runs through 50 nodes counts as one execution — the same as a workflow with two nodes. Every plan includes unlimited users and unlimited workflows.

That single design choice is why n8n looks cheap next to Zapier or Make, which bill per step or per module. It's also why the plan you need has almost nothing to do with how complex your automations are, and almost everything to do with how often they run.

There are two ways to pay for n8n, and they're priced on completely different logic:

• n8n Cloud — n8n runs the instance, you pay a monthly fee tied to an execution quota.

• Community Edition (self-hosted) — the software is free and open source, executions are unlimited, and you pay for a server plus your own time.

Below are the official Cloud numbers, then the honest math on what self-hosting really costs.

n8n Cloud plans in 2026 (official)

n8n bills in euros. Prices below are taken from the n8n pricing page and verified in July 2026 — annual billing first, monthly billing in brackets (annual saves 17%).

• Starter — €20/month annually (€24 billed monthly). 2,500 executions/month · 5 concurrent executions · 1 shared project · unlimited users and workflows · 2,300 AI credits/month · 1 day of workflow history · forum support. Hosted by n8n.

• Pro — €50/month annually (€60 billed monthly). 10,000 executions/month · 20 concurrent executions · 3 shared projects · 7 days of insights · 5 days of workflow history · up to 13,700 AI credits/month · admin roles, global variables, execution search. Hosted by n8n.

• Business — €667/month annually (€800 billed monthly). 40,000 executions/month · 6 shared projects · SSO, SAML and LDAP · 30 days of insights · separate environments · Git version control · self-hosting included.

• Enterprise — contact sales. Custom execution volume · 200+ concurrent executions · unlimited projects · 365 days of insights · external secret store · log streaming · dedicated support with an SLA · self-hosted or cloud.

Two things people miss on this page. First, self-hosting with a licence starts at Business — €667/month. The free self-hosted route is Community Edition, which is a different product with a different feature set. Second, n8n also runs a Start-up Plan: companies under 20 employees can apply for 50% off Business.

What counts as one execution

An execution is one complete run of one workflow, from trigger to finish, regardless of how many nodes it passes through. This matters more than the headline price.

A daily report that pulls three APIs, transforms the data and posts to Slack is one execution — about 30 per month. A webhook that fires on every form submission on a busy site can be thousands. Same complexity, wildly different bills.

So the question to answer before you pick a plan isn't "how advanced are my workflows" — it's "how many times a month does a trigger fire?" Count your triggers, not your nodes:

• Scheduled workflows — runs per day × 30. A workflow every 15 minutes is ~2,900 executions/month on its own, which already exceeds Starter.

• Webhooks — one per inbound event. Form submissions, Stripe events, GitHub hooks, chatbot messages.

• Polling triggers — these check on an interval whether or not anything changed, and each check is an execution.

Polling is the classic way people blow through a quota without noticing. Three polling triggers at one-minute intervals is over 129,000 executions a month — past Business, on three workflows.

The real cost of self-hosting n8n

Community Edition is free software with unlimited executions and unlimited workflows. It includes the editor, every integration, code steps in JavaScript and Python, the API, webhooks and custom nodes. What it doesn't include is the governance layer: SSO/SAML, separate dev and production environments, Git-based version control, granular role permissions, log streaming and support with an SLA.

"Free" refers to the licence. Here's what actually shows up on a card each month:

• The server — $5–25/month. n8n wants roughly 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM to be comfortable. Budget providers like Hetzner sit at the bottom of that range; DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr nearer the top.

• Domain — about $1/month. Amortised annual registration. Webhooks need a stable public URL.

• SSL — $0. Let's Encrypt, if you're willing to wire it up and keep renewals working.

• Backups — $0–5/month. Your workflows and credentials live in a database. Losing it means rebuilding everything by hand.

• Your time — the line nobody prices. Docker Compose, a reverse proxy, environment variables, version upgrades, certificate renewals, and whatever breaks at 2am on the day a webhook stops firing.

Cash cost lands around $10–30/month on a fixed-price server. Put the same instance on a usage-metered host and the number moves — an always-running n8n on Railway lands nearer $15–25/month, because it holds about a gigabyte of RAM around the clock whether a workflow fires or not.

The honest total depends entirely on how you value the last item. If you're comfortable in a terminal, self-hosting is genuinely the cheapest automation platform available. If you're not, the maintenance is the product you're buying — and it's the reason most people who try the DIY route end up back on Cloud within a few months.

There's a middle path that didn't exist a couple of years ago: run Community Edition on a managed host, so you get unlimited executions without owning a server. That's what our one-click n8n template does — the full self-hosted n8n, deployed for you, with SSL and a domain handled. Flat $10/month on the Maker plan, and no execution meter, because there isn't one in Community Edition. If you'd rather do it manually, our guide to self-hosting n8n walks through the whole setup.

Cloud vs self-hosted: three scenarios

Scenario 1: a few personal automations

Three or four workflows — a daily digest, a form-to-spreadsheet hook, a Slack notifier. Maybe 300 executions a month, well inside any quota.

n8n Cloud Starter: €20/month. Self-hosted: $10–30/month plus setup and upkeep.

Verdict: Cloud, comfortably. At this volume you're paying n8n to not think about servers, and that's a fair trade. Self-hosting only wins here if you already run a server for something else.

Scenario 2: one busy webhook

A single workflow behind a form, a chatbot or a Stripe webhook, firing a few hundred times a day. Call it 9,000 executions a month — one workflow.

n8n Cloud: Starter is gone at 2,500; you're on Pro at €50/month, and the next tier above it is €667. Self-hosted: still $10–30/month, because there's no meter.

Verdict: this is where the crossover lives. One busy trigger, not fifty clever workflows, is what pushes people off Cloud. Note how brutal the ladder is above Pro — the jump from €50 to €667 has nothing in between.

Scenario 3: automations running a small business

Fifteen workflows including a couple of polling triggers, order processing, lead routing, reporting. Realistically 50,000+ executions a month.

n8n Cloud: past Business (40,000) — you're in Enterprise pricing conversations. Self-hosted: $10–30/month for the infrastructure; the constraint becomes server capacity, not licence tiers, and capacity is cheap.

Verdict: self-hosted, and it isn't close. At this volume the licence saving pays for a lot of maintenance — or for a managed host that does the maintenance for you.

Which one you should pick

A short decision list, in the order the questions actually matter:

• Under ~2,500 executions/month and you don't want to touch a server — n8n Cloud Starter. Simple, supported, done.

• You need SSO, audit logs, separate environments or a support SLA — Cloud Business or Enterprise. Community Edition doesn't have these, and no amount of self-hosting adds them.

• You're over the quota, or a polling trigger keeps eating it — Community Edition. Unlimited executions is the whole point.

• You want unlimited executions but not a server to babysit — Community Edition on a managed host. This is the option most people don't know exists.

• You're just trying n8n out — the Cloud free trial needs no card, and it's the fastest way to find out whether n8n fits your problem at all.

FAQ

Is n8n free?

The self-hosted Community Edition is free and open source, with unlimited workflows and unlimited executions — you pay only for the server it runs on. n8n Cloud is not free; it offers a trial without a credit card, and paid plans start at €20/month billed annually.

How much does n8n Cloud cost per month?

Starter is €20/month billed annually or €24 billed monthly (2,500 executions). Pro is €50 or €60 (10,000 executions). Business is €667 or €800 (40,000 executions, self-hosting licence included). Enterprise is custom. Verified July 2026.

What counts as an execution in n8n?

One complete run of one workflow, from trigger to finish, no matter how many nodes it contains. A 50-node workflow and a 2-node workflow each count as one execution — which is why n8n is far cheaper than per-step tools for complex automations.

What happens if I go over my execution limit?

n8n asks you to upgrade to the next tier rather than billing per-execution overage. On self-hosted Business and Enterprise licences, extra capacity is sold in blocks — around €4,000 for an additional 300,000 executions. There is no overage on Community Edition, because there is no quota.

Is self-hosting n8n cheaper than n8n Cloud?

On cash, almost always — $10–30/month for infrastructure versus €20–667/month for a quota. The cost you're taking on is maintenance: updates, backups, SSL renewals and debugging. Below roughly 2,500 executions a month, Cloud usually wins on total effort; above it, self-hosting wins quickly.

Does the free Community Edition have execution limits?

No. Executions, workflows and users are unlimited. The limits are technical (your server's capacity) and functional — no SSO, no separate environments, no Git version control, no support SLA.

Can I self-host n8n without managing a server?

Yes. Community Edition can run on a managed host, so you get unlimited executions without owning the machine. On livemy.app that's a one-click n8n template at a flat $10/month on the Maker plan, with a custom domain and free SSL included, and backups available as a $5/month add-on.

The number that decides it is your trigger count

n8n's pricing is unusually honest — one meter, no per-step arithmetic, no seat tax. But that one meter is the whole decision. Before you compare plans, count how many times a month your triggers fire. If the answer is in the hundreds, Cloud Starter is a good deal. If it's in the tens of thousands, you're paying a quota for something the free edition gives away, and the only real question left is who runs the server.

→ Deploy self-hosted n8n on livemy.app · Unlimited executions · Flat $10/month · Custom domain and SSL included.