Understand n8n pricing across Cloud and self-hosted editions. Compare execution limits, infrastructure costs, and plans for European teams.
TL;DR: n8n pricing runs from €0 for the self-hosted Community Edition to €667 a month for Business. Cloud suits teams with no DevOps, but caps executions. Community on a European VPS suits developers who want unlimited runs and can maintain a server. Business suits scaleups that need SSO, Git and staging, and is overkill for everyone else.
How n8n plans and editions work
n8n pricing follows two tracks. On Cloud, n8n hosts everything and you pick Starter or Pro. On the self-hosted track, you run the software yourself under Community (free), Business or Enterprise. Business is self-hosted only for now, and n8n keeps a waitlist for a hosted version.
| Edition | Where it runs | Price | Executions per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Hosted by n8n | €20/month billed annually | 2,500 |
| Pro | Hosted by n8n | €50/month billed annually | 10,000 |
| Community | Self-hosted | Free | Unlimited |
| Business | Self-hosted only | €667/month billed annually | 40,000 |
| Enterprise | Hosted or self-hosted | Custom | Custom |
Source: n8n's pricing page, checked October 2026. The Community execution allowance comes from InstaPods' pricing analysis, July 2026.
What counts as an execution
An execution is one run of a whole workflow, from trigger to last step. According to n8n's own FAQ, it makes no difference how many steps the workflow has or how much data it processes. It still counts once.
That is the big contrast with Zapier, which bills per task, and Make, which bills per operation. InstaPods gives the plain example: a Zap with five steps uses five tasks per run, while the same automation on n8n uses one execution. Make works the same way per module, so a ten-module scenario burns ten operations per run.
The Cloud free trial
The Cloud trial needs no credit card. It gives you Pro-level features with 1,000 executions, 5 concurrent executions, a 180-second execution timeout, 1 team project, 800 Assistant credits and 100 AI credits. Admin roles, Named Versions, Workflow Diffs and the public API are not included.
A Business trial is separate. It runs for 14 days with all Business features, but it does ask for a credit card.
Which setup fits your business best
Solo developers and technical agencies
If you can run Docker, Community on a small European VPS is the cheapest route to high volume. There is no execution cap, no seat fee and no plan to outgrow. Sliplane's and InstaPods' breakdowns (July 2026) both treat the server as the only line item.
Picture a two-person agency running webhook automations for ten clients. On Cloud that traffic would chew through a quota, but on a VPS it just uses CPU. The trade-off is that you own updates, TLS, backups and monitoring, and Community leaves out paid features such as SSO and LDAP.
Marketing and operations teams without sysadmins
If nobody wants to patch a server, choose Cloud. According to n8n's pricing page (October 2026), both Starter and Pro are hosted by n8n, so updates are not your job. Starter fits a few lead-routing or reporting workflows, while Pro adds admin roles, three shared projects and metric-based evaluations.
Workload maths before you pick
Count runs, not workflows. n8n's FAQ gives these rules of thumb:
- A daily schedule uses 30 or 31 executions a month.
- A schedule that fires every 5 minutes uses roughly 8,640 in a 30-day month (n8n quotes a range of 8,600 to 8,900).
- A webhook workflow uses as many executions per day as the triggering event happens per day.
One 5-minute schedule alone overruns Starter's 2,500 and leaves little room on Pro's 10,000. Latenode's example is gentler: ten workflows running hourly through business hours add up to about 2,200 executions, close to Starter's ceiling. So if you poll often, either self-host or switch the trigger to a webhook.
Growing companies with compliance demands
Business is aimed at companies under 100 employees. It adds SSO and LDAP, multiple environments, Git version control, queue mode for scaling, 6 shared projects and 30 days of insights. If your auditors ask for a dev/prod split and a change history, Community cannot give you that.
Official cloud plans and execution limits
Cloud Starter and Pro differ mostly in volume, concurrency and run length. Here is the side-by-side, with prices before VAT.
| Limit | Starter | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Billed monthly | €24 (£24) | €60 (£60) |
| Billed annually, per month | €20 (£20) | €50 (£50) |
| Executions per month | 2,500 | 10,000 |
| Shared projects | 1 | 3 |
| Concurrent executions | 5 | Up to 50 |
| Assistant credits per month | 1,600 | Up to 9,600 |
| Maximum execution duration | 5 minutes | 40 minutes |
| Saved executions | 2.5k | 25k |
| Saved-execution storage | 2.5 GB | 25 GB |
| Execution log retention | 7 days | 30 days |
| Admin roles | No | Yes |
Source: n8n's pricing page, checked October 2026.
The 5-minute duration cap on Starter matters more than it looks. A long AI agent run or a large data export can hit it, whereas Pro's 40 minutes gives far more headroom.
No seat or workflow caps
Every Cloud tier includes unlimited active workflows and unlimited users. InstaPods notes that older caps on workflows and users were removed, so execution volume is now the only thing that moves your bill. You can add the whole team without touching the price.
Assistant and AI Agent nodes
Assistant is in preview. Your credit allowance refreshes monthly and unused credits do not roll over, though you can buy extra credits that kick in once the included ones run out. The AI Agent node, AI steps and MCP Server Trigger and Client are available on Cloud, and Starter includes AI models without API keys.
Self-hosted instances work differently. You bring your own key, so no credit limit applies. For current offers on these plans, see the n8n page.
The real cost of self hosting
Community Edition plus a server
The Community Edition is a standard self-hosted version published on GitHub. It carries no execution cap and gives you the API, the CLI and every integration. InstaPods counts 400+ of them.
The server is where the money goes. Sliplane's pricing review (July 2026) puts a small n8n setup on Hetzner, DigitalOcean or Netcup at roughly €4 to €12 a month, depending on region, RAM, disk, backups and traffic. Sliplane's own managed option starts at €9 a month per server.
That figure leaves out your time. You still handle Docker, the Postgres or SQLite choice, the reverse proxy, TLS, updates, backups and monitoring. A €5 server is not cheap if a botched upgrade eats your evening.
Latenode, which sells a competing platform, estimates a monitored, backed-up production setup at $300 to $800 a month before staff time. That sizing assumes high availability, so read it as the upper end. Your real figure depends on how much downtime your business tolerates.
Business self-hosted licence
Business costs €667 a month billed annually (£569 annually or £682 monthly in GBP). It covers 40,000 executions across unlimited instances, and usage from all of them counts toward one quota. After payment you receive a licence key by email and apply it to your existing Community instance, so there is no migration.
Two conditions come with it. The key must ping n8n's licence server daily, and that ping includes your production execution count. Telemetry is also on by default, though you can switch it off.
Support is forum-only on Business. Dedicated support with an SLA starts at Enterprise. Monthly commitments can be cancelled at any time, while annual ones end with the term, and n8n gives no pro-rata refunds. Companies under 20 employees can halve the price through the Start-up Plan, covered in the FAQ below.
Business overage mechanics
Workflows never pause when you pass your quota. Overages, if they apply, are invoiced 45 days after they occur at €4,000 per extra bucket of 300,000 executions. Business users get a weekly email with execution counts, and annual subscribers are contacted around 80% of quota. Since one bucket is a four-figure invoice, a traffic spike deserves a quick look at that weekly email.
Data residency and European compliance rules
n8n GmbH is a Berlin company. According to n8n's pricing FAQ and legal pages (checked October 2026), hosted plans store data within the EU on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. On self-hosted plans, data lives wherever you decide to host n8n.
That second point is useful. If your compliance team wants everything inside the EU, a self-hosted instance on a German, Finnish or French VPS meets that on your terms. Cloud meets it by default.
On the data protection side, n8n's privacy pages state a data processing agreement, Standard Contractual Clauses for cross-border transfers and a sub-processor list. They also describe a security programme aligned to SOC 2 principles. That is an alignment, not a certification, so word your vendor questionnaire accordingly.
All prices in this guide are before VAT. Business buyers can pay annually by invoice and wire transfer, which the FAQ below explains.
Frequently Asked Questions about n8n pricing
Is n8n Community Edition free for business use?
n8n lists Community as a free, standard self-hosted version with no execution cap. You pay only for the server and your own upkeep. The paid layer, with SSO, LDAP, environments and Git control, sits in Business, and you can unlock it later by applying a licence key to the same instance. Source: n8n's pricing page, checked October 2026.
How does an execution compare to a Zapier task or Make operation?
Count the steps in a typical run. If your Zap has six steps, you spend six tasks per run, while n8n spends one execution. n8n itself claims some workflows do in one execution what would take 10,000 operations elsewhere.
Entry prices look different, though. InstaPods lists Zapier's first paid plan at US$19.99 a month for 750 tasks, and Latenode puts Make's entry at US$9 a month. Make can look cheapest on paper but drains fast on complex scenarios. For detailed side-by-sides, see the Zapier vs n8n and Make vs n8n comparisons. Sources: InstaPods and Latenode analyses, checked July 2026.
What happens when you hit a quota?
It depends on which limit. Reaching the saved-execution limit never stops workflows, it only trims how much history n8n keeps, oldest first. On Business or Enterprise, workflows also keep running past the execution quota, with overages invoiced as described above. For Cloud, InstaPods reports that extra execution packs exist, with varying prices. Source: n8n's pricing FAQ, checked October 2026.
Can you pay for Business by invoice and wire transfer?
Yes, for the annual Business plan and for Enterprise. You can generate the contract through a self-service DocuSign form, with a separate form for € payment. Once it is signed, your subscription starts and the licence key arrives. Source: n8n's pricing FAQ, checked October 2026.
Who qualifies for the 50% startup discount?
The Start-up Plan is for companies with under 20 employees, and it takes 50% off Business. It does not apply to the Cloud plans. If you are larger than that, or need only light automation, Cloud or Community will usually cost far less than Business. You can also weigh other tools in our n8n alternatives roundup. Source: n8n's pricing page, checked October 2026.