Self-hosted or cloud

The options, side by side

Option	What you pay	What it also costs	Who controls the data	Who fixes it at 3am
n8n Cloud	From about €20/mo (Starter), €50/mo (Pro), more for Business	Little	n8n's EU infrastructure	n8n, for the infrastructure
Host it yourself	€10–50/mo for a server	Your hours: updates, backups, certificates, debugging	You, completely	You
One-click install on a VPS	€10–30/mo	Your hours, minus the initial setup	You, completely	You
Operated for you	Fixed monthly fee	Nothing further	You, on your infrastructure or ours	We do

The column that actually decides this is the second one. A self-hosted instance costs almost nothing in server fees and a real number of hours a month in care. We put numbers on that in the honest maths.

Start with the shape, not the number

Prices change; check n8n's pricing page for today's numbers. What decides your bill for good is the shape of the charge, and n8n's shape is unusual: it charges per execution, 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.)

n8n Enterprise sits above Cloud Business, priced on request, and adds single sign-on, roles, separate environments and support with response times (when it's worth it).

The case for n8n Cloud

No maintenance, EU hosting, a fast start, and pricing that is fair at low volume. If your workflows are straightforward and nobody in-house wants to own a server, this is the honest recommendation, and we make it to customers regularly.

The limits arrive later: a custom node for your industry ERP, heavy volume, a rule about where data must live, or a security team that wants your logs somewhere central. And whichever you pick, a workflow that quietly stopped is still yours to notice.

The case for self-hosting

Full control. Any node, any volume, your network, your compliance story.

What it takes: a small server, two CPUs and 4 GB of memory suits most small and mid-sized businesses; Postgres rather than the built-in database once volume is real; worker processes when you outgrow one machine (how to scale it); and a plan for updates, backups and security. We put real numbers on those hours in self-hosting looks free until you add it up. For most small and mid-sized businesses the honest total is several times the subscription they avoided.

Self-hosting is right when the control is genuinely required, and a named person owns the upkeep. Both, not either.

The third option

Somebody else operates it, on your infrastructure. n8n runs on your servers, inside your network and your compliance boundary, and a partner owns the operations: monitoring, upgrades, recovery when something fails, and building what comes next.

The control of self-hosting, the hours of Cloud. That's managed n8n on your servers, or on ours if nothing forces the data to stay put, including the AI employees that n8n on its own does not give you. It's also the one line-item that covers the workflows themselves, not just the machine: a 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 doesn't produce a surprise bill.

Deciding

Whose calendar do the maintenance hours come out of?

1. The data has to stay on your infrastructure, or you need custom nodes → self-host. With an owner, do it yourself. Without one, have it operated.
2. Simple workflows, somebody technical in-house, no rules about data location → n8n Cloud.
3. The automation matters to the business and nobody wants to own the operations → operated, in either location.

Want the numbers run on your actual processes? Talk to us. If the honest answer is that no tool is the problem, the alternatives page sorts that out before you spend anything.