What n8n costs
The sticker price is the easy part. Here is the rest of the bill, including the hours nobody puts in the spreadsheet.
Start with the shape, not the number
Prices change. What decides your bill is the shape of the charge, and n8n's shape is unusual.
n8n charges per execution, which is one run of a whole workflow, no matter how many steps are inside it. Zapier and Make charge per step. A twenty-step order workflow that runs a thousand times a month is a thousand executions on n8n, and twenty thousand billable steps on a per-step tool. The more complex the job, the wider that gap gets. (Full comparison of the three.)
The options, side by side
| Option | What you pay | What is not in the price |
|---|---|---|
| n8n Cloud, Starter | About €20 a month, billed annually | Little room for custom nodes |
| n8n Cloud, Pro | About €50 a month, billed annually | Higher execution allowance, still managed by n8n |
| n8n Cloud, Business | Several hundred a month | Worth it at scale, not before |
| Run it yourself | Nothing to licence, plus €10–50 a month for a server | The hours somebody spends looking after it |
| n8n Enterprise | Priced on request | Adds single sign-on, roles, environments, support with response times (when it is worth it) |
| Managed by us | Fixed monthly fee | Hosting and the running of your workflows, both included |
Those are the numbers as published in mid-2026 and they move. Check n8n's pricing page before you decide. The shapes in the right-hand column are the part that does not change.
The line nobody budgets for
Running n8n yourself really does cost nothing to licence. It also needs somebody to update it, back it up, renew the certificates, look after the database, and work out why a workflow stopped overnight.
Count those hours honestly and put a real number on them. For most small teams a few hours a month already costs more than the subscription they were avoiding. That does not make self-hosting wrong. It makes it a decision about control, not about saving money (the honest trade-off, and the same maths in detail).
What managed costs, said plainly
Managed n8n from us is one fixed monthly fee, set by the size of your instance, how many workflows we look after and how much support you want. Not per execution, so a busy month does not produce a surprise bill. It covers hosting, on our infrastructure or yours, watching that your workflows actually ran rather than only that the server is up, fixing what breaks, and engineering time when you need something changed.
It costs more than a Cloud subscription. It costs less than the slice of an engineer's week that doing it yourself quietly takes. That is the whole trade, and if a Cloud subscription is enough for you, take the Cloud subscription.
Working out your own number
- Count your workflows, how often each runs, and how many steps they have. That shows you the per-step versus per-execution gap.
- Put a real hourly cost on the maintenance, and be honest about who would actually do it.
- Add what a silent failure costs. A weekend of unprocessed orders belongs in this calculation too.
Want the numbers run on your actual processes? Talk to us, or see what AI automation costs overall.
If the honest answer is that no tool is the problem, the alternatives page sorts that out before you spend anything.
FAQ
How much does n8n cost?
n8n Cloud starts at about €20 a month for the Starter plan and €50 for Pro, billed annually, with a larger Business plan above that and custom pricing for Enterprise. Running it yourself costs nothing to license, plus roughly €10 to €50 a month for a server, plus the time somebody spends looking after it. Check n8n's pricing page for today's numbers.
Is self-hosted n8n really free?
The licence is free. Running it is not. Updates, backups, certificate renewals, database care and fixing the workflow that stopped on a Friday night all take somebody's time. A few hours a month usually costs more than the subscription you avoided. Host it yourself because you want the control, not because you want to save money.
What is an execution, and why does it matter?
One execution is one run of a whole workflow, however many steps it has. Zapier and Make charge for each step instead. A twenty-step workflow that runs a thousand times a month is a thousand executions on n8n, and twenty thousand billable steps somewhere else. That gap is the whole reason n8n gets cheaper the more complex your work is.
When is n8n Enterprise worth it?
When you need single sign-on, proper roles, separate test and live environments, longer data retention or a support agreement with response times. It is priced on request. If you cannot name which of those you need, you do not need it yet.
What does a managed instance cost?
A fixed monthly fee, based on the size of your instance, how many workflows we look after and how much support you want. It is deliberately not priced per execution, so a busy month does not produce a surprise bill. It covers the hosting, watching that workflows actually run, fixing them when they do not, and engineering time when you want changes.