n8n pricing

This page is part of my AI tool reviews. I checked every number below on n8n’s own pricing page on 4 Nov 2026. I run a renovation company, Buildme.ie, and I use automation tools daily to handle leads and follow-ups, so I care less about feature lists and more about one question: what will this cost me per month once it is actually running?

n8n pricing at a glance

n8n sells four paid tiers plus a free self-hosted edition. Every paid plan includes unlimited users, unlimited active workflows and every integration. The only thing that really changes the price is how many workflow executions you run per month.

• Starter: €20 per month billed annually, or €24 month to month. 2,500 executions, 5 concurrent executions, 1 shared project, 1,600 AI Assistant credits a month.
• Pro: €50 per month billed annually, or €60 month to month, for 10,000 executions. There is a bigger Pro tier with 50,000 executions at €145 month to month or €1,450 a year. Pro gets 3 shared projects, up to 50 concurrent executions, 7 days of insights, and 4,000 Assistant credits on the 10k tier or 9,600 on the 50k tier.
• Business: €667 per month billed annually, or €800 month to month, for 40,000 executions. It is self-hosted only (a hosted version is on a waitlist) and adds SSO and LDAP, multiple environments, queue mode and Git version control.
• Enterprise: contact sales. Custom executions, 200+ concurrent executions, unlimited shared projects, SLA support, hosted or self-hosted.

A note on currency. The pricing page served to me on 4 Nov 2026 showed euros. n8n’s contract form offers both a euro and a dollar payment option, and the only dollar figure printed on the page was the Business overage rate. So if you are in the US, check the figure on your own screen and at checkout before you budget. I am not going to guess a dollar price n8n did not show me.

Annual billing saves 17% according to the page. On Starter that is €240 a year instead of €288.

Is n8n free?

Yes, if you self-host. The Community Edition is a standard self-hosted version of n8n on GitHub, and there is no license fee. You pay for the server it runs on, plus your own time to keep it updated, backed up and secure. The pricing page does not set an execution cap for the Community Edition, so your limit is whatever your server can handle.

n8n Cloud is not free, but the trial is generous. You do not need a credit card, and you get Pro-level features with 1,000 executions, 5 concurrent executions, a 180-second timeout, 1 team project, 800 Assistant credits and 100 AI credits. A few things are left out of the trial: admin roles, named versions, workflow diffs and the public API. The Business plan has its own 14-day trial, and that one does need a card.

My view: if you have never built a workflow, start on the Cloud trial. Do not burn a weekend setting up a server before you know whether n8n fits how you work.

What is an execution in n8n?

This is the part most people get wrong, and it is the reason n8n can be very cheap or surprisingly expensive.

n8n defines an execution as a single run of your entire workflow. The number of steps does not matter, and neither does how much data moves through it. A 3-step workflow and a 40-step workflow both count as one execution each time they run. That is the big difference from tools that bill per step or per task.

What triggers a run is what you need to count:

• Scheduled workflows: every scheduled run is one execution. n8n’s own example: a daily schedule is 30 or 31 executions a month, and a workflow that runs every 5 minutes is about 8,600 to 8,900 a month. That second one alone blows through Starter.
• Webhook workflows: every event that hits the webhook is one execution. If a form sends you 10 leads a day, that is about 300 executions a month.
• Chatbots: every message counts, across all conversations. A chatbot is the fastest way to use up a plan.

What 2,500 and 10,000 executions look like in real life

Here is how I would translate the plan limits into everyday automations for a small service business. These are my own calculations from n8n’s definition, not n8n figures.

• Starter, 2,500 executions: roughly 83 runs a day. That covers, for example, a lead-capture workflow for 20 leads a day (about 600 a month), a daily report (30 a month), a review-request workflow after each finished job, and an hourly sync (about 720 a month), with room left over.
• Pro, 10,000 executions: roughly 330 runs a day. That is enough for a small team running several production workflows, or one website chatbot handling a few hundred messages a day.
• Pro 50k or Business: you only need these if you have high-frequency schedules, busy webhooks or chatbots, or several departments building on one account.

What happens if you go over your limit?

On Starter and Pro, overages are capped, which means no surprise bill. The trade-off is that you will need to upgrade when you hit the ceiling. On Business, workflows keep running past the quota, and the page lists an overage fee of €4,000 or $4,800 per extra 300,000 executions. Enterprise overages are set in your order form.

There are other limits that matter more than people expect:

• Execution time: 5 minutes max on Starter, 40 minutes on Pro and Enterprise. Long AI agent runs can hit the Starter cap.
• Log retention: 7 days on Starter, 30 days on Pro, unlimited on Enterprise. If you need to debug something from last month, Starter will not help.
• Workflow history: 1 day on Starter, 5 days on Pro.
• Saved executions: 2,500 on Starter, 25,000 on Pro, 50,000 on Enterprise.

The cheapest way to use n8n

There are three realistic routes, and which one is cheapest depends on how much your time is worth.

1. Self-host the Community Edition. Free software, you pay for a small server. Cheapest on paper. You handle updates, backups and security yourself. Good if you or someone on your team is comfortable with servers.
2. Starter billed annually. €20 a month, nothing to maintain. For most solo business owners running a handful of lead and follow-up workflows, this is the sweet spot. Pay monthly (€24) for the first month or two until you are sure, then switch to annual.
3. Business with the startup discount. If you have fewer than 20 employees and need Business features like SSO, environments or Git, n8n’s Startup plan offers 50% off Business. Check the startup page on n8n.io for the current terms.

Ways to keep the execution count down on any plan:

• Swap “check every 5 minutes” schedules for webhooks where the app supports them. One run per real event instead of 8,600 polls a month.
• Combine related steps into one workflow instead of chaining several small ones, since steps are free and runs are not.
• Batch work. One run that processes 50 items counts once.
• Keep chatbots on a separate plan or tool if they are eating your quota.

n8n Cloud vs self-hosted: which costs less?

Self-hosting wins on the invoice and loses on time. n8n’s own page is clear that on self-hosted Business and Enterprise, a license key pings n8n’s license server daily, and that telemetry is on by default but can be turned off. On the free Community Edition you still have to own patching and security. n8n’s security page says that on self-hosted installs you are responsible for encryption in transit, through a reverse proxy, and at rest.

On n8n Cloud, n8n runs it on Microsoft Azure, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and currently hosts data in the EU. For a US business that has data residency rules, check that before you sign up.

If I were starting today with no technical help, I would pick Cloud Starter. If I already had a developer who manages servers, I would self-host and spend the savings elsewhere.

Is n8n worth the price?

For a small business, yes, as long as you count executions before you choose a plan. Unlimited users and unlimited steps per run make it cheap for complex workflows. The things to watch are chatbots and frequent schedules, because they multiply your run count fast.

If you are also weighing app builders for the same job, see my Base44 review and Base44 pricing breakdown. And if you are new to the tool itself, start with What is n8n.

Prices change, and n8n’s page shows the Business overage price was last changed on 26 October 2026. I will keep this page updated and note the check date at the top.