n8n is a workflow automation tool you can run free on your own server or pay to use in n8n’s cloud. On the paid plans, you’re billed per workflow run rather than per step, which makes long, complicated automations cheap. n8n also comes with a license that limits how you can use it for clients, and a learning curve that G2 reviewers complain about more than anything else. This review works out what n8n really costs, what the license allows, and who it suits.
No commission here, yet. n8n runs an affiliate program that anyone can apply to, but I haven’t joined it. Every n8n link on this page is a plain link. If that changes, this note will say so.
The receipt
n8n in five lines
| Time | A simple workflow in an evening; real fluency takes weeks, and some code helps |
| Cost | Free to self-host; cloud from €20 a month billed yearly for 2,500 workflow runs |
| Output | Very capable: 500+ integrations, JavaScript and Python steps, AI agents |
| Real earning path | Building and hosting automations for small businesses |
| Overall | 7.3/10 |
A good buy if… you’re comfortable with a bit of logic or code, your workflows have many steps, or you want your data on your own server.
Look elsewhere if… you want something a non-technical team can set up in ten minutes, you need email or phone support on a small plan, or you want to let clients build their own workflows on your account.
What I looked at, and how I scored it
I haven’t used n8n on paid client work. This review is built from sources you can check: n8n’s pricing page and FAQ, its documentation on executions, the cloud trial, self-hosting, updates and backups, its license FAQ and terms, its release notes and security advisories, 316 G2 reviews and 49 Trustpilot reviews (read for patterns), n8n’s community forum, and the pricing pages of Make, Zapier and Activepieces. Everything was checked on 3 October 2026. The usage examples are my own arithmetic from n8n’s published rules.
| What I scored | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | 6/10 | A clean visual editor, but the learning curve is the most common complaint on G2 |
| Output quality | 9/10 | Code steps, AI agents, sub-workflows and self-hosting make it the most flexible of the big three |
| Value for money | 8/10 | Per-run pricing is cheap for long workflows and self-hosting is free; the jump to Business is steep |
| Trust and support | 6/10 | Well funded and EU-hosted, but small plans get forum support only and self-hosters must patch quickly |
The overall 7.3 is the average of the four (7.25, rounded). If your experience with n8n is different, tell me and I’ll update this.
Six things that are easy to miss about n8n’s pricing
- You pay per run, not per step. n8n counts “a single run of your entire workflow”, however many steps it has or how much data it moves. A 20-step workflow costs the same as a two-step one. What costs you is frequency: a workflow on a 15-minute schedule runs about 2,880 times a month, already more than Starter’s 2,500.
- Testing is free. Only production executions, the ones started by a trigger or a schedule, count towards your quota. Running a workflow by hand in the editor to test it doesn’t.
- At the limit, runs fail rather than queue. On n8n Cloud, once you’ve used your monthly executions, new runs “fail immediately with an error”. n8n support will reset a month’s count once, as a courtesy, on the Trial, Starter and Pro-1 plans. After that you upgrade or wait for the next month.
- The trial deletes itself. The 14-day cloud trial needs no card and gives you Pro features with 1,000 executions. If you don’t upgrade, n8n deletes the workspace when the trial ends, though you have 90 days to download your workflows.
- No pro-rata refunds. Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time and run to the end of the month. Annual plans run to the end of the term, and n8n’s terms call the annual payment non-refundable.
- The Business plan isn’t on the cloud. Business (€667 a month billed yearly) is self-hosted only for now. If you want features like SSO and Git-based version control on n8n’s cloud, you’re looking at Enterprise, which is priced on request.
What n8n does
- A visual workflow editor: you connect nodes on a canvas, then branch, loop and merge data between them.
- 500+ integrations, by n8n’s own count, plus an HTTP Request node for any app with an API and more than 10,000 community templates to start from.
- Code when you need it: JavaScript or Python steps anywhere in a workflow. On n8n Cloud you can’t import extra npm modules, which matters if you rely on a specific library.
- AI building blocks: an AI Agent node and other LangChain-based nodes for chat models, memory, tools and vector stores. The n8n Assistant, launched in September 2026, builds, runs and debugs workflows from a plain-English request using your plan’s monthly AI credits. n8n can also act as an MCP server, so AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT can trigger your workflows.
- Run it where you like: on n8n Cloud, hosted in Frankfurt, or on your own server with the free Community Edition.
n8n pricing in 2026
| Plan | Price, billed yearly | Workflow runs a month | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community (self-hosted) | €0, plus your server | No plan limit published | No projects, SSO, Git version control or environments |
| Starter | €20 a month | 2,500 | 5 runs at once, 1 shared project, forum support |
| Pro | €50 a month | 10,000, with larger tiers from 50,000 | Up to 50 runs at once, 3 shared projects |
| Business | €667 a month, self-hosted only | 40,000 | SSO, Git version control, 6 shared projects |
| Enterprise | On request | Custom | Cloud or self-hosted, dedicated support with an SLA |
These are the annual-billing prices from n8n’s pricing page, which shows them in euros. Paying monthly costs more: the toggle says annual billing saves 17%, which works out to about €24 a month for Starter and €60 for Pro. Every plan includes unlimited users and workflows. Companies with fewer than 20 employees and under €5 million in funding can get 50% off Business through n8n’s startup plan.
What 2,500 or 10,000 runs actually cover
| Workflow | Runs a month | Plan it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Website enquiries by webhook, 30 a day, any number of steps | 900 | Starter |
| A sync that runs every 15 minutes | 2,880 | Pro (just over Starter’s 2,500) |
| A check that runs every 5 minutes | 8,640 | Pro |
| The same check every minute | 43,200 | Pro’s larger tiers (from 50,000), Enterprise or self-hosting |
The practical takeaway: on annual billing, a run costs €8 per thousand on Starter and €5 per thousand on Pro, however long the workflow is. Steps are free; schedules aren’t. Start workflows from webhooks or app events where you can, and set schedules to the longest interval the job allows.
Self-hosting n8n: free, but not free of work
The Community Edition is free and includes almost the whole product: the same editor, nodes and AI features. What it lacks are team features such as projects, SSO, Git version control, environments and credential sharing. Registering your email unlocks folders and two debugging features at no cost. You pay for a server instead:
| Server | Monthly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner CX23 | €5.49 plus €0.50 for an IPv4 address | Excluding VAT; prices from 15 June 2026 |
| Hostinger KVM 1 (1 vCPU, 4 GB) | $6.49 on a 24-month term, then $11.99 | Template with n8n preinstalled |
| Hostinger KVM 2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB) | $8.99 on a 24-month term, then $14.99 | Enough headroom for n8n Assistant |
| DigitalOcean Basic (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | $24 | Per-second billing, capped at $24 a month |
n8n’s own guide says a small server is enough for most use, but recommends at least 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM if you want the n8n Assistant. It also says plainly that it “recommends self-hosting for expert users” because “mistakes can lead to data loss, security issues, and downtime.” In practice, self-hosting comes with four jobs:
- Update at least monthly. That’s n8n’s own advice, and it matters. In January 2026 a flaw rated 10 out of 10 (CVE-2026-21858) let attackers read files on servers running n8n 1.65 to 1.120 through certain form-based workflows. The fix was version 1.121.0.
- Back up the encryption key as well as the database. n8n stores credentials encrypted. Without the key, a restored database’s saved credentials can’t be decrypted.
- Plan for n8n 3.0. It’s scheduled for October 2026. Self-hosted n8n will need Docker (installs via npm stop being supported), and old nodes such as Function, Cron and HTML Extract are being removed, so older workflows may need rework.
- Be careful with community nodes. n8n warns they “have full access to the machine that n8n runs on”. From 3.0, unverified community packages are switched off by default.
The license fine print
n8n isn’t open source in the usual sense. It’s “fair-code” under n8n’s Sustainable Use License: free to use and modify for your own internal business or personal use, with limits on commercial use. The license FAQ is clearer than most:
| You can | You can’t |
|---|---|
| Use it free inside your own business | Host n8n as a service and let your clients build workflows |
| Build, run and maintain workflows for clients on your own instance, and charge for it | Let external users build or configure their own workflows through your product |
| Install, configure and maintain n8n on a client’s own server for a fee | White-label n8n by removing its branding |
| Use n8n behind the scenes in your product, where users trigger automations you built | Fork n8n’s code to launch your own automation product |
One wrinkle: an older n8n support article (updated July 2025) says that hosting and managing clients’ workflows and credentials inside your own instance needs an Enterprise license, which is stricter than the FAQ. If your business model involves holding client credentials on your server, ask license@n8n.io and keep the answer in writing.
What users say
- G2: 4.7 out of 5 from 316 reviews. Ease of use (77 mentions) and flexible automation (72) lead the praise. The learning curve leads the complaints (41), followed by difficulty for non-developers (24), features missing from the self-hosted version (17), poor interface design (15) and debugging large workflows (14).
- Trustpilot: 2.9 out of 5 from 49 reviews. The one-star reviews describe account access problems, slow email-only support, charges tied to the credit system and workflows breaking.
Ease of use leading the praise while the learning curve leads the complaints says it all: people comfortable with logic love it, and people expecting a point-and-click app struggle. The company itself is on solid ground. SAP’s investment in May 2026 valued n8n, which is based in Berlin, at $5.2 billion, and n8n says it has 1.7 million monthly active builders.
n8n vs Make vs Zapier vs Activepieces
| Tool | Entry price | How usage is counted | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| n8n | Free to self-host; cloud from €20 a month billed yearly for 2,500 runs | Per workflow run, however many steps | Long workflows, technical users, self-hosting |
| Make.com | Free for 1,000 credits; $12 a month for 10,000 on monthly billing | Per module action and per item | Visual, branching workflows on a budget |
| Zapier | Free for 100 tasks; Professional from $19.99 a month billed yearly | Per task | The quickest setup for non-technical teams |
| Activepieces | Free for 1,000 credits; Plus $20 a month for 10,000 | One credit per run, plus extra for AI steps | A simpler open-source alternative |
As I worked out in my Make.com review, the counting model matters more than the headline price. A 12-step workflow that runs once is 12 credits on Make but one execution on n8n. Long workflows favor n8n. Short ones that run constantly are where the others can compete.
Pros and cons
Strong points
- Billed per run, not per step
- Free to self-host
- Code and AI agent steps built in
- Test runs don’t use your quota
- Cloud data stays in the EU
Weak points
- Steep learning curve
- Forum-only support on small plans
- Business plan is self-hosted only
- License limits hosting for clients
- Self-hosting means patching and backups
Is n8n worth it?
For technical users, freelancers and small teams with long workflows, yes. Per-run pricing makes complex automations cheap, testing doesn’t eat your quota, and the free Community Edition is the most generous offer in this category if you can look after a server. Watch the schedules that quietly use up executions, and if you self-host, treat updates and backups as part of the price. If you just need a few simple automations set up by a non-technical team, Make or Zapier will be less work.
Can you earn with n8n?
Yes, and n8n has an edge over Make here: you can install it on a client’s own server and charge to look after it, which the license explicitly allows. My separate guide covers what actually pays, real rates from Upwork and n8n’s forum, what the license lets you sell, and the fine print of n8n’s 30% affiliate program.
Related reading: Systeme.io review · Manychat review
n8n FAQ
Is n8n free?
The self-hosted Community Edition is free and includes almost every feature except team tools such as projects, SSO and Git version control. You pay for your own server instead. n8n Cloud has a 14-day free trial, then starts at €20 a month billed yearly.
What counts as an execution in n8n?
One run of an entire workflow, however many steps it has or how much data it processes. On paid plans only production runs count; testing in the editor doesn’t.
Is n8n better than Make?
For long workflows, code and self-hosting, usually yes. Make is easier for non-technical users and can be cheaper for short workflows that run constantly. My Make.com review explains its credit rules.
Can I use n8n for client work?
Yes. The license FAQ allows building and maintaining workflows for clients and charging for it, including on the client’s own server. You can’t host n8n as a service where clients build their own workflows, or white-label it.
What happens if I run out of executions?
On n8n Cloud, new runs fail with an “Execution limit reached” error until the next month or an upgrade. Support offers a one-time reset on the Trial, Starter and Pro-1 plans.
Does n8n offer refunds?
Not pro-rata ones. Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time and run to the end of the month. Annual plans are paid upfront, and n8n’s terms call that payment non-refundable.
Update log: 3 October 2026: first published, with prices, license terms and ratings checked that day.
Sources
- n8n pricing and FAQ and startup plan
- n8n docs: types of executions, execution limits and resets and Pro execution tiers
- n8n docs: the cloud free trial and n8n self-serve terms
- n8n docs: compare editions, self-hosting on Hetzner, updating n8n and backup and restore
- n8n 3.0 breaking changes and community node risks
- CVE-2026-21858 advisory
- n8n license FAQ and n8n support: which license do I need?
- Introducing n8n Assistant (September 2026) and n8n on SAP’s investment (May 2026)
- n8n on G2 and on Trustpilot
- Hetzner price adjustment, Hostinger n8n VPS and DigitalOcean Droplet pricing
- Make pricing, Zapier pricing and Activepieces pricing
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