n8n Pricing 2026: Cloud Plans, Self-Hosting and Real Costs

TL;DR: n8n Pricing at a Glance

• Community Edition (self-hosted): Free, unlimited executions and workflows. You pay for your own server and upkeep.

• Cloud Starter: €24/month (about $27/month), or €20/month (about $23/month) billed annually (2,500 executions)

• Cloud Pro: €60/month (about $68/month), or €50/month (about $56/month) billed annually (10,000 executions). A larger Pro tier gives 50,000 executions for €145/month (about $164/month).

• Business: €800/month (about $904/month), or €667/month (about $754/month) billed annually (40,000 executions). Self-hosted only for now.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing, hosted by n8n or self-hosted (SSO, log streaming, dedicated support with SLA)

• Start-up Plan: 50% off Business for qualifying companies with fewer than 20 employees

Prices checked on n8n.io/pricing in October 2026. n8n lists them in euros, and annual billing saves about 17%.

The key difference from Zapier and Make: n8n charges per workflow execution, not per step or task. A 10-step workflow counts as 1 execution on n8n versus 10 tasks on Zapier. That single difference makes n8n dramatically cheaper for complex automations.

Want someone to pick the plan, set up hosting and build workflows that do not break at 2 AM? See how our n8n agency team builds and runs production n8n automations, starting with a free Starter Audit of what you run today.

n8n Cloud Pricing Plans Compared

Every n8n plan includes unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration. The variable that scales your cost is execution volume, plus which features you need (SSO, Git version control, environments, support).

Here is what each plan includes, as listed on n8n.io in October 2026:

• Starter (€24/month (about $27/month)) gives you 2,500 executions, 5 concurrent executions and a 5 minute maximum run time. A single polling trigger checking for new data every 5 minutes uses about 8,640 executions a month on its own, so Starter suits webhook-driven workflows, not polling-heavy setups. Most teams outgrow it once they put a few workflows into production.

• Pro (€60/month (about $68/month)) moves you to 10,000 executions, up to 50 concurrent executions, a 40 minute maximum run time, admin roles and workflow history. This is where most small teams running CRM syncs, lead routing or internal reporting land. If you need more volume, the 50,000 execution Pro tier at €145/month (about $164/month) is the cheapest per execution of the hosted plans.

• Business (€800/month (about $904/month)) adds SSO, SAML and LDAP, Git-based version control, multiple environments and queue mode for scaling, with 40,000 executions. It is currently self-hosted only, so you run the infrastructure and apply a license key. Support is the community forum, not a dedicated team. Overage is billed at €4,000 (about $4,519) per extra 300,000 executions.

• Enterprise is custom-quoted, available hosted by n8n or self-hosted, and adds unlimited shared projects, 200+ concurrent executions, log streaming, external secret stores, extended data retention and dedicated support with an SLA. If you need SSO on n8n Cloud, this is currently the tier.

The execution model is the most important thing to understand about n8n pricing. One execution equals one complete workflow run, from trigger to final output, regardless of how many steps that workflow contains. A 3-step workflow and a 30-step workflow both cost exactly one execution. That is fundamentally different from Zapier, which charges per individual task (each step is a task), and Make, which charges per operation (each action is an operation).

For simple automations, the difference is minor. For complex, multi-step workflows, it is massive.

n8n Self-Hosted Pricing: What It Actually Costs

The n8n Community Edition software is free. You can download it from GitHub, install it on your own server, and run unlimited executions and workflows with every integration. What you do not get are the Business and Enterprise features, such as SSO, Git version control and multiple environments, which need a paid license key.

The catch is infrastructure.

"Free" stops being free the moment you need a server, a database, SSL certificates, backups, and someone to maintain all of it. Here is what self-hosting n8n actually costs in practice:

• Server costs: A basic VPS from DigitalOcean or AWS starts at $5/month, but production workloads need more. For a stable n8n instance handling moderate automation loads, plan for at least 4GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs. That puts you in the $20-40/month range on most cloud providers. High-volume setups with many concurrent workflows can push infrastructure costs to $50-150/month.

• Database costs: n8n needs a database (PostgreSQL recommended for production). If you run it on the same VPS, it is included in your server cost. If you use a managed database service for reliability, add $15-50/month.

• DevOps maintenance: This is the cost most teams underestimate. Someone needs to handle updates, monitor uptime, configure backups, troubleshoot issues, and manage security patches. Budget 2-8 hours per month of DevOps time, depending on your setup complexity.

• SSL and domain: Minimal cost ($0-15/year), but required for production.

• Realistic total: Most production n8n self-hosted deployments run $20-150/month in infrastructure, plus the value of internal engineering time for maintenance.

Self-hosting is the right choice if your team has DevOps capacity and you need full data control (especially for compliance-sensitive industries). It is the wrong choice if your team does not have server management skills, your automation is not complex enough to justify the overhead, or your engineering time is better spent on product work.

Not sure whether cloud or self-hosted is the right call for your setup? Book a free consultation with our n8n team. We will give you an honest recommendation in one call.

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n8n Pricing vs. Zapier vs. Make

The pricing model difference between these three platforms creates dramatic cost gaps at scale. Here is a concrete comparison.

Take a 10-step workflow that runs 1,000 times per month:

At 1,000 runs, the bills can look similar. Now scale it to the same 10-step workflow running 5,000 times per month:

• n8n: 5,000 executions. Still fits within Pro (€60/month (about $68/month)).

• Zapier: about 50,000 tasks, which pushes you into much higher task tiers.

• Make: about 50,000 operations, which also means a larger plan.

The gap widens with every extra step and every extra run. For multi-step automations at volume, the execution model usually makes n8n the cheapest of the three.

In practical terms: a SaaS company running 15 workflows averaging 8 steps each, with 10,000 runs a month, uses 10,000 executions on n8n. The same setup is roughly 80,000 tasks on Zapier or 80,000 operations on Make. Check both vendors' current pricing pages for what that volume costs, because their tiers change often.

There is one scenario where n8n is not the cheapest: very simple, low-volume automations with few steps. If you only run basic 2-3 step workflows a few hundred times per month, Make's low entry tiers and Zapier's simplicity can make them the better choice. The n8n cost advantage kicks in when workflows get complex, which is exactly when automation delivers the most business value.

This is also why we build on n8n for most client projects at Goodspeed. The cost structure rewards complexity instead of penalizing it.

For a deeper comparison beyond pricing, see our full breakdown of n8n vs. Zapier and n8n vs. Make.

Hidden Costs Most n8n Guides Skip

Every n8n pricing page focuses on the subscription or infrastructure cost. None of them talk about what you will actually spend to get workflows running and keep them running.

API costs from connected services

If your n8n workflows call OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud, or any third-party API, those costs sit outside your n8n bill. An AI-powered document processing workflow making hundreds of model calls a day can cost more in API fees than the n8n plan itself. These costs scale with usage, and most teams do not budget for them upfront.

Data transfer costs at scale

Cloud providers charge for egress. If your workflows move large volumes of data between services (especially across cloud regions), data transfer fees add up. This is less relevant for small setups but matters for high-volume production deployments.

Developer or agency time

Building a workflow is the easy part. Building a workflow that handles errors gracefully, retries failed steps, logs issues for debugging, and does not break when an API changes its response format takes significantly more time. The development cost of production-grade automation is the single largest line item for most projects, whether you build in-house or hire an agency.

Error monitoring and alerting

Production workflows need monitoring. If a workflow fails at 2 AM and nobody notices until Monday, that is a business problem. Tools like Datadog, PagerDuty, or even simple Slack alerting add cost (either in tooling fees or the engineering time to set it up).

Debugging time

Workflows break. APIs change, data formats shift, rate limits get hit. The cost of debugging and fixing production workflows is ongoing and real. Budget for it.

None of these costs are unique to n8n. They apply to any automation platform. But understanding them upfront prevents the surprise when a €60/month (about $68/month) plan turns into a much larger total cost of ownership.

Want a clear picture of what your automation project will actually cost? Our Signal Sprint gives you a scoped estimate, priority roadmap, and honest build-or-buy recommendation.

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What It Costs to Hire an n8n Agency

Most pricing guides stop at the subscription. If your team does not have the capacity to build, deploy and maintain n8n workflows, an agency is the alternative. Here is how our own pricing works, as a reference point:

• Free Starter Audit: we review your current workflows and tell you what to build, fix or retire, and which n8n plan fits.

• n8n Automation Accelerator ($5,000): a fixed-price programme to get your first production automations live.

• Ongoing n8n team (from $10k/month): a dedicated team building new workflows, monitoring and handling incidents.

What drives the cost

The number of systems being integrated, the complexity of conditional logic and error handling, compliance or data sensitivity requirements, whether the project includes AI/LLM components, and the depth of ongoing monitoring and maintenance.

n8n reached $40M in annual recurring revenue by 2025 and raised $180M at a $2.5B valuation in October 2025 led by Accel with participation from Nvidia's NVentures. The platform now serves over 3,000 enterprise customers including Vodafone, Softbank, and Seat, with more than 230,000 active users. The ecosystem is growing fast, and the demand for experienced n8n agencies is growing with it.

For market ranges and how agencies structure n8n pricing, see our full guide to what it costs to work with an n8n partner.

What Production n8n Work Looks Like

The plan is the small part of the bill. The value comes from what runs on it. Three recent examples:

• HubSync needed its tax workflow platform to connect to the tools CPA firms already use. We embedded as their automation team, built 20 n8n automations (10 live in production), ran a two-way HubSpot sync handling 25,000+ records in real time and migrated 306 deals with zero duplicates. One multi-tenant Jira integration now serves every client workspace with no new engineering per customer.

• Oyster, a $1.2bn employment platform, wanted automation skills inside its own teams. We ran a six-week n8n programme that took about 20 people from Legal, HR, Payroll, Product and Revenue Operations from zero to shipping their own workflows. Oyster measured the result at $105k a year and 3,658 hours given back to teams.

• Rank Authority runs an AI SEO platform where n8n orchestrates the backend, firing prompts across eight AI providers, publishing content and re-scanning subscriber sites on a schedule. It shipped to beta in four months with a documented handover.

In each case, getting error handling, monitoring and handover right mattered far more than the plan tier.

How to Choose the Right n8n Plan

The right plan depends on four factors:

Team technical capacity

If your team can manage servers and handle DevOps, self-hosting gives you unlimited executions at the lowest total cost. If not, cloud removes the operational burden so your team can focus on building, not maintaining infrastructure. A good rule of thumb: if your team already runs other self-hosted tools (databases, CI/CD pipelines, internal apps), self-hosting n8n fits naturally into that workflow. If the words "Docker compose" or "PostgreSQL backup" make your team nervous, cloud is the right call.

Execution volume

Count your expected monthly executions before picking a plan. Remember: one execution equals one complete workflow run. If you are migrating from Zapier, divide your current task count by the average number of steps per workflow to estimate n8n executions. Most teams overestimate how many executions they need because they are used to Zapier's per-task counting. A team using 20,000 Zapier tasks per month with an average of 8 steps per workflow would need only about 2,500 n8n executions. That fits on the Starter plan.

Compliance requirements

If you need SSO, you are looking at Business (€800/month (about $904/month), self-hosted only) or Enterprise (custom, hosted or self-hosted). Log streaming and dedicated support are Enterprise only. If compliance is not a factor, Starter or Pro covers most teams. Hosted n8n stores data in the EU, in Frankfurt. For data-sensitive industries like healthcare, fintech, or legal services, the self-hosted Community Edition paired with your own compliant infrastructure can meet regulatory requirements at a fraction of the Business plan cost, assuming your team has the DevOps capacity.

Scale trajectory

If your automation needs are growing, pick a plan that leaves room. Upgrading mid-month is possible, but planning for growth from the start prevents workflow interruptions. Teams building AI-powered workflows should plan for higher execution counts than they expect, because AI workflows tend to expand in scope quickly once the initial value is proven.

For teams running business-critical workflows and needing them built right, an n8n agency handles the platform decision, infrastructure setup, and ongoing reliability. That means your team focuses on the business outcomes automation delivers, not the technical plumbing behind it.

Evaluating n8n for your business? Book a free consultation. We will walk through your use case and recommend the right plan and approach.

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