In cash, yes; in total cost, usually not. Self-hosted n8n is free, but a server costs $6 to $24 a month and upkeep takes one to three hours monthly. n8n Cloud Starter is 20 euros a month billed annually (24 monthly), about $23 to $27. Below roughly 10,000 runs a month, Cloud usually wins once time is counted.
The picture flips in two cases. If one workflow runs very often, say a check every minute, you can blow through Cloud's execution allowance and land on a plan costing hundreds a month, while a self-hosted server doesn't charge per run at all. And if someone in the business already looks after servers and enjoys it, their time really does cost less than a subscription. Everyone else should price the hours honestly before choosing.
The two price lists side by side
n8n lists its prices in euros. Dollar figures below use about 1.14 dollars to the euro, the rate in late September 2026, so check the current rate on your card statement.
| Option | Price | Executions a month | Notable limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Starter | 20 euros a month billed annually, 24 monthly (about $23-$27) | 2,500 | 5 concurrent runs, 1 shared project, forum support |
| Cloud Pro | 50 euros a month billed annually, 60 monthly (about $57-$68) | 10,000 | 20 concurrent runs, 3 shared projects, admin roles |
| Business | 667 euros a month billed annually, 800 monthly (about $760-$910) | 40,000 | Self-hosted only for now; SSO, Git version control, environments |
| Enterprise | Quote | Custom | 200+ concurrent runs, support with a service level |
| Self-hosted Community edition | Free software; you pay for the server | No limit | No SSO, environments, Git version control, projects and sharing, external secrets or log streaming |
Every Cloud plan listed above allows unlimited active workflows, so the execution allowance is the number that moves you between plans. If you go over, n8n says workflows keep running but overage charges may apply. Businesses with fewer than 20 employees can check whether they qualify for its Start-up Plan, which n8n advertises at 50% off Business.
The Community edition is covered by n8n's Sustainable Use License. Automating your own business's processes is allowed; selling a service whose value comes mainly from n8n, such as hosting it for your customers, is not. Registering the Community edition with an email address adds a few extras, including folders and debugging in the editor.
For the server itself, a typical cloud host's prices give a sense of scale: DigitalOcean's basic servers list at $6 a month for 1 GB of memory, $12 for 2 GB and $24 for 4 GB, with automatic backups at 20% (weekly) or 30% (daily) of the server price. A small business running a dozen light workflows can start on 2 GB; heavy file handling or many simultaneous runs needs more.
What counts as an execution
Cloud pricing hinges on executions, so it pays to estimate yours before choosing. n8n's documentation defines an execution as one run of a whole workflow, however many steps it has and however much data it handles. A few rules make counts lower than people fear:
- Manual runs while you build and test don't count.
- A polling trigger (one that checks an app such as Gmail or Google Drive for something new) counts only when it finds new data. Empty checks are free.
- A schedule trigger counts every time it fires, whether or not there is anything to do.
- A webhook (an address another app calls when something happens) counts once per incoming request.
The schedule rule is where costs go wrong. A workflow set to "check the job sheet every minute" fires 60 × 24 × 30 = 43,200 times a month, more than 17 times the Starter allowance, even if it only finds work a handful of times a day. The fix costs nothing: trigger it from the app's webhook instead, use a polling trigger that only counts when something is new, or check every 15 minutes, which is 2,880 a month. Picture a cleaning company whose owner set a one-minute schedule to watch a bookings spreadsheet. Moving to a 15-minute check cut its count by about 93%, and customers noticed no difference, because booking confirmations had always gone out within the hour.
A filled-in execution worksheet
Before choosing a plan, list every workflow you intend to build with its trigger type and how often the triggering event happens. An illustrative worksheet for a landscaping firm with 150 maintenance customers:
| Workflow | Trigger | Events a month | Executions a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day-before visit reminder by text | Schedule, once a day at 4pm | 30 runs, each sending all of tomorrow's reminders | 30 |
| New website enquiry to CRM | Webhook from the form | 90 enquiries | 90 |
| Job completed: photo report to customer | Webhook from the job app | 600 visits | 600 |
| Supplier invoices from email to accounts | Polling trigger on the invoices inbox | 80 invoices | 80 |
| Weekly summary to the owner | Schedule, Mondays | 4 | 4 |
| Total | 804 |
Two design choices keep this low. The reminder workflow runs once a day and loops through tomorrow's visits inside a single execution, rather than running once per customer. And the supplier inbox uses a polling trigger, so empty checks cost nothing. At about 800 executions, the firm has room to triple its workflows on Starter. If it had built the reminder as one execution per visit, and the photo report as a one-minute schedule, the same work could have cost tens of thousands of executions.
The hidden line on self-hosting: somebody's hours
Self-hosting is a small, recurring job. Here is an honest monthly list for a single-server setup, with the time each task usually takes someone who knows what they're doing:
| Task | How often | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Update n8n to the latest version and check workflows still run | Monthly, or within days of a security notice | 30-60 minutes |
| Apply operating-system updates and restart | Monthly | 15 minutes |
| Check a backup can actually be restored | Quarterly | 30-60 minutes |
| Check disk space and execution history size | Monthly | 10 minutes |
| Renew or check the security certificate for the web address | Automatic if set up properly; check quarterly | 5 minutes |
| Something breaks: a failed update, a full disk, a changed app login | A few times a year | 1-4 hours each |
That averages one to three hours a month, plus half a day to a day for the initial setup. The cash cost of that time depends on who does it: an owner's evening, a staff member's working hour, or a freelancer's invoice. It is the line most comparisons leave out, and it is usually bigger than the server bill.
A roofing contractor's year, costed both ways
An illustrative seven-person roofing contractor wants four workflows in n8n:
- Website enquiry form to the CRM, plus a text alert to the owner: about 120 runs a month.
- A daily check for quotes with no reply after three days, sending a polite follow-up: a once-a-day schedule plus the follow-ups it triggers, about 400 runs.
- Paid invoices marked in the accounts software, with a thank-you email and review request: about 150 runs.
- New emails in the shared inbox sorted by an AI step into enquiry, supplier, complaint or other: a polling trigger, so only new emails count, about 1,500 runs.
That's about 2,170 executions a month, inside Cloud Starter's 2,500 but close to it, so a busy spring could push the business onto Pro.
| Year one | n8n Cloud Starter (annual) | n8n Cloud Pro (annual) | Self-hosted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription or server | 240 euros, about $274 | 600 euros, about $684 | 2 GB server, $144 |
| Backups | Included | Included | Weekly, 20%: $29 |
| Setup time | 1 hour | 1 hour | 6 hours |
| Upkeep time | Negligible | Negligible | 1.5 hours a month plus 4 hours for incidents: 22 hours |
| Time at $50 an hour (assumed) | $50 | $50 | $1,400 |
| Total | About $324 | About $734 | About $1,573 |
Self-hosting saves about $100 in cash against Starter but costs over $1,000 more once time is counted. It only wins if the time is genuinely free, for example if the owner's nephew runs servers for a living and does it as a favour, and even then the business is relying on a favour for its lead alerts. For this contractor, Cloud Starter with an eye on the execution count is the sensible choice, moving to Pro if spring volumes push it over.
A business where self-hosting clearly wins
Now take an illustrative removals firm that syncs every job, crew assignment and van booking between its job-management system, a dispatch app and its accounts, with status updates flowing both ways as the day goes on. It runs about 30,000 executions a month. On Cloud, that is three times Pro's allowance, and Business is currently offered only for self-hosting. A self-hosted Community edition on a 4 GB server at $24 a month, with daily backups at 30% ($7.20), costs about $375 a year in cash plus the same two hours a month of upkeep. At that volume the per-run economics dominate, and the firm already pays an IT contractor who can add n8n to his monthly round.
The general rule from the two examples: self-hosting wins when executions run well past 10,000 a month, when a contract requires data to stay on your own server, or when someone competent already maintains servers for you. The trade-offs of keeping data on your own machines are covered in cloud AI vs on-device AI for business data. Otherwise Cloud's price is mostly a payment for not having to think about updates.
January 2026 showed what patching costs
Between December 2025 and February 2026, n8n disclosed a run of serious vulnerabilities. The worst, CVE-2026-21858, was rated 10.0 on the standard severity scale: it let an attacker take over an exposed instance without logging in, by sending crafted requests to webhook endpoints. It was fixed in n8n version 1.121.0. Another, CVE-2026-21877, allowed remote code execution by a logged-in user and was fixed in 1.121.3.
n8n patched its Cloud instances itself. Self-hosted instances stayed vulnerable until their owners upgraded, and security researchers reported that most exploitation attempts targeted self-hosted servers that hadn't been updated. For a small business, the lesson is practical: if you self-host, someone must read n8n's release notes, and must be able to upgrade within days, not at the next quiet month. Build that commitment into the cost comparison, or choose Cloud.
Costs that are the same either way
Don't let these muddy the comparison, because you pay them whichever way you host:
- AI model usage. An AI step that calls OpenAI or Anthropic is billed by that provider per token. Sorting the roofing contractor's 1,500 emails a month on a small model is cheap: at around 1,000 tokens in and 50 out per email on gpt-6-luna ($0.10 and $0.50 per million tokens), it comes to well under a dollar a month. n8n Cloud plans also include some AI credits for its own AI features.
- The apps you connect. Your CRM, email and accounts subscriptions don't change.
- Building the workflows. Designing and testing a workflow takes the same hours on either version. If you're paying someone to build them, see whether to hire an automation consultant or build it yourself.
Keeping a self-hosted server cheap and boring
If you do self-host, most of the unplanned hours come from a handful of avoidable problems. A setup checklist I'd use:
- Set and store the encryption key on day one. n8n encrypts saved credentials with a key it generates on first launch and keeps in its settings folder. If that folder is lost, for example because a container was recreated without persistent storage, every saved app login becomes unreadable. Set the key yourself and keep a copy in your password manager.
- Use a proper database for anything important. n8n can run on its built-in SQLite database, but PostgreSQL is the usual choice for production use, and its backups are easier to restore.
- Leave execution pruning on. n8n prunes execution history by default, deleting records older than 336 hours (14 days) or beyond 10,000 executions. Switching that off to "keep everything" is how disks fill up months later.
- Turn on the host's backups and test a restore. A backup you've never restored is a hope, not a backup.
- Add an uptime check. A free monitoring service that pings the n8n address and emails two people if it's down.
- Put updates in the calendar, monthly, with a named person, and subscribe to n8n's release notes for security fixes.
- Keep a one-page record of where the server is, who has access, how to restore it and which workflows matter most, so a stranger could recover it.
A realistic example of skipping item 1: a small plumbing firm's helper rebuilt its n8n container during an update and didn't map the settings folder to permanent storage. n8n started cleanly with a new key, and all eleven saved logins (email, CRM, accounts, texting) showed as unreadable. Workflows were intact, but it took an afternoon to reconnect every app, during which new enquiries sat unrouted.
Signs it's time to switch hosting
- Cloud to self-hosted: you are consistently over your execution allowance after fixing wasteful schedules, you've been quoted Enterprise pricing, or a client contract requires data to stay on your own servers.
- Self-hosted to Cloud: updates are being skipped, the person who set it up has left, or you've had a second unplanned outage in a year.
- Either to another tool: nobody in the business is comfortable editing a workflow. n8n rewards people who like logic; if that isn't anyone on the team, a simpler platform may cost more per run and less overall. The comparison in Zapier vs Make vs n8n is the place to check.
Whichever you choose, keep exported copies of your workflows somewhere outside n8n. They are the valuable part, and they move between Cloud and self-hosted versions easily. The broader costs that follow any automation after launch are covered in what AI automations cost once they're live.
More questions about running n8n
Can I run self-hosted n8n on an office computer instead of a server?
You can, and it costs nothing extra, but workflows stop whenever that computer sleeps, restarts for updates or loses its connection, and webhooks from outside services need a public address to reach it. It suits testing. For anything customers depend on, such as lead alerts or booking confirmations, a small cloud server or n8n Cloud is more reliable.
Is self-hosted n8n more private than n8n Cloud?
It can be, because workflow data stays on a server you control. But the data still passes to every app and AI service the workflow calls, and a poorly secured server is less private than a managed one. Self-hosting helps when a contract or policy requires data to stay on your infrastructure. It doesn't help if the server goes unpatched.
Can I move from self-hosted n8n to n8n Cloud later?
Yes. Workflows export as files you can import into another instance, so the logic moves easily. Credentials such as app logins and API keys are encrypted with your instance's key, so plan to re-enter them on the new instance. Allow an afternoon to move and test a handful of workflows, and switch webhook addresses in the apps that call them.
Further reads
- What Is n8n, and Should a Small Business Use It? — What n8n is and whether it suits you at all.
- How to Calculate the ROI of an AI Automation Before You Build It — Checking a workflow is worth building before choosing where it runs.
- Business Data Backup Checklist Before You Connect AI Tools — Backups to have in place before automations touch your data.
- AI Vendor Lock-In: How to Keep Your Data and Prompts Portable — Keeping your workflows portable whichever way you host.
- Where Is Your Data Stored When You Use AI Tools? — Where data goes when a workflow calls AI services.
- Is Open-Source AI Really Free? The True Cost for a Small Business — What running an open-source AI model really costs a small business, itemised: hardware, rented GPUs, hosted APIs, setup time and the break-even point.
- When Does Zapier Get Too Expensive? Finding the Tipping Point — Zapier bills every action step, so costs climb with steps, not runs. Worked sums at three volumes show when to trim, stay or move to Make or n8n.
- How to Set Spending Limits and Alerts on Pay-As-You-Go AI Tools — Where the spend limits live in OpenAI, Anthropic, ChatGPT, Claude, Zapier, Make and n8n, and how to choose caps that stop a runaway without breaking bookings.
- iPaaS, Middleware or Custom Code: How Should Your Apps Connect? — iPaaS, middleware and custom code explained in plain English, with one real-shaped integration costed three ways over three years.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: n8n pricing page and documentation (executions, Community edition features, Sustainable Use License, execution data pruning, encryption key); DigitalOcean Droplet pricing; published security advisories on n8n vulnerabilities disclosed December 2025 to February 2026; facts sheet for API prices. Checked September 2026.