n8n Cloud starts at €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions, rising to €50 for 10,000 and €667 for 40,000. The self-hosted Community edition is free and unlimited. That gap — free versus €20 — is the decision most people are actually trying to make, and the honest answer is that self-hosting is not free.
An execution in n8n means one entire workflow run, however many steps it contains. That single design choice makes n8n the cheapest option in the category for complex work and the most expensive for simple high-volume work. This guide prices both routes properly, including the costs self-hosting guides leave out.
Key takeaways
- One execution = one whole workflow run. Step count is irrelevant. A 40-step workflow costs the same as a 3-step one.
- n8n Cloud Starter is €20/month annual for 2,500 executions, with 5 concurrent executions and unlimited users.
- Self-hosting is free software on a paid server. Budget $5–10/month for a small VPS, plus about an hour to set up and 1–2 hours a month to maintain.
- At a $50 hourly value, that maintenance time costs more than n8n Cloud. Self-hosting wins on data control and unlimited volume, not on price.
- The €50 to €667 jump between Pro and Business is brutal. Pro at 10,000 executions covers almost every small business; if you outgrow it, self-hosting becomes the sane move.
What Does n8n Cost in 2026?
n8n splits into a free self-hostable Community edition and four paid Cloud tiers. Prices below are from n8n’s own pricing page on 26 July 2026, quoted at the annual billing rate.
| Plan | Price | Executions/month | Concurrent | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community (self-hosted) | Free | Unlimited | Your server’s limit | Unlimited |
| Starter | €20/mo annual | 2,500 | 5 | 1 shared |
| Pro | €50/mo annual | 10,000 | 20 | 3 shared |
| Business | €667/mo annual | 40,000 | Unspecified | 6 shared · self-host option |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Custom | 200+ | Unlimited |
Two things worth flagging. Unlimited users on every paid tier is a genuine differentiator — Zapier charges for shared workspaces from its Team plan up. And the Pro-to-Business jump is 13× for 4× the executions, which is the steepest cliff in mainstream automation pricing. Almost nobody should cross it; self-hosting is the rational answer at that volume.
How Does n8n Count Executions?
One execution is one complete run of a workflow, regardless of complexity. n8n’s documentation states it directly: “An execution is a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn’t matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes — it’s still a single execution.”
That is the opposite of how Zapier and Make meter work, and the difference is not marginal.
| Platform | Billing unit | A 10-step workflow, 1,000 runs |
|---|---|---|
| n8n | One whole workflow run | 1,000 executions |
| Make | One module run | ~10,000 credits |
| Zapier | One action step | ~9,000 tasks (trigger excluded) |
So n8n gets cheaper relative to its rivals as workflows get longer. A three-step automation running 2,000 times a month is 2,000 executions on n8n — which needs Pro at €50 — but only 4,000 tasks on Zapier and 6,000 credits on Make, both cheaper. Flip it to a twenty-step workflow and n8n wins outright.
The rule: n8n is cheapest when you have few runs of complex workflows. It is the most expensive when you have many runs of trivial ones.
What Does Self-Hosting n8n Actually Cost?
The software is free. The server is not, and neither is your time. A realistic self-hosted setup runs $5–10 a month for a small VPS, needs about an hour of initial setup, and takes one to two hours a month of maintenance.
n8n’s documented minimum is 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and 20 GB SSD — but that figure is for development. In practice n8n plus PostgreSQL plus Nginx consumes roughly 800 MB at idle, so 2 GB is a floor rather than a target, and 4 GB is the sensible default once you run concurrent executions or move large payloads.
| Cost line | Light use | Production | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| VPS | $5–8/mo (2 GB) | $20–40/mo (4 GB+) | Hetzner and DigitalOcean at the low end |
| Initial setup | ~1 hour | 2–4 hours | Docker Compose, PostgreSQL, reverse proxy, TLS |
| Maintenance | 1–2 hrs/mo | 2–4 hrs/mo | Updates, backups, disk, certificate renewal |
| Time cost at $50/hr | $50–100/mo | $100–200/mo | The line most guides omit entirely |
Read the bottom row carefully, because it inverts the usual conclusion. One to two hours a month of maintenance at a $50 hourly value costs $50–100 — two to five times the €20 Starter plan. Self-hosting saves money only if your time is genuinely free, or if your execution volume is high enough that Cloud pricing would exceed it.
That threshold is easy to find. n8n Pro is €50/month for 10,000 executions. If you need materially more than that, self-hosting starts winning on pure cost. Below it, Cloud is usually cheaper once you price your own hours honestly.
Should You Self-Host or Use n8n Cloud?
Self-host for data control or very high volume. Use Cloud for everything else. The decision is rarely about the subscription price once maintenance time is in the arithmetic.
| If you… | Choose | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Handle health, legal or financial records | Self-host | Data never leaves infrastructure you control |
| Need more than ~10,000 executions/month | Self-host | Cloud pricing above Pro jumps 13× |
| Already run servers and monitoring | Self-host | Marginal maintenance cost is near zero for you |
| Are a non-technical business owner | Cloud | An unpatched, unbacked-up server is a liability |
| Run under ~2,500 executions/month | Cloud Starter | €20 is cheaper than any honest accounting of your time |
| Need it working this afternoon | Cloud | Setup is minutes, not hours |
One risk worth naming that pricing pages never mention: a self-hosted instance you stop maintaining becomes a security problem attached to all your business credentials. n8n holds API keys for every service it connects to. If you are not confident you will apply updates, that is a strong argument for Cloud regardless of cost.
What Happens When You Hit the Execution Limit?
Plan for it before it happens, because the concurrency cap bites earlier than the execution cap for most people. Starter allows 5 concurrent executions and Pro allows 20 — and concurrency, not monthly volume, is what breaks first when several workflows fire at once.
A concrete example. Three workflows each triggered by a webhook, all firing at 9am when your overnight batch lands, each taking 40 seconds. On Starter that’s fine. Add a fourth and fifth workflow to the same trigger window and you are queueing, which shows up as latency rather than as an error — the hardest kind of problem to notice.
So watch two numbers, not one: executions used against your monthly allowance, and peak concurrency against your tier’s cap. If you are comfortably inside the volume limit but workflows feel slow at predictable times of day, concurrency is the constraint and upgrading executions won’t fix it.
Is n8n Cheaper Than Zapier or Make?
It depends on the shape of your workflows, and the answer flips completely between the two extremes. Here are three shapes priced across all three platforms.
| Workflow shape | n8n Cloud | Make | Zapier | Cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 steps, 1,000 runs/mo | €20 (Starter) | $9 (Core) | $49 (Pro 2,000) | Make |
| 12 steps, 1,000 runs/mo | €20 (Starter) | $9 (Core, 12k credits → next tier) | Well above $49 | n8n |
| 4 steps, 50 records per run, daily | €20 (Starter) | ~4,500+ credits | ~4,500+ tasks | n8n |
The third row is where n8n’s model pays off hardest. Because bundle count and step count are both irrelevant to an execution, batch processing is effectively free — the same work that multiplies a Make bill leaves n8n’s untouched. We break down Make’s bundle multiplication in the Make.com pricing guide, and Zapier’s per-step counting in the Zapier pricing explainer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is n8n really free?
The Community edition is free, open-source software with unlimited executions — but you have to host it. Expect $5–10/month for a small VPS, an hour of setup, and one to two hours a month of maintenance. Free software, paid infrastructure.
What counts as an execution in n8n?
One complete run of a workflow. Per n8n’s documentation, it doesn’t matter how many steps the workflow has or how much data it processes — it’s still a single execution. This is why complex workflows cost no more than simple ones.
How much is n8n Cloud per month?
Starter is €20/month billed annually for 2,500 executions, Pro is €50 for 10,000, and Business is €667 for 40,000. All paid tiers include unlimited users.
Is n8n cheaper than Make?
Not for simple, low-volume workflows — Make Core at $9 usually beats n8n Starter at €20. n8n becomes cheaper once workflows get long or start processing batches, because step count and record count don’t affect an execution.
What server do I need to self-host n8n?
The documented minimum is 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and 20 GB SSD, but that’s a development figure. n8n with PostgreSQL and Nginx uses around 800 MB at idle, so treat 2 GB as a floor and 4 GB as the practical default for production.
Do I need to code to use n8n?
No for standard workflows — the visual editor covers most work. You will need basic server skills to self-host, and n8n does let you drop into JavaScript or Python inside a workflow when you want to, which is part of its appeal for technical users.
The Bottom Line
n8n’s pricing rewards complexity and punishes triviality. If your workflows are long, branchy, or process batches of records, per-execution billing makes it the cheapest serious option in the category — and self-hosting removes the ceiling entirely.
But be honest about self-hosting. It is free software on a paid server that you have to maintain, and one to two hours a month of your attention is worth more than the €20 Starter plan at almost any professional hourly rate. Self-host for data control or genuine volume. Otherwise pay the €20 and spend those hours building automations instead of patching a server.
If you’re still choosing between platforms, the full comparison of AI automation tools prices the same automation on all three. If you’re weighing whether the automation is worth building at all, start with the automation playbook.
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Sources
- n8n — Pricing plans and execution definition
- Cherry Servers — n8n Self-Hosting Requirements Guide (2026)
- Make — Pricing plans
- Zapier — Pricing plans
- SBE Council — 2026 Small Business Tech Use Survey
All sources retrieved 26 July 2026. Time-cost figures are arithmetic at a $50 hourly value, not survey data. Vendor pricing changes often — the pricing pages are the authority.
