n8n Pricing in 2026: Plans, Execution Limits and Real Self-Hosting Costs

n8n is free if you host it yourself with the Community Edition. On n8n Cloud, as of October 2026, plans start at $20 a month billed annually ($24 month to month) for 2,500 workflow executions, Pro costs $50 a month billed annually for 10,000 executions, and the Business license, sold for self-hosting only, is listed at €667 a month billed annually for 40,000 on the European price page. n8n bills per execution, meaning one full run of a workflow regardless of how many steps it has, so a 20-step workflow costs the same as a 2-step one.

What is n8n?

n8n is a workflow automation platform: it connects the apps a business already uses, moves data between them and runs AI steps and AI agents inside the same workflows. You build each workflow visually by chaining nodes, and you can write JavaScript or Python in a Code step when a ready-made node is not enough. You can rent it as a hosted service (n8n Cloud) or install the free Community Edition on your own server, which is the main reason its pricing looks so different from Zapier's or Make's.

n8n plans and prices as of October 2026

Every n8n plan includes unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration. What changes from one plan to the next is the number of monthly executions, how many can run at the same time, and the team and governance features. The prices below come from n8n's pricing page, read on October 27, 2026.

* n8n displays prices in the visitor's local currency. We confirmed the Starter and Pro amounts in US dollars. For Business, the page we read listed €667 a month billed annually (€8,000 a year) and €800 month to month, so confirm the dollar figure at checkout.

A few details matter as much as the sticker price:

• Annual billing saves about 17%. Starter costs $240 a year instead of $288 at $24 a month.
• A free trial, not a free plan. n8n Cloud has no free tier. The trial gives you Pro features for 14 days with 1,000 executions, and no credit card is required.
• No surprise overages on Starter and Pro. n8n lists both as capped with no overage fees, so you move up a tier when you need more. On Business, workflows keep running past the quota and extra usage is listed at $4,800 per 300,000 executions (€4,000 in Europe).
• AI credits are separate from executions. Assistant credits pay for n8n's AI helper that builds and edits workflows: 1,600 a month on Starter, 4,000 or 9,600 on Pro, and unused credits do not roll over. Starter and Pro can also call models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others through prepaid Gateway credits, without your own API keys.
• Where your data lives. n8n Cloud stores data in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. If your data has to stay in the US or on your own infrastructure, self-hosting is how you control that.
• Startup discount. Companies with fewer than 20 employees can apply for the Start-up Plan, which takes 50% off Business.

How n8n counts executions

An execution is one run of your entire workflow, from the trigger to the last step. It does not matter whether the workflow has 3 steps or 30, or whether it processes one record or 500: it is still one execution. Only production executions count toward your quota, meaning runs started automatically by a trigger, a schedule or a polling check. Clicking “Execute workflow” while you build and test is free.

n8n's documentation spells out the rules by trigger type:

• Schedule trigger: one execution every time it fires, whether or not there was work to do.
• Polling trigger (for example, “new file in Google Drive”): one execution only when the poll finds new data. Empty polls are free.
• Webhook trigger: one execution for every inbound request that starts the workflow, including requests with an empty body. Malformed requests that fail before the workflow starts do not count.
• Never counted: manual test runs, sub-workflows called by a parent workflow (only the parent counts) and runs of your error workflow.

Four worked examples

1. Lead intake. A website form sends each lead to a webhook, followed by 12 steps: create the CRM contact, enrich it, classify it with AI, reply by email, alert sales in Slack, log it in a sheet. 300 leads a month equals 300 executions. A tool that bills each action would count those 12 steps 3,600 times.
2. A schedule every 5 minutes. 12 runs an hour × 24 hours × 30 days = 8,640 executions a month, even on days with nothing to process. That single workflow uses more than three times Starter's 2,500. Switching to a polling trigger, which only counts when it finds new data, or to a webhook usually fixes it. Running it once an hour instead uses 720.
3. A website chatbot. Each message a visitor sends starts one execution. 150 conversations a week × 6 messages = 900 executions a week, or about 3,900 a month (900 × 52 ÷ 12). That fits Pro 10K, not Starter.
4. A nightly batch. One scheduled run each night loops through 500 unpaid invoices and calls a sub-workflow for each reminder. That is 30 executions a month, because the loop and the sub-workflows stay inside the parent execution.

To size a plan, list every workflow you intend to run, estimate how many times each one triggers per month, add them up and keep about 20% of headroom. Frequent schedules, not long workflows, are what usually blow the budget.

Is n8n free? The self-hosted Community Edition

Yes, if you run it yourself. The Community Edition is what n8n runs without a license key, and n8n describes it as free with almost the complete feature set. Execution quotas apply to paid plans, cloud or self-hosted, so on the Community Edition the only limit is your server. n8n Cloud, by contrast, has no free plan once the trial ends.

The license: Sustainable Use License

The Community Edition is published under n8n's Sustainable Use License, which covers the self-hosted version only. The practical rule from n8n's license FAQ: if workflows are only created or modified by you or people in your organization, you can use n8n for free, including in a commercial business. Under that license you can:

• run your own business on it, or use it for personal and learning projects;
• build automations for clients on your instance, as long as clients cannot create or edit them;
• charge clients for building, setting up and maintaining workflows, and for training and consulting;
• run several instances.

You cannot host n8n as a service where clients build their own workflows, let end users configure workflows through your product (through your own interface, the API, MCP or an AI agent acting for them), fork n8n into a competing automation product, or white-label it. Those uses need a commercial agreement with n8n.

What is free and what is paid

Sharing is the paid feature small teams notice first. A solo founder will not miss it. A team of five that needs to edit the same workflows and reuse the same credentials will, and that is usually the moment to compare n8n Cloud Pro with a self-hosted Business license.

What self-hosting n8n really costs

The license is free; the server and your time are not. A small business instance runs comfortably on an entry-level virtual private server (VPS). Here is what two mainstream providers list on their official pricing pages as of October 2026:

On DigitalOcean, weekly backups add 20% of the server price, so $2.40 a month on the $12 plan. Our rule of thumb: start with 2 GB of memory for a handful of workflows, and move to 4 GB if you run AI agents, Code steps on large files or many workflows at the same time, because memory use grows with data size, node count and parallel runs.

The bigger line is time. Self-hosting means you own the setup and every job after it:

• installing n8n with Docker, pointing a domain at it and setting up SSL;
• applying n8n updates and operating system security patches;
• backing up the database and actually testing a restore;
• monitoring uptime, disk space and out-of-memory errors;
• keeping credentials and the server itself locked down.

Once the instance is stable, plan on 2 to 4 hours a month (our estimate), more during the first month. To put a price on that time, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay of network and computer systems administrators at $47.66 an hour (May 2025). Two to four hours a month is therefore worth about $95 to $191, more than the server and more than n8n's Starter or Pro plan.

n8n total cost of ownership at 3 volumes

Assumptions: annual billing on n8n Cloud. For self-hosting, a DigitalOcean droplet with weekly backups, plus admin time valued at the BLS median of $47.66 an hour (2, 3 and 4 hours a month as volume grows).

The math for the first row: the server is $12 plus $2.40 of backups, so $14.40 × 12 months = $172.80. Time is 2 hours × $47.66 × 12 months = $1,143.84. For the last row, the 4 GB server is $24 plus $4.80 of backups, so $28.80 × 12 = $345.60, and time is 4 hours × $47.66 × 12 = $2,287.68.

Three conclusions:

• Counted honestly, n8n Cloud is cheaper at all three volumes for a business without in-house technical staff.
• Self-hosting wins on cash when the admin time is already paid for, for example when a developer on your team runs servers anyway. The cost then falls to roughly $173 to $346 a year.
• Self-hosting also wins above 50,000 executions a month, where n8n Cloud's Pro plan tops out and the next step is a Business license or an Enterprise contract, and whenever data has to stay on your own infrastructure.

Which n8n plan fits which business?

• Checking whether n8n fits: start the cloud trial. It costs nothing and needs no card.
• Small business with a few production workflows, under 2,500 runs a month: Starter. Keep an eye on schedules.
• Several workflows, frequent schedules or a chatbot: Pro 10K, then Pro 50K. You also get admin roles, insights and longer logs.
• Company under 100 employees that needs SSO, Git version control or separate test and production environments: Business, self-hosted. Check the 50% Start-up Plan if you have fewer than 20 employees.
• Strict compliance, audit logs, guaranteed support: Enterprise.
• Technical team that wants full control of its data, or volumes above 50,000 executions: the free Community Edition on your own server, with the time cost in mind.
• Nobody on the team is comfortable with technical tools: n8n is not the easiest option. Compare it with Zapier and Make in our n8n vs Zapier vs Make cost comparison.

Whatever the plan, the subscription is rarely the big number. The value comes from choosing workflows that save real hours, as shown in our AI automation examples for small businesses. If you plan to add AI agents to n8n, read what an AI agent is and when it is worth it first. And if you would rather have the workflows built and maintained for you, our automation and AI service starts with a free 30-minute call and a fixed quote within 72 hours.