n8n cost: Cloud or self-hosted, with your own numbers
n8n prices Cloud by workflow executions and gives the software away free if you run it yourself. The gap between those two sentences is your server bill and your own hours. Put your numbers in and see which side wins, and where it flips.
Prices read from n8n.io/pricing on 7 October 2026, annual billing. n8n also bills monthly and says annual saves 17%.
Your n8n cost, both ways, at once
Cloud picks the cheapest published plan that covers your volume, and jumps to Business if you need SSO, Git, environments or queue mode, which n8n sells only from that plan. Self-hosted adds a licence, €0 on the Community edition and the same €667 key if you need SSO, Git, environments, projects or sharing, plus your server and your hours. Change anything and both sides move.
Your workload, your rates
The server cost, the hourly rate and the ops hours are your own inputs. The defaults are placeholders to start from, not prices we researched for you. Ops hours is the number the whole decision turns on, and you know it better than we do.
- 10,000 executions, 3 shared projects, up to 50 concurrent executions, admin roles.
- Unlimited users and workflows on every plan.
- Licence: €0, Community edition
- Server: €25
- Your hours: €70 (1 h at €70)
Self-hosting stays cheaper while you spend under 21 minutes a month running it. Above that, the Pro plan is the cheaper answer. You know that number better than we do.
n8n plan prices and allowances read from n8n.io/pricing on 7 October 2026, annual billing. n8n also bills monthly and says annual saves 17%. What the free Community edition does not include, including the line that queue mode is included, is n8n's own list at docs.n8n.io/hosting/community-edition-features, read 7 October 2026.
n8n Cloud pricing, straight from the price list
n8n publishes four plans and prices them all the same way: by workflow executions per month. Not per step, not per seat, not per workflow. One run counts once whether it touches two nodes or two hundred, and every plan includes unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration. The figures below are the annual billing prices from n8n.io/pricing, read 7 October 2026.
Starter is €20 a month for 2,500 executions, one shared project, five concurrent executions and 1,600 Assistant credits. Pro is €50 a month for 10,000 executions, three shared projects, up to 50 concurrent executions, seven days of insights and admin roles. Business is €667 a month for 40,000 executions, six shared projects, SSO and LDAP, 30 days of insights, multiple environments, queue mode and Git version control, and it is the first paid plan whose licence key you can apply to a self-hosted instance. The free Community edition is self-hosted too. Enterprise is contact sales, with a custom execution count, 200+ concurrent executions, 365 days of insights, log streaming, an external secret store and dedicated support with an SLA.
Divide price by allowance and the ladder stops being a straight line: €8 per 1,000 executions on Starter, €5 on Pro, €16.68 on Business. Business is the most expensive execution n8n sells. Plenty of readers land on it for volume alone, but what it adds over Pro is SSO, Git, environments and queue mode.
How much does n8n cost to self-host?
The software is €0. Without a licence key n8n runs as the Community edition, which n8n's own documentation describes as having almost the complete feature set, and you can stay on it indefinitely. Register an email and you get the Registered Community edition, still free, which adds folders, debug in editor and custom execution data. There is no trial clock and no seat count anywhere in that sentence.
So a self-hosted bill has three lines and n8n publishes only the first. The licence is €0, unless you need one of the ten features n8n lists as outside that edition, and the two that catch most teams are workflow sharing and projects, not SSO. Queue mode is inside it and costs nothing. The server is whatever you pay for it, which is your number, not a market rate we looked up for you. The third line is the one that gets left off the spreadsheet: your own hours, priced at whatever your team costs.
n8n documents plenty of ways to install it, and none of them change that arithmetic. They change how many of those hours you spend. The docs list a one-line setup script, Docker Compose (described there as the best option for production), AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Run, Google Kubernetes Engine, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Heroku, OpenShift and npm, which is deprecated from n8n 3.0.
Is n8n free?
Yes, with one condition that costs more than everything else here.
n8n self-hosted on the Community edition is free, permanently, with almost the complete feature set according to n8n's own hosting docs. Nobody counts your seats and nothing expires. If that is the version you need, go install it.
The condition is the paid feature set, and n8n publishes exactly what it is. Its Community edition docs list ten features the free edition does not include, and two of them carry a note in brackets that matters more than the item itself: queue mode is included, and so is logging.
The wording matters, because n8n uses two words for two things. An edition is the variant of the software you run. A plan is the subscription you buy. Community is an edition, Business is a plan, and you can run a plan's features on your own server while still paying for the plan.
Two of those ten decide it for most teams, and neither is the one people expect. Sharing (workflows, credentials) is not in the Community edition, and n8n says what that means in the same line: only the instance owner and the user who creates them can access workflows and credentials. A second person cannot open your workflow. Projects is not in it either. That is the honest reason a team leaves the free edition, far more often than SSO is.
What is not on that list is just as useful. Queue mode is included, so scaling n8n out across workers on your own server costs nothing. And the list is a list of features: n8n's published Community limits are features, not a monthly execution allowance. The per-execution figures further up this page are how the Cloud plans are billed. Your own server and database are still real limits, which is what queue mode is there for.
The practical version: if you need SSO, Git or environments, self-hosting does not save you the subscription, it adds a server and your hours on top. If what you need is projects or a second person able to open a workflow, it is worse than that: Cloud sells you those from €20 a month, while your own server needs the €667 key. If you need none of them, the Community edition really is free, queue mode included, and the only open question is what your time costs.
“The Community edition includes almost the complete feature set of n8n. It doesn't include these features:”
- Custom variables
- Environments
- External secrets
- External storage for binary data
- Log streaming (Logging is included)
- Multi-main mode (Queue mode is included)
- Projects
- SSO (SAML, LDAP)
- Sharing (workflows, credentials) (Only the instance owner and the user who creates them can access workflows and credentials)
- Version control using Git
“These features are available on self-hosted Business and Enterprise plans.”
n8n's own list, quoted in full and in its own order, from docs.n8n.io/hosting/community-edition-features, read 7 October 2026. The bracketed notes are n8n's, not ours.
The three costs behind every n8n self hosted bill
Every number here is either n8n's published price or something you typed in. Two of these three have no public price at all.
The server you have not priced yet
The gap between the cheapest box n8n documents and the most managed one is too wide for a single honest figure, so the calculator asks you for yours instead of inventing a market rate.
The hours nobody logs
Upgrades, backups, a certificate that expires on a Sunday, a queue that stops draining at 2am. This is the number the whole decision turns on, and you know it better than we do. The calculator defaults to one hour a month on purpose: understating our own case is the honest direction to be wrong in.
The licence key people assume away
SSO and LDAP, Git version control, multiple environments, projects, and sharing a workflow with a second person are all on n8n's list of what the free Community edition does not include. On your own server they need a paid licence key, bought by subscribing to a plan. Queue mode is not on that list: n8n's docs say it is included, so scaling out costs nothing self-hosted.
Where the crossover sits
A comparison with one answer is a sales page. The useful output is the line where the answer flips, because that line is made of your own hours.
The arithmetic is short. Self-hosting is cheaper while your server cost plus your ops hours times your rate stays under the Cloud plan that covers your volume. Rearrange it and one number falls out: the hours per month at which both sides cost the same. Below that line, self-host.
Run a few shapes through it. Against Starter at €20 a month, a €25 server already puts you behind before you spend a minute of your own time. Against Pro at €50 for 10,000 executions, that same €25 server leaves €25 of headroom, which at a €70 hourly rate is about 21 minutes a month. Against Business at €667 the headroom is enormous, but only if nothing on n8n's exclusion list applies to you, because if something does you pay the €667 either way and self-hosting can only add to it. Queue mode is not on that list, so needing it leaves the headroom intact.
The server price and the hourly rate in that paragraph are example inputs, not researched rates. Put your own in. The shape holds either way: on the Community edition self-hosting wins while your hours stay small, and stops winning the moment a feature n8n excludes from that edition, or a real maintenance load, appears.
cloud = cheapest published plan whose allowance covers your executions,
raised to Business if you need SSO, Git, environments or queue mode
self_hosted = licence (€0 on Community, €667 if you need a feature Community excludes: SSO, Git, environments, projects, sharing)
+ your server + your ops hours x your rate
crossover_hours = (cloud - licence - server) / your hourly rateEverything the calculator shows comes out of those three lines, and the only n8n figures in them are published prices.When Cloud wins, and when self-hosting wins
Both answers are right for somebody. Here is how to tell which one is yours without running a number.
Self-host, and do not let anyone talk you out of it
- You are inside a few thousand executions a month.
- You do not need SSO, Git version control, multiple environments or projects.
- One person owns the workflows, because the free edition has no sharing.
- You do need queue mode: n8n includes it in the free Community edition.
- Somebody on the team already runs Docker without thinking about it.
- n8n has to reach a database or a service inside a private network.
- You want the execution data on infrastructure you control.
At that shape the licence is free, the server is small and the hours are few. Self-host, and the n8n hosting docs are the whole job.
Pay for Cloud, and stop paying with your weekends
- You need SSO, Git or multiple environments, so the €667 is due either way.
- More than one person has to open the workflows, or you want them split into projects: Community has neither, and Cloud has both from Starter.
- Nobody on the team wants to own a server at 2am.
- Your volume sits comfortably inside a published allowance.
- The engineering hours are worth more pointed at your product.
One cheaper door: n8n lists a Start-up Plan with 50% off Business for companies under 20 employees that qualify. Ask before you budget the full price.
Sources, and what on this page is not a price
Every n8n figure above was read from n8n's own pages on 7 October 2026. Prices change, so check them before you sign anything.
- Plan prices, allowances and features: n8n.io/pricing, read 7 October 2026.
- Self-hosting and installation options: docs.n8n.io/hosting, read 7 October 2026.
- Community edition feature set: docs.n8n.io/hosting/community-edition-features, read 7 October 2026.
- Editions, plans and licence keys: docs.n8n.io/choose-n8n, read 7 October 2026.
Nothing else here is a price. Your server cost, hourly rate and ops hours are your own inputs, and the calculator's defaults are placeholders. We do not convert currencies, so keep your own numbers in euros too.
If the answer came out "do not self-host", that is the useful result
Plenty of readers get a number that says pay n8n and spend the hours elsewhere, or that the Business licence is due whatever they do. If that is you and the workflows are load bearing, a 15 minute call beats another spreadsheet. If the calculator put you on the self-hosted side, you do not need us.
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