n8n Cloud vs Self-Hosted: The Real Costs

n8nOctober 6, 2026 · 6 min read

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n8n offers two deployment options: the product can be rented as n8n Cloud or run on your own server, where the Community edition costs nothing. For a one-person business that makes the choice a real cost decision, not just a technical one.

Every price, limit and licence term below is read from n8n's own pricing page and documentation on October 6, 2026 and linked to the source. The prices are shown in euros, as the page shows them.

What n8n Cloud costs

Plan	Price as shown	Executions a month	Notes
Trial	Free, no credit card	1,000 for the 14-day trial	14 days of Pro features on Starter-level computing power; the workspace is deleted if you do not upgrade
Starter	20€ a month, billed annually	2.5K, unlimited steps	5 concurrent executions, 1 shared project, 5-minute maximum execution time
Pro	50€ a month, billed annually	10K, unlimited steps	40-minute maximum execution time
Business	667€ a month, billed annually	40K, unlimited steps	Self-hosted only; overage 4,000 EUR per extra 300,000 executions
Enterprise	Contact sales	Custom	Hosted by n8n or self-hosted

The figures above are the billed-annually prices shown on the pricing page, which also has a Monthly / Annually (Save 17%) switch; paying month to month costs more, and the month-to-month prices are not quoted here. All plans include unlimited users and workflows and every integration, and pricing is based on monthly workflow executions regardless of complexity. An execution is a single run of the entire workflow, no matter how many steps it has or how much data it processes.

Two cloud-only extras are worth knowing about. Starter and Pro come with a monthly allowance of AI Assistant credits, 1,600 on Starter and 4,000 or 9,600 on Pro depending on plan size, and gateway credits, which let you call AI models and tool services without your own API keys, are likewise available only on n8n Cloud Starter and Pro. Neither is available on Cloud Enterprise or on self-hosted n8n.

What self-hosting costs

The software itself is free. n8n's hosting overview states that every self-hosted install uses the same core product: without a licence key it runs as the free Community edition, and adding a Business or Enterprise licence key enables those editions. The editions comparison says you can stick with the free Community edition indefinitely, or register for free to unlock extra features. Neither page, nor the pricing page the docs point to for definitive usage limits, states an execution limit for the Community edition; the pricing page mentions the Community edition only as a standard, self-hosted version available on GitHub. That is not the same as a promise that it is unlimited.

The server is the cost. The Docker Compose guide asks for at least 4 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, explaining that the sandbox that runs AI-generated code uses Docker-in-Docker and needs more headroom than a typical container. For a Hetzner deployment the docs say the CPX11 server type is enough for most usage levels, but not once n8n Assistant is added: CPX11 does not have enough headroom for the sandbox, and the docs say to choose a plan with at least 4 GB RAM / 2 vCPU instead. n8n publishes no hosting prices, so the monthly figure comes from whichever provider you choose.

The install route has changed. The one-line setup requires Docker on Linux or macOS, or WSL on Windows. From n8n 3.0, which the docs say is launching October 2026, n8n is only distributed through Docker; the old npm install route no longer works for new installs, though existing npm installs keep working for now.

What the Community edition leaves out

The feature list says the Community edition includes almost the complete feature set of n8n, then names what it does not include:

Custom variables, environments and external secrets.
External storage for binary data and log streaming (basic logging is included).
Multi-main mode and projects.
SSO (SAML and LDAP) and sharing of workflows and credentials: only the instance owner and the user who created them can access workflows and credentials.
Version control using Git.

For one person automating their own business, the list reads as things you will not miss until you hire. Sharing, projects and SSO are team features; environments and Git version control matter once workflows are important enough to need a staging copy.

The licence, in plain words

Free self-hosting comes under n8n's Sustainable Use License. The licence text allows you to use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. The licence FAQ adds the three points a small business needs:

If workflows are only created or modified by you or people in your organisation, you can use n8n under the Community licence for free.
There is no limit on the number of clients an agency or freelancer can serve from a single instance; the determining factor is client access, not client count or revenue.
You may not host n8n as a service and allow your clients to build workflows.

The Community licence applies to the self-hosted version only; n8n Cloud is a paid subscription under its own terms.

Which to choose

Choose n8n Cloud if nobody in the business wants to run a server, if the included Assistant credits or gateway credits matter (self-hosted n8n can run the Assistant, but only with your own AI provider key, and gateway credits are not available on self-hosted n8n), or if the volume fits inside Starter's 2.5K executions and the 20€ a month billed annually is cheaper than the time a server would take. Choose self-hosting if you are comfortable with Docker, your workflows stay inside your own business, and you do not want a plan priced on monthly executions. The trial is the cheap way to find out: 14 days of Pro, 1,000 executions, no card.

Verdict

Self-hosted n8n is genuinely free for a one-person business whose workflows are its own, at the price of a small server and the chore of running it. n8n Cloud at 20€ a month billed annually buys the hosting and the AI credits, with forum support only, inside a 2.5K-execution limit that a busy workflow can reach. Decide on who maintains the server, not on the software price, because the software you would run yourself is the free Community edition.