n8n’s free version is real, but “free” means self-hosted not free cloud. Here’s exactly what the Community edition includes, what it doesn’t, and the license catch.
The question sounds simple and it isn’t, which is why so many people end up annoyed.
You read that n8n is open source and free. You go to n8n.io, click pricing, and every plan has a price on it. So you assume the “free” thing was marketing, or outdated, or you misread something.
You didn’t. Both things are true at once, and the reason is that n8n has two completely separate products sharing one name.
That’s the whole confusion, and once you see it the pricing page stops being irritating.
There’s also a third option almost nobody writes about a free tier between the two that unlocks extra features for the cost of typing in your email address. I only found it because I went through n8n’s own documentation instead of the comparison articles.
📌 HOW I CHECKED THIS : Everything below about what’s included and excluded comes from n8n’s own documentation — specifically their “Compare editions” page and the Sustainable Use License docs — rather than from third-party roundups. I did that on purpose: the third-party pricing articles I read while researching this contradicted each other on several points, including whether a free cloud tier exists. Where sources disagreed, I’ve said so rather than picking one. Pricing figures below are approximate and were accurate to the sources I checked in August 2026 — verify at n8n.io/pricing before you spend anything.
1- The two products, in one paragraph each
n8n Cloud is the managed version. n8n runs the servers, handles updates, you log in and build. This is what the pricing page is selling, and there is no permanent free tier on it. You get a 14-day trial, no credit card required, and then you pay.
n8n Community edition is the self-hosted version. You run it on your own server. It’s free indefinitely, it’s the same underlying software, and n8n’s own docs describe it as including almost the complete feature set.
So: the software is free, the hosting is not. If someone tells you n8n is free and someone else tells you it costs $24 a month, they’re both right and they’re talking about different things.
2- What the free Community edition actually leaves out
This is the list people want and rarely get accurately, because most articles paraphrase it wrong. Straight from n8n’s documentation, the Community edition does not include:
- SSO (SAML and LDAP)
- Sharing workflows and credentials
- Projects
- Version control using Git
- Environments
- Custom Variables
- External secrets
- External storage for binary data
- Log streaming to external systems
- Multi-main mode
Now the part that matters more than the list: look at what that list is. SSO, audit-style logging, Git integration, external secret stores, RBAC-adjacent features. That’s an enterprise IT list. It’s the stuff a company with a compliance department needs.
If you’re one person automating your own work, almost none of it applies to you.
Two clarifications that are easy to get wrong, and that I’ve seen stated backwards:
- Logging is included. It’s log streaming to external systems that isn’t.
- Queue mode is included. It’s multi-main mode that isn’t.
Those distinctions matter if you’re planning anything at scale, and several articles I read collapsed them into “no logging” and “no queue mode,” which is just false.
The one gap that genuinely bites normal users
In the Community edition, only the instance owner and the person who created a workflow or credential can access it. There’s no sharing with teammates.
For solo use that’s irrelevant. The moment a second person needs to touch your automations, it’s a wall and it’s the limitation most likely to push a small team onto a paid plan, not SSO or Git.
Worth knowing before you build your whole setup around free, rather than after.
3- The free tier nobody mentions
Here’s the bit I’d have wanted someone to tell me.
There’s a Registered Community edition. You register your instance with your email address, n8n sends you a free license key, you activate it. Still free. No card, no trial clock.
It unlocks three things:
- Folders : organize workflows instead of scrolling one flat list
- Debug in editor : copy and pin execution data while you’re building
- Custom execution data : save, find and annotate execution metadata
Folders sound trivial until you have thirty workflows. Debug in editor is the one that actually changes your build experience pinning data lets you develop against a frozen response instead of hammering a live API every time you test a node.
To register an existing instance: three-dots icon in the lower-left, Settings → Usage and plan → Unlock, enter your email, and they send you the key. If you’re setting up fresh, the option appears during initial account creation.
Free features sitting behind a form nobody knows about. Take them.
4- The license catch that catches agencies
n8n isn’t technically open source. It’s fair-code, under something called the Sustainable Use License. That distinction is mostly academic right up until it isn’t.
What the license allows: use and modification for internal business purposes, personal use, or non-commercial purposes.
What it explicitly allows that people assume it doesn’t: charging for consulting or support services. Building n8n workflows for clients as a service is fine. n8n lifted the old restriction on this and says so directly in their docs.
Where it stops: you can’t turn n8n into the basis of a competing product, a third-party hosted service, or a white-label solution sold to end customers. Running your own n8n instance and charging clients to execute their automations on it is the pattern that needs a commercial license.
The technical setup is identical either way, which is exactly why people get this wrong. Building workflows for a client on their instance fine. Hosting the instance and selling access to it not fine without a license.
5- What self-hosting actually costs
“Free” software still needs somewhere to run.
Realistic figures from what I found: a small VPS running n8n via Docker Compose lands somewhere around $4–7/month on providers like Hetzner or DigitalOcean, or a managed self-hosting service in a similar range. Sources put typical initial setup at 30–60 minutes if you follow a guide, and figures for ongoing maintenance vary a lot depending on who’s writing.
n8n official pricing and billing [https://n8n.io/pricing/]
Add the things nobody quotes you: security patches, backups you actually test, and the hour you’ll lose the first time something breaks at an inconvenient moment.
So the honest comparison isn’t “free vs $24/month.” It’s “$5/month plus your own time vs $24/month and someone else’s problem.”
Which is genuinely a real decision, and it depends entirely on whether your time is worth more than $19/month to you.
6- The execution model the actual reason people move to n8n
This deserves its own section because it’s the single biggest structural difference from Zapier, and it’s not really about free at all.
One workflow run = one execution. A workflow with two nodes and a workflow with two hundred nodes each count as one execution per run. The volume of data doesn’t change the count either.
Zapier bills per task per step. So a 15-step automation costs you 15 tasks there and one execution on n8n.
That’s why long, complex automations are dramatically cheaper on n8n, and why the comparison flips depending on what you build. Lots of simple two-step zaps? The gap narrows. A few big multi-step pipelines? n8n wins by a mile.
On self-hosted Community edition, executions are unlimited anyway you’re bounded by your server, not a counter.
7- Cloud pricing, with a warning attached
I’m giving you ranges rather than exact figures deliberately, because the sources I checked openly disagreed with each other on prices, on whether active workflow limits still exist, and in one case on whether a free cloud tier exists at all.
Roughly, as of the sources I checked in August 2026:
- Starter : around $20–24/month, roughly 2,500 executions
- Pro : around $50–60/month, roughly 10,000 executions
- Business : around $800/month
- Enterprise : custom, includes SSO and the rest of the governance features
- Annual billing saves around 17%
- n8n is Berlin-based and prices in EUR, so your figure shifts with the exchange rate
The execution limits are the real constraint, and here’s the trap: a workflow triggering every five minutes generates about 8,640 executions a month on its own. One scheduled workflow on a tight interval will blow through a Starter allowance in about nine days.
The Modern AI Automation Agency Stack in 2026 [https://aiflohub.com/the-modern-ai-automation-agency-stack-in-2026/]
Before picking a plan, multiply your trigger frequency out. It’s a two-minute calculation that saves a lot of irritation.
Check n8n.io/pricing yourself. Their docs explicitly say the pricing page is the source of truth and that features per plan can change. That’s about as clear a hint as a vendor gives you that third-party pricing articles go stale fast this one included.
8- Mistakes worth avoiding
Assuming “open source” means “free for anything.” Fair-code isn’t the same as OSI open source. The internal-use restriction is real.
Building a team setup on Community edition. No workflow or credential sharing means the second person hits a wall immediately. Decide this before you’ve built forty workflows.
Not registering your free instance. Folders, debug-in-editor and custom execution data are free and most people never claim them.
Treating self-hosting as zero cost. It’s cheap, not free. Server, patches, backups, your time.
Picking a cloud plan without doing trigger maths. Every-five-minutes schedules are execution furnaces.
Trusting any pricing article, including this one, six months from now. Verify on the official page.
Deploying on the public internet carelessly. If you self-host, you’re now responsible for securing an application that holds credentials to your email, your bank-adjacent tools, and everything else you connect. Use HTTPS, keep it patched, don’t skip authentication. This is the part of “free” that costs people most when it goes wrong.
9- So is it free?
Yes, genuinely, if you’re willing to run it yourself. The Community edition isn’t a crippled demo. It’s nearly the whole product, the missing pieces are enterprise IT features, and the execution limit is your server rather than a billing counter.
No, if what you wanted was a free managed cloud tool. That’s a 14-day trial, and then it’s a subscription.
If you’re one person automating your own stuff and you’re comfortable with Docker and a $5 VPS, self-hosted n8n is one of the better deals in this category take the free registration while you’re at it. If you’d rather not think about servers at all, the trial is there and the cloud plans are priced normally.
The thing I’d actually check first, before either: run your trigger frequencies through a calculator. More people get caught by execution maths than by anything on the feature list.
Is GPT Astra Free? How to access it [https://aiflohub.com/is-chatgpt-astra-free-how-to-access-gpt-6-astra-and-what-the-rollout-actually-looks-like/]
FAQ
Is n8n completely free?
The self-hosted Community edition is free indefinitely with unlimited executions. n8n Cloud has no permanent free tier just a 14-day trial with no card required. So the software is free; managed hosting isn’t.
What’s missing from the free n8n Community edition?
SSO, workflow and credential sharing, projects, Git version control, environments, custom variables, external secrets, external binary storage, log streaming, and multi-main mode. Standard logging and queue mode are both included.
Is n8n open source?
Not by the strict definition. It’s fair-code under the Sustainable Use License, which permits internal business, personal and non-commercial use. The Open Source Initiative doesn’t classify licences with usage limitations as open source.
Can I use free n8n for client work?
You can charge for consulting and for building workflows n8n explicitly permits that. You can’t host n8n as a service and sell access to it, or white-label it, without a commercial license.
What does self-hosting n8n cost?
Around $4–7/month for a small VPS, plus your setup and maintenance time. Reported setup time is 30–60 minutes following a guide.
How does n8n count executions?
One complete workflow run counts as one execution, regardless of how many nodes it contains or how much data passes through. This is why it’s cheaper than per-task billing for multi-step automations.
Leave a Reply