n8n’s pricing model has shifted significantly over the past two years. The Community Edition remains free and fully self-hostable — unlimited workflows, unlimited executions, no feature gating. But n8n Cloud, the managed hosting option, now charges per execution. Zapier charges per task (each individual step). Make.com charges per operation. And suddenly “which automation platform should I use?” is really a cost-engineering question.
Understanding the real cost requires looking beyond sticker prices. A platform advertising “€24/month” sounds affordable until you discover that covers only 2,500 workflow runs. A $19.99/month plan sounds competitive until you realize each step in a 5-step workflow burns 5 of your allocation. The math that matters is cost per automation at your actual usage volume — and that’s what this article calculates, with real numbers, for every major option.
All pricing reflects published rates as of November 2025. n8n Cloud prices are in euros; Zapier, Make, and MassiveGRID prices are in US dollars. We use an approximate €1 = $1.08 conversion where needed.
n8n Cloud Pricing Breakdown
n8n Cloud is the managed, hosted version of n8n. You sign up, connect your integrations, and n8n handles the infrastructure, updates, and scaling. Here are the current tiers:
| Plan | Price | Executions/mo | Concurrent | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | €24/mo | 2,500 | 5 | 1 |
| Pro | €60/mo | 10,000 | 20 | 3 |
| Business | €800/mo | 40,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | Unlimited |
The critical insight: n8n charges per execution, not per step. An execution is one complete workflow run, regardless of how many nodes it contains. A 50-step workflow that pulls data from an API, transforms it through 15 nodes, branches into 3 conditional paths, and writes to 4 different destinations — that’s 1 execution. This is n8n’s single biggest pricing advantage over Zapier, and it matters enormously for complex automations.
But the execution limits are still restrictive for real workloads. Let’s run the math on a typical mid-size automation setup:
- 50 active workflows
- Average 100 triggers per day per workflow (mix of webhooks, scheduled polls, and event-driven triggers)
- 30 days per month
That’s 50 × 100 × 30 = 150,000 executions per month. The Pro plan gives you 10,000. Even the Business plan at €800/mo (∼$864) only provides 40,000 — less than a third of what you need. You’re looking at Enterprise pricing or fundamentally redesigning your automation architecture to reduce trigger frequency.
When you exceed your execution limit on n8n Cloud, your workflows stop running until the next billing cycle. There is no automatic overage billing — your automations simply halt. For business-critical workflows, this is a serious reliability risk.
For teams running fewer than 5,000 executions monthly — maybe 10–15 workflows triggered a few times per hour — the Pro tier at €60/mo is reasonable. Beyond that, the cost curve steepens dramatically, and self-hosting becomes the obvious financial choice.
n8n Self-Hosted Cost Breakdown
n8n Community Edition is open source under the Sustainable Use License. You can run it on your own server with zero execution limits, unlimited workflows, unlimited active triggers, and full access to every feature — including community nodes, custom code execution, and local AI model integration via LangChain. The only cost is the infrastructure you run it on.
Let’s build up the true all-in cost with real numbers.
Software cost
$0. n8n Community Edition is free. No license fees, no per-user charges, no feature restrictions. You get the same workflow engine, the same node library, and the same AI capabilities as n8n Cloud — without execution caps.
VPS infrastructure
n8n with Docker and PostgreSQL runs comfortably on 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, and 64 GB SSD. Using MassiveGRID’s per-resource VPS pricing, here’s the breakdown:
| Resource | Amount | Unit Price | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| vCPU | 2 cores | $2.87/core | $5.74 |
| RAM | 4 GB | $0.80/GB | $3.20 |
| SSD Storage | 64 GB | $0.01/GB | $0.64 |
| Total | $9.58/mo |
The formula: (2 × $2.87) + (4 × $0.80) + (64 × $0.01) = $9.58/mo. With annual billing, that drops by 20% to $7.66/mo.
For heavier workloads — 100+ active workflows, queue mode with Redis workers, or AI-heavy pipelines — a 4 vCPU / 8 GB RAM / 128 GB SSD configuration runs $19.16/mo (or $38.32/mo for dedicated CPU via VDS).
Other costs
- Domain name: ~$12/year (~$1/mo amortized). Required for HTTPS webhooks and browser access.
- SSL certificate: $0. Let’s Encrypt via Caddy provides free, auto-renewing SSL.
- Off-site backups: $2–5/mo for external backup storage (recommended but optional if you have Ceph-replicated storage).
- Setup time: ~2 hours following our step-by-step Docker guide. One-time investment.
- Ongoing maintenance: ~30 minutes per month for updates (
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d), log checks, and disk monitoring.
Total all-in cost: ~$13–44/mo for unlimited everything.
Self-hosting requires Docker and basic Linux comfort. If you’ve never SSH’d into a server before, budget 2–4 hours of learning time on top of the setup. Our installation guide covers every step, but the concepts (containers, reverse proxies, environment variables) will be new. It’s a real investment — and for many technical users, a worthwhile one.
Start Self-Hosting n8n — Unlimited Executions
No per-execution fees. No workflow caps. Full control over your data.
Recommended: 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM / 64 GB SSD — $9.58/mo
Configure Your VPS →Zapier: The Per-Task Tax
Zapier is the most widely recognized workflow automation platform, with over 8,000 pre-built integrations — roughly 7x more than n8n’s 1,100+. But its pricing model is fundamentally different, and at scale, dramatically more expensive.
Zapier charges per task, and each step in a workflow counts as a separate task. This is not a subtle difference. It changes the cost equation by an order of magnitude for complex automations.
Consider a typical business workflow: “When a form is submitted, look up the contact in the CRM, create a deal, send a welcome email, update a Google Sheet, and post a notification to Slack.” That’s 5 steps.
- On n8n: 1 execution per run (regardless of step count)
- On Zapier: 5 tasks per run
Now run the volume math. If that workflow triggers 100 times per day:
- n8n: 100 executions/day × 30 days = 3,000 executions/month
- Zapier: 100 runs × 5 steps × 30 days = 15,000 tasks/month
On Zapier, 15,000 tasks/month puts you well beyond the Professional plan ($49.99/mo for 2,000 tasks). You’re into Team or Enterprise territory, likely $299+/month — for a single workflow. On a self-hosted n8n instance, that same workflow runs unlimited for under $10/month.
| Zapier Plan | Price | Tasks/mo | Enough for Our Example? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19.99/mo | 750 | No (covers 5 days) |
| Professional | $49.99/mo | 2,000 | No (covers 13 days) |
| Team | $69.99/mo | 2,000 | No (same limit, shared workspace) |
| Enterprise | Custom ($299+) | Custom | Yes, at significant cost |
To be fair: Zapier genuinely excels for non-technical teams. The visual builder is simpler than n8n’s, the integration library is unmatched, and there’s zero infrastructure to manage. If your team consists of marketing or operations people who would never touch a terminal, Zapier’s premium is the price of accessibility. But if anyone on the team can run docker compose up, the cost difference is difficult to justify at volume.
Make.com: The Middle Ground
Make.com (formerly Integromat) occupies an interesting middle position. It charges per operation — similar to Zapier’s per-step model, but with one important difference: polling triggers consume operations even when they don’t find new data. A workflow that checks an inbox every 5 minutes uses operations on every check, not just when emails arrive.
Make’s pricing starts at $9/month for 10,000 operations — significantly cheaper than Zapier at comparable volumes. The visual builder is arguably the most intuitive of the three platforms, with a flowchart-style interface that makes complex branching logic easy to follow.
However, Make has two notable limitations. First, there is no self-hosting option — it’s cloud-only. You cannot run Make on your own infrastructure, which means you’re permanently subject to their pricing decisions and data handling policies. Second, while Make has added AI features, its integration with LLM toolchains is less mature than n8n’s native LangChain support. If you’re building AI-powered automations that chain multiple model calls, tool use, and vector database queries, n8n’s AI nodes are currently more capable.
Make is a good choice for teams that want something more affordable than Zapier with a better visual experience than n8n Cloud, but don’t need self-hosting or advanced AI capabilities. For data-sovereign environments or unlimited-execution requirements, it’s simply not an option.
Hidden Costs Nobody Discusses
Every option — cloud and self-hosted — has costs that don’t appear on the pricing page. Being honest about these is the only way to make a genuinely informed decision.
Hidden costs of cloud platforms
- Vendor lock-in: Your workflows are stored in the provider’s format, on the provider’s infrastructure. Migrating from Zapier to n8n (or vice versa) means rebuilding every workflow from scratch. The more automations you build, the higher the switching cost.
- Pricing changes: Cloud platforms change pricing. n8n has already restructured its cloud tiers multiple times. Zapier has steadily increased prices while reducing task allocations. You’re making a long-term bet on someone else’s business model.
- Feature deprecation: Integrations break. API versions change. A platform might drop support for a connector you depend on, and your only recourse is a support ticket.
- Data sovereignty limits: Your workflow data — including API keys, customer records, and business logic — lives on someone else’s servers, in their chosen jurisdiction. For GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific compliance, this can be a disqualifier.
Hidden costs of self-hosting
- Your time at 2 AM: When Docker runs out of disk space on a Saturday night and your webhook-triggered workflows start silently failing, that’s your problem. Cloud platforms handle this for you.
- Disk management: Docker images accumulate. PostgreSQL WAL files grow. Log files expand. Without automated pruning and monitoring, you’ll eventually hit storage limits.
- PostgreSQL maintenance: Vacuuming, connection pooling, backup verification, version upgrades — a production database requires ongoing attention.
- Security patching: OS updates, Docker updates, n8n updates. Each one carries a small risk of breaking something, and skipping them carries a larger risk of vulnerabilities.
Running n8n on MassiveGRID’s HA infrastructure mitigates several of these concerns. Ceph distributed storage with 3x replication reduces data loss risk. Automatic VM failover reduces downtime from hardware failures. And 24/7 human support means infrastructure-level issues — hypervisor problems, network outages, disk failures — are someone else’s problem, even at 2 AM.
Decision Framework
Rather than declaring a universal winner, here’s a framework based on your actual situation:
Choose n8n Cloud if:
- You run fewer than 5,000 executions per month
- You have no Docker or Linux experience and don’t want to learn
- You have no data sovereignty or compliance requirements
- You value managed updates and zero infrastructure maintenance
Choose self-hosted n8n if:
- You exceed 5,000 executions per month (the savings are immediate and substantial)
- You’re comfortable with Docker or willing to invest 2–4 hours learning
- You need data sovereignty, GDPR compliance, or industry-specific data handling
- You’re cost-conscious and want predictable, flat-rate infrastructure costs
- You want access to all community nodes, custom code, and local AI models
Choose Zapier if:
- Your team is non-technical and needs the simplest possible interface
- You rely on niche integrations that only Zapier supports (out of 8,000+)
- Your workflows are simple (1–3 steps) and low-volume
- Budget is secondary to ease of use
Choose self-hosted on MassiveGRID specifically if:
- You want self-hosting benefits with high-availability infrastructure underneath
- You need human support for infrastructure issues (not just application-level help)
- You want per-resource pricing that scales independently (add RAM without changing CPU)
- You need data center options in NYC, London, Frankfurt, or Singapore
Conclusion
The pricing math is clear: once you exceed a few thousand executions per month, self-hosted n8n on a VPS is dramatically cheaper than any cloud alternative. At 20,000 monthly executions, you are looking at roughly $10/month self-hosted versus $60–$100+ on managed platforms. That gap only widens as your automation scales.
But cost is only one dimension. Factor in data sovereignty, unlimited community nodes, no execution caps, and the ability to run local AI models — and self-hosting becomes compelling even before the savings. The trade-off is real maintenance responsibility, but on high-availability infrastructure with automatic failover, that responsibility is manageable for anyone comfortable with Docker basics.