When I got married, my mom and I visited countless bakeries looking for the perfect wedding cake. Nothing quite hit the mark. So she did what any completely rational mother of the bride would do: she made the cake herself. It ended up being perfectly customized to our specifications (raspberry dark chocolate with buttercream frosting)—but it also added more than a few gray hairs and kept her up until 2 a.m. the night before, hand-perfecting the icing.
n8n's pricing works a lot like that decision. You can go the completely free, fully DIY route with self-hosting and infinite flexibility, but you're also signing up for the infrastructure equivalent of staying up all night piping buttercream. Or you can pay for one of n8n's supported versions. One option gives you control; the other gives you convenience. And with n8n, neither is effortless.
In this guide, I'll dig into how n8n's pricing works, including cloud vs. self-hosting, and the real costs behind each. Then, we'll explore how it all stacks up against Zapier: the only bakery in this analogy where you can just walk in, choose what you need, and walk out with something baked to order and reliable enough for the real world—without anybody losing sleep in the process.
Table of contents:
What is n8n?
n8n (short for "nodemation") is an open source automation tool that lets you build workflows using a visual, node-based editor. If you've used other automation builders, the general idea will feel familiar: you connect steps on a canvas to automate tasks across your apps and data. Where n8n differs is in how much customization it allows—especially if you're comfortable digging into technical details.
Because it offers a self-hosted version, many teams explore n8n as a potentially lower-cost option compared to managed automation platforms. In this scenario, you're responsible for setup, security, scaling, and maintenance. For some teams that already have the technical headcount to manage the infrastructure, that tradeoff keeps costs stable. For others, the extra overhead becomes its own kind of expense, even if it doesn't show up on an invoice.
Other teams (especially those related to the government or military) want a self-hosted option due to strict regulatory regimes or air-gapped security requirements. In those cases, the costs associated with self-hosting are a necessary evil.
n8n also offers a cloud-hosted version for people who don't want to manage the infrastructure themselves, but that comes with its own pricing structure (more on that later). In general, the tool is flexible and powerful, but it also assumes a level of technical comfort that not every business has the bandwidth for—something worth keeping in mind when comparing the total cost of using it long-term.
n8n cloud pricing vs. self-hosted
n8n comes in two versions, cloud and self-hosted—and the difference really comes down to who's responsible for keeping the lights on. With n8n's cloud subscription, everything is managed for you. You sign up, open the app, and start building. You don't have to think about servers, updates, uptime, or security patches, and the pricing is predictable because you're paying for a hosted service, not whatever your infrastructure happens to cost that month.
Self-hosting n8n flips that equation. You can download the free Community tier on GitHub, and you'll run it on your infrastructure—whether that's a VPS, Docker setup, or your own hardware. You get far more control: you can customize your environment, manage your own data storage, and build deeply tailored workflows that might not be possible in a managed setup. But with that freedom comes responsibility. You're the one handling updates, backups, monitoring, and anything that goes wrong at inconvenient times.
The higher-tier n8n plans can also be self-hosted (in fact, the Business tier requires that you self-host). Essentially, this means you're paying consumption-based pricing regardless of whether you're self-hosting or not. The Business tier also gets you basic admin controls like SSO and logging, as well as a higher tier of support access, even though n8n isn't hosting the software for you.
So the choice is really about convenience versus control. If you want the simplest path to working automations, cloud hosting (on one of the lower tiers or a custom cloud Enterprise plan) gets you there faster with fewer moving parts. If you need full ownership of your environment or have strict privacy or customization requirements, self-hosting gives you the flexibility to shape n8n however you want—just with a lot more work (and hidden costs) on your plate.
If you decide to go with a managed setup, I'd argue you're better off going with Zapier instead because of the wider range of cloud subscription tiers, more pre-built integrations, and easier AI orchestration for your whole company.
n8n pricing overview
Here are n8n's main pricing tiers and what comes with them. Pricing can change quickly, though, so visit the n8n pricing page to be sure it's up to date.
Starter ($20/month billed annually): This is the entry-level cloud plan. You get roughly 2,500 workflow executions per month (with unlimited steps inside each workflow), unlimited users, and 5 concurrent workflow executions.
Pro plan ($50/month billed annually): If you need more monthly usage, this is the next step up. With Pro, you get higher execution quotas (10,000 per month) and additional team-friendly features, like more shared projects, admin/role-based access controls, global variables, and longer execution logs.
Business ($800/month billed annually): This plan is best for small and mid-sized companies who are ready to scale and have the budget to match. It comes with 40,000 workflow executions per month, along with more security features, version control, and access to the n8n community forum. Keep in mind that while it's supported, it still requires users to self-host the software.
Enterprise (pricing on request): This tier provides custom capacity for organizations with heavy or unpredictable automation needs. That typically means a large execution volume, advanced security or compliance features, dedicated support, and more flexibility around how n8n is deployed or managed. Enterprise users have the option to self-host or use it on the cloud.
Community tier (not pictured): This version of self-hosted n8n is unsupported, but free.
Who n8n is best for
n8n is most appealing for teams that want maximum control and have the technical depth to support it. That means developers or technically advanced teams who like the flexibility of hand-coded automation but don't want to maintain a pile of custom scripts. If your organization treats automation infrastructure as a core competency—and you have people dedicated to managing it—n8n's approach will feel familiar.
It's also a go-to option for companies that need to self-host behind their own firewall. In these cases, the ability to install and run n8n on your own infrastructure can feel like a major advantage. That said, true air-gapped environments are extremely rare outside of places like government-classified systems or certain financial environments. And even in a self-hosted setup, most enterprise automations rely on external API calls anyway, which means your data is leaving that environment regardless. You often end up managing complex firewall exceptions and custom security reviews for every integration you want to connect.
Where n8n requires real commitment is on the operational side. To run it successfully, you typically need engineering resources for provisioning servers, scaling the system, monitoring performance, and handling upgrades and patches. Security and compliance work also falls squarely on your team. And when it comes to building workflows, the interface is flexible but leans heavily technical: complex automations often require JavaScript or Python, which limits who can contribute. That makes it harder to spread automation across non-technical teams and can keep IT or engineering stuck with a growing backlog.
All of this makes n8n an appealing choice for organizations that want total control, have the in-house expertise to support a custom automation environment, and don't mind the operational overhead that comes with it. But if your team wants to move fast, scale automations across departments, or reduce the maintenance burden on engineering, you'll run into more roadblocks with n8n's developer-centric model than with a tool like Zapier.
n8n vs. Zapier pricing
n8n's Community tier is technically free, which can look appealing at first glance. But "free" in this case really means "you take on all the operational responsibility yourself," and that adds up fast once you're running automations at any kind of scale. By the time all the pieces are in place, many teams are looking at costs that can climb into the hundreds of thousands annually. So while the software license may be free, the overall cost of ownership is often anything but.
Zapier takes the opposite approach: the subscription price is the total price. You don't have to manage hosting, patching, or scaling, and you don't need to assign an engineer to keep the lights on. Every plan includes enterprise-grade security and compliance, managed infrastructure, and support resources built for teams—so the value shows up quickly without operational drag.
Even if you choose one of n8n's cloud or supported self-hosting plans, the billing model still works differently from Zapier's. Because n8n charges per workflow execution, a tiny two-step automation costs the same as an 80-step one. That tends to push teams toward building fewer, larger workflows, which can become harder to maintain and harder for non-technical users to build on. It also makes it trickier to scale those quick, lightweight automations that usually deliver the fastest wins.
Zapier's model flips that dynamic. Smaller, more modular workflows are often cheaper, which encourages both developers and non-technical teams to experiment and create the bite-sized automations that make a meaningful difference day to day. And if usage grows, it's usually because more people across the organization found ways to work more efficiently—which is exactly what automation is supposed to unlock.
Learn more about how Zapier's task-based pricing works, or read an in-depth comparison of Zapier vs. n8n.
Find your automation sweet spot
I wouldn't say choosing an automation tool is on par, headache-wise, with planning a wedding. But it comes close—especially when you're stuck deciding between saving money and handing the work off to the pros.
n8n pricing plans are split across this decision: the self-hosted version gives you total creative control and the freedom to shape the system however you want. But you're also taking on the maintenance, infrastructure headaches, debugging, and ongoing operational lift that never really goes away. The cloud version lets you offload most of that work, but it sacrifices flexibility and security unless you're ready to pay the equivalent of a destination wedding's budget.
Zapier, on the other hand, is the option where you walk in, describe what you need, and walk out with something reliable, polished, and ready for the big day. You pay for the stability and the ease, but you also skip the stress and unexpected costs. And because Zapier's pricing scales with usage rather than workflow size, it encourages the kind of modular automations that help whole teams (not just developers) move faster.
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