Guide

n8n Cloud vs self-hosted: what the official pricing page actually limits (November 2026)

Updated: (America/Buenos_Aires)

What this page is. A reading of n8n’s official pricing page and the official “Choose how to use n8n” doc. I have not run production workloads on n8n Cloud or on a self-hosted instance for this article, so there are no measured execution counts, no “you will need X executions” guesses, and no invented overage invoices.
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Direct answer

n8n’s official pricing page (opened 12 November 2026) says all plans include unlimited users, workflows, and every integration, and that pricing is based on monthly workflow executions, regardless of complexity. An execution, per n8n’s own FAQ on that page, is one run of the entire workflow, not a per-step or per-task charge.

On the default Annually (Save 17%) view of that page, the plan cards showed:

  • n8n Cloud Starter: 20€/month, billed annually, 2.5K workflow executions with unlimited steps, hosted by n8n. No credit card required to start the free trial. The card also lists 1 shared project, 5 concurrent executions, 1,600 Assistant credits/month, and forum support.
  • n8n Cloud Pro: 50€/month, billed annually, 10K workflow executions with unlimited steps, hosted by n8n. Everything in Starter, plus 3 shared projects, up to 50 concurrent executions, up to 9,600 Assistant credits/month, admin roles, and other Pro items on the card.
  • Business: 667€/month, billed annually, 40K workflow executions with unlimited steps. The card is labeled Self-hosted only. n8n’s FAQ on the same page says the Business plan is not yet available on n8n Cloud.
  • Enterprise: contact sales, custom workflow executions, hosted by n8n or self-hosted.

Self-hosting the Community edition is free software. n8n’s “Choose how to use n8n” page says you can stick with Community indefinitely, or register for free extra features. You still pay for the server, a domain, backups, and your time. Paid Business and Enterprise features (SSO, Git version control, environments, and others) need a license even if you already run your own VPS.

n8n’s own docs steer people without server experience to Cloud.

What “an execution” means on the official page

The pricing page FAQ “What are executions (and why are they more powerful than on other products)?” says:

  • An execution is a single run of your entire workflow.
  • The number of steps and the amount of data processed do not turn one run into many executions.
  • n8n contrasts this with tools that bill per step or task.

The same FAQ notes that a single n8n execution can do work that would take 10,000 operations in other tools. That 10,000 figure is n8n’s comparison language, not a quota on an n8n plan.

The hero line on the page is: “If it doesn’t run, you don’t pay… only pay when a workflow runs from start to finish.”

Cloud plan prices and the default execution allowances

Figures below are what n8n.io/pricing showed on 12 November 2026. They change. Currency is left in euro as published. I am not converting to USD.

The page has a Monthly / Annually (Save 17%) toggle. The default view I opened was annual billing. The cards then showed a “Number of workflow executions” dropdown. The default selected values were 2.5K (Starter), 10K (Pro), and 40K (Business).

Plan Hosted by Default price shown (annual billing) Default execution allowance shown Other limits shown on the card or in the “Executions and limits” table
Starter n8n Cloud 20€/month, billed annually 2.5K workflow executions with unlimited steps 1 shared project; 5 concurrent executions; 1,600 Assistant credits/month; forum support; max saved executions 2.5k; saved-execution storage 2.5 GB; max execution log retention 7 days; max execution duration 5 minutes; overage fees “Capped”
Pro n8n Cloud 50€/month, billed annually 10K workflow executions with unlimited steps 3 shared projects; up to 50 concurrent executions; up to 9,600 Assistant credits/month; admin roles; workflow history; max saved executions 25k; storage 25 GB; log retention 30 days; concurrent executions listed as 20 / 50; max duration 40 minutes; overage fees “Capped”
Business Self-hosted only (not on Cloud yet, per the FAQ) 667€/month, billed annually 40K workflow executions with unlimited steps Card lists, among other things: 6 shared projects, SSO and LDAP, 30 days of insights, multiple environments, queue mode for scaling, version control using Git, forum support
Enterprise n8n Cloud or self-hosted Contact sales Custom workflow executions 200+ concurrent executions and the Enterprise rows in the comparison tables

The comparison tables on that page are labeled Starter / Pro / Enterprise. Several Business-only details therefore live on the Business card and in the FAQ, not in every table column.

Monthly list prices, and other execution tiers

The page’s pricing data (same official page, including the Monthly toggle and the execution-count dropdown) also listed these figures, which were not the default headline on the annual cards:

  • Starter: monthly list price 24€/month for the 2,500-execution tier. The annual commitment is 240€/year, which is the 20€/month billed annually figure (a 17% reduction versus 12 × 24€).
  • Pro: monthly list price 60€/month for the 10,000-execution tier; annual 600€/year (50€/month billed annually). The same official data also included a larger Pro option: 50,000 executions at 145€/month, or 1,450€/year.
  • Business: monthly list price 800€/month for the 40,000-execution tier; annual 8,000€/year, which the card rounds to 667€/month billed annually. The same official data included higher self-hosted Business tiers, for example 50k, 75k, 100k, 150k, 200k, 300k, 400k, and 500k executions, at higher euro amounts.

I did not open every dropdown row in a browser, so treat the extra tiers as present in the official page’s pricing data, and confirm the live dropdown before you buy. I am not inventing tiers that were not in that page source.

The official page does not publish a dollar-or-euro overage rate in the comparison table. The cell simply says “Capped” (Starter, Pro) or “Custom” (Enterprise). A FAQ about Business and Enterprise says that if you exceed your quota, workflows keep running, “but overage charges may apply if you do not upgrade to the next usage tier,” and that sales will reach out when you are close to the quota. I am not inventing an overage price.

What official docs say about Cloud vs self-host

n8n’s Choose how to use n8n page (opened 12 November 2026) splits the decision in two: Cloud or self-hosted, then which plan or edition.

It recommends n8n Cloud if you want to start right away, do not have technical expertise, or do not want to manage infrastructure. It recommends self-hosted if you need full control, have customized use cases, or have the infrastructure and technical resources. Both options, it says, can be used in production. Enterprise features are available as paid plans on both paths.

On cost, that doc says:

  • Cloud has a free trial.
  • Self-hosted Community edition is free, “with almost the complete feature set.”
  • Paid Business and Enterprise options exist for self-hosted.

Self-hosted editions / plans listed there:

Edition / plan Cost, as the doc states it Designed for, as the doc states it
Community Free Self-hosting with almost the complete feature set
Registered Community Free Community plus folders, debug in editor, and custom execution data, unlocked by registering your email
Business Paid (license key when you subscribe) Teams needing paid features like SSO, environments, and projects
Enterprise Paid (license key when you subscribe) Organizations needing the most advanced security, scaling, and governance

The same doc lists features that need a paid plan, including custom variables, environments, external secrets, external storage for binary data, log streaming (standard logging is included), multi-main mode (queue mode is included), projects, SSO (SAML, LDAP), workflow and credential sharing, and version control using Git. It tells you to treat the pricing page as the definitive source, because availability changes.

Community edition is free. A VPS is not.

The pricing page points to a standard self-hosted Community edition on GitHub. The software price is €0. You still pay for compute, storage, traffic, a domain, backups, and the time to install, update, and secure the box.

A companion guide, Best VPS for self-hosting n8n if you want the official 4 GB / 2 vCPU headroom, walks through official n8n sizing notes and public VPS list prices (DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Hostinger) as they stood on 12 November 2026. I am not repeating those VPS figures as a currency-converted “Cloud vs VPS winner” here. A Hetzner or Hostinger bill can be lower than Cloud Starter on those published euro and dollar amounts; that ignores maintenance time, failed upgrades, backups, and Cloud features you may actually need.

If you need SSO, Git-based version control, or other paid-only features, renting a VPS does not unlock them by itself. You would still be looking at Business or Enterprise.

Trial, Assistant credits, data location

From the official pricing FAQ and cards, opened 12 November 2026:

  • A Cloud free trial is described as 14 days of Pro-level features, with trial limits of 1,000 executions, 5 concurrent executions, a 180-second execution timeout, and 1 team project. It includes 800 Assistant credits plus 100 AI credits. No credit card is required for the n8n Cloud trial. A credit card is required for the Business plan free trial.
  • Assistant credits (Assistant is in preview): 1,600/month on Starter; 4,000 or 9,600 on Pro, “depending on your plan size.” Unused credits do not roll over. Extra credits can be purchased. On self-hosted n8n, Assistant is available in preview with your own key (BYOK), so no credit limits apply, according to that FAQ.
  • Hosted plan data is stored in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. Self-hosted data is wherever you host n8n.
  • A Startup plan offers 50% off Business for companies with under 20 employees, via a separate Startup page.

Who this is not for

  • Anyone who wants a single “executions per month” number from a blog and does not check the live official dropdown. Third-party posts have quoted monthly caps; as of this date the official page does publish them, and they can change with the dropdown.
  • Anyone who assumes Business is a Cloud plan. Officially, it is self-hosted only for now.
  • Anyone who assumes a cheap VPS plus free Community unlocks SSO or Git version control. Officially, those need a paid plan.
  • Anyone looking for a measured “Cloud is X% slower” or “self-hosting always saves Y€” claim. This page does not have those measurements.

FAQ

Does the official pricing page publish a monthly execution quota?
Yes, on the page I opened on 12 November 2026. The default card values were 2.5K (Starter), 10K (Pro), and 40K (Business) workflow executions with unlimited steps, and the cards include a dropdown to change the number of executions. Some third-party blogs already quoted 2,500 or 10,000; I am citing the official page, not those blogs.

If I exceed the quota, do workflows stop?
For Business and Enterprise, the official FAQ says workflows continue running, but overage charges may apply if you do not upgrade to the next usage tier. The comparison table labels Starter and Pro overage fees as “Capped” and Enterprise as “Custom.” I could not find a public euro amount for those overages on the page.

Is self-hosting always cheaper than n8n Cloud?
The Community software is free; the server is not. Compare the live pricing page, the live VPS list prices, and your own time. Do not treat a prepaid VPS promo rate as the long-term cost.

Can I use a Business license on more than one instance?
The official FAQ says you can apply the Business or Enterprise license key on an unlimited number of instances, and combined usage from all of them counts toward the quota. A license key must ping n8n’s license server daily to stay active, and that ping includes production execution counts.

Where should a non-expert start, according to n8n?
The official “Choose how to use n8n” page tells people who want to start immediately, or who do not have technical expertise, or who do not want to manage infrastructure, to use n8n Cloud.

What I will check when this page is refreshed

Around February 2027, or sooner if n8n changes the pricing page: whether the default 2.5K / 10K / 40K allowances and the 20€ / 50€ / 667€ annual card prices still hold, whether Business has arrived on Cloud, whether overage rates are published as euro amounts, and whether the Monthly toggle prices still match the 24€ / 60€ / 800€ figures in the page data.

Sources