n8n

n8n for a small business: Cloud plans, what an execution is, and what self-hosting leaves to you

n8n runs on n8n's own servers, as n8n Cloud, or on a server you run, where the Community edition is free under n8n's Sustainable Use License. Cloud is priced by workflow runs; self-hosting moves the updates, backups and security to you.

By Oscar CobbeCurrent as at 30 October 20268 minute read16 sources

Two ways to run n8n

n8n is a workflow automation tool. A workflow starts from a trigger, such as a schedule, a webhook or a check of another app for new data, and runs a chain of steps across your apps. n8n's documentation frames the choice in two decisions: who runs the infrastructure, then which plan or edition. Set against Zapier, Make and Power Automate on price, it is in the four automation tools compared; this page goes into n8n alone.

1n8n Cloud: n8n hosts and maintains your instance. The plans are Starter, Pro and Enterprise, after a free trial.
2Self-hosted: you install n8n on your own server or cloud account, with Docker Compose, a one-line setup script or one of n8n's guides for a cloud provider. Without a licence key it runs as the free Community edition; a Business or Enterprise licence key turns on those editions' features.

n8n Cloud's plans, as priced in October 2026

n8n prices its plans by workflow executions a month, with unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration on all of them. Its pricing page gave its prices in euro, billed annually, and says paying annually saves 17%. Monthly plans are paid in advance and can be cancelled at any time, running to the end of the month; n8n's terms make fees non-refundable, and plans renew automatically unless cancelled.

	Starter	Pro	Enterprise
Price	€20 a month, billed annually	From €50 a month, billed annually	On request
Executions a month	2,500	10,000; a 50,000 size also exists	Custom
Executions running at once	5	20, or 50 on the 50,000 size	200 or more
Longest single execution	5 minutes	40 minutes	40 minutes
Past executions kept	Up to 2,500, for up to 7 days	Up to 25,000, for up to 30 days	Up to 50,000, no time limit
Shared projects	1	3	Unlimited
Support	Forum	Forum	Email and dedicated, with an SLA

At the limit, and on trial

Starter and Pro are capped: n8n's terms say no usage beyond the limit can be consumed, and there are no overage fees. Executions over the concurrency limit wait in a queue. A new Cloud account starts on a trial of Pro features for 14 days, limited to 1,000 executions and Starter's computing power, and n8n deletes the instance if you have not upgraded when the trial ends.

What counts as an execution

An execution is one run of a whole workflow, however many steps it has and however much data it handles. Only production executions count against a plan: runs started by a trigger, a schedule or polling, once the workflow is published. A schedule trigger counts each time it fires; a polling trigger, such as one watching a Google Drive folder, counts only when it finds something new; a webhook counts each request that starts the workflow.

n8n's own guide to estimating: a daily schedule is 30 or 31 executions a month, and one that runs every 5 minutes is about 8,600 to 8,900, beyond Starter's 2,500 and within Pro's 10,000. These do not count towards the quota:

1Manual runs from the editor while you build and test.
2Sub-workflows called by another workflow: only the top-level run counts.
3Runs of an error workflow.
4Polls that find nothing new, and webhook requests rejected before the workflow starts.

The self-hosted Community edition and its licence

The Community edition is free, and n8n says it has almost the complete feature set. It is published under n8n's Sustainable Use License, which grants the right to use, copy, modify and distribute n8n within limits. The main one allows use "only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use". The licence also allows passing the software to others only free of charge and for non-commercial purposes, and forbids removing n8n's licensing and copyright notices.

n8n's licence FAQ puts this in practical terms. Allowed: using the Community edition to run your business; building automations for clients on your own instance, as long as the clients cannot create or edit them; charging clients for setting up and maintaining workflows. Not allowed: hosting n8n as a service in which clients build their own workflows, or white-labelling it. n8n does not call itself open source, because the Open Source Initiative's definition rules out limits on use.

What the Community edition leaves out, by n8n's list: single sign-on (SAML and LDAP), projects, sharing of workflows and credentials (only the instance owner and the person who created them can open them), environments, external secrets, log streaming, Git version control and custom variables. Registering the instance with an email address, which is free, adds folders, debugging in the editor and custom execution data. The rest come with a paid licence key: the self-hosted Business plan, for companies with fewer than 100 employees, was €667 a month billed annually for 40,000 executions a month, and n8n says it is not yet offered on n8n Cloud. A paid licence key checks in with n8n's licence server daily and reports the number of production executions.

What self-hosting leaves to you

n8n's own comparison puts hosting and maintenance with n8n on Cloud, and with you when you self-host, along with installation and configuration that need technical knowledge. Its documentation spells out what that covers:

1Updates: n8n recommends updating often, at least once a month, reading the release notes for breaking changes, and testing an update on a separate instance first.
2Backups: a complete backup is the .n8n folder, which holds the key that encrypts your stored credentials, plus the database if you use PostgreSQL. n8n's command-line export covers workflows and credentials only, not users, execution history, variables or settings, and without the encryption key the credentials in a restored database cannot be decrypted. n8n recommends a full backup before updating.
3Security: SSL, single sign-on, enforced two-step sign-in, security audits, blocked nodes and limits on which hosts workflows can reach are settings you configure on your own instance.
4Personal data: for a self-hosted instance n8n is neither controller nor processor, deleting a person's data is up to you, and n8n suggests pruning execution data automatically every few days.
5Telemetry: a self-hosted instance sends usage and diagnostic data to n8n by default. Environment variables switch it off, but an instance with a paid licence keeps reporting its usage counts.
6Hosting cost: n8n charges nothing for the Community edition. The server, database and storage are paid to whoever hosts them; n8n's install guides cover AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Heroku and OpenShift.

Where n8n Cloud keeps your data

n8n's pricing page says data on its hosted plans is stored in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. Its list of sub-processors names Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider, processing in the EU.

The same list names AI providers processing in the United States, such as OpenAI, for n8n's AI features. n8n's privacy documentation says its AI Assistant is on by default on Cloud, and that what it sends to the models is the shape of your workflow and the settings and code of the node you are working on, not the data your workflows process.

On Cloud, n8n's usage telemetry cannot be switched off, and n8n records sessions in its interface, without credential values, deleting the recordings after 21 days. If any of that data goes to the United States, sending personal data to the US from Ireland covers what to check.

n8n's data processing terms

For Cloud, n8n's self-serve terms apply its data processing agreement to the customer content it processes for you. For a self-hosted instance, they say n8n is not your processor and the agreement does not apply. n8n GmbH, in Berlin, publishes the agreement pre-signed, for customers to download, countersign and return. What a data processing agreement must contain is the list to check it against.

1Roles: the agreement makes your business the controller and n8n the processor. n8n's documentation adds that on Cloud n8n is also a controller in its own right, for example of telemetry.
2Breaches: n8n will tell you without undue delay and, where feasible, no later than 72 hours after it becomes aware of one.
3Transfers: where a transfer needs them, the EU's standard contractual clauses form part of the agreement, and you consent to n8n and its subcontractors transferring data outside the EEA on the conditions it sets out.
4Sub-processors: n8n tells you of new or replaced subcontractors, and if you object, your remedy is to close your account or, where n8n agrees, to end access to the part of the service affected.

Which suits a small business

From what n8n documents, the choice turns on who looks after the server and who builds the workflows:

1Nobody to run a server: n8n Cloud, which n8n hosts, updates and scales, with the data in Frankfurt.
2Long workflows: n8n counts runs, not steps, so a twenty-step workflow uses one execution per run, the same as a two-step one.
3Someone technical to look after a server, and only your own staff building workflows: the Community edition, free under the Sustainable Use License, with updates, backups and security yours to run.
4Several people sharing workflows and credentials, or single sign-on: a paid plan, Pro or Enterprise on Cloud, or Business or Enterprise self-hosted.

Before you build

Pick the task first: what to automate first is about choosing it, and the automation savings calculator works out what it costs you now. If the workflow handles personal data, automating a process that touches personal data lists what to write down before it runs, and a self-hosted instance's backups are only as good as the last restore test.

Build sets workflows up, in n8n where it suits them, and documents and watches them.

Sources

Free, and no account needed

Is the job worth automating?

Minutes each time and times a week in; the hours and money the job costs a year, and how long an automation would take to pay back once n8n's own charge is counted, out.

Run the free check

Workflows built, documented and watched

Build sets up the automations your business needs, in n8n where it suits them, on n8n Cloud or on a server you control, documents them and hands them over, and every automation retries and alerts a person when it fails. €1,500 for one connection, €3,000 for up to five workflows.

See Build

Who wrote this

Oscar Cobbe · Founder, FourWinds Digital

Writes and maintains the legal explainers on this site, and does the compliance work behind them. Every date and article number here is checked against the legislation itself before it is published, and each article shows the date it was last checked.

More about how we work →