n8n Pricing 2026: Cloud, Enterprise, Self-Hosted
How n8n pricing works in 2026 — Cloud per-execution, Enterprise SSO, and the true cost of self-hosting at scale.
Key takeaways
- n8n Cloud bills per workflow execution, not per node — a 10–50x discount vs Zapier at scale.
- Self-hosted Community Edition is free for internal business use.
- Enterprise unlocks SSO, RBAC, external secrets, environments, and audit logs.
- True self-host cost: $20–$200/month VPS plus a few hours of ops per quarter.
n8n has three commercial tracks: Cloud (managed, per-execution), Enterprise (SSO, RBAC, support), and Community Edition (self-hosted, free forever). This guide breaks down the 2026 numbers, where the gotchas are, and how to choose without overpaying.
n8n Cloud tiers
Starter, Pro, and Business tiers vary by execution count, active workflows, and seats. The unit being billed is one workflow execution regardless of how many nodes it touches — a workflow with 50 nodes counts the same as one with 5.
Enterprise — what you're actually paying for
SAML/OIDC SSO, role-based access control, audit logs, external secret stores (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), source-controlled environments (dev/staging/prod with Git sync), and a real support SLA. If you're at a regulated company, Enterprise pays for itself in the first compliance audit.
Self-hosted true cost
Hardware: $20/month VPS handles low thousands of executions per day. Postgres: included on same box at small scale, or $15/month managed. Backups: $1/month S3-compatible. Ops time: ~2 hours per quarter for upgrades and reviews. For most teams under 1M executions/month, self-hosted is by far the cheapest path.
Frequently asked questions
- Is n8n Cloud cheaper than Zapier?
- Almost always at any meaningful scale, because n8n bills per execution and Zapier bills per task.
- Do I need Enterprise to use n8n at work?
- No. Community Edition and Cloud are both fine for internal use. Enterprise is for compliance, SSO, and large teams.