Workflow automation billed per workflow execution, not per step, with a free self-hostable Community edition under the Sustainable Use License.
Teams building long, step-heavy workflows who want the bill tied to runs rather than steps, since n8n's pricing page states pricing is based on monthly workflow executions 'regardless of complexity'. Self-hosting suits teams that need workflow data and credentials to stay on their own infrastructure, including air-gapped setups. The AI category sits on the same canvas as HTTP Request, Postgres and the rest of the 2,329 listed integrations, so agent steps and plumbing steps are built in one place.
Execution allowances are low in absolute terms: Starter is EUR 20/mo for 2,500 executions and Pro EUR 50/mo for 10,000, so high-frequency polling workflows burn the quota regardless of how simple each run is. Business is EUR 667/mo billed annually, self-hosted only with cloud on a waitlist, and n8n's pricing page restricts it to companies with fewer than 100 employees; overage is EUR 4,000 per extra bucket of 300,000 executions. The code is not open source: the main branch is under the Sustainable Use License v1.0, which limits use to internal business purposes or non-commercial personal use, and files marked .ee require a separate n8n Enterprise License, so hosting n8n commercially for others is not covered.
Pros
Cons
No, and n8n does not name an OSI licence. The repository's main branch is covered by the Sustainable Use License Version 1.0, which grants use, copying, distribution and derivative works only for internal business purposes or for non-commercial personal use, and permits free distribution for non-commercial purposes only. Files marked .ee are excluded entirely and require a separate n8n Enterprise License.
One execution is a single run of your entire workflow. The pricing page says pricing is based on monthly workflow executions regardless of complexity, so a twenty-node workflow and a two-node workflow each count as one. Starter includes 2,500 executions a month, Pro 10,000 and Business 40,000. Business overage is charged at four thousand euros per additional bucket of three hundred thousand executions.
The docs describe Community as free with almost the complete feature set. Features listed as needing a paid subscription include custom variables, environments, external secrets, external storage for binary data, log streaming, multi-main mode, projects, SAML and LDAP single sign-on, workflow and credential sharing, and version control using Git. Registering your email unlocks folders, debug in editor and custom execution data at no cost.
n8n's security page states that n8n Cloud uses Microsoft Azure and that the hardware and stored data are currently hosted in the European Union, while noting it is preparing to host in additional locations. Backups replicate to a separate region in the same country with the same encryption as production. Data at rest is encrypted in your instance's mounted volume. Self-hosted data sits wherever you host it.
Facts sourced from the vendor’s own site, last verified 2026-10-10.
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