Key findings
- Zapier bills each successful action as a task and Make bills each module operation as a credit, so a long workflow costs more on both than on n8n.
- Cloud Starter is €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions, and Pro is €50 for 10,000. Self-hosted Community is free for internal use, and Business is €667 a month billed annually for 40,000.
- Self-hosters report infrastructure from about US$6 a month on a small VPS, plus 1 to 2 hours of upkeep a month. One team runs millions of executions a year on a very small server.
- Starter caps a run at 5 minutes and 5 concurrent runs, and Pro at 40 minutes and up to 50.
- SSO, Git version control, and multiple environments start on the self-hosted Business plan, at €667 a month billed annually. Of the 11 public accounts GILD reviewed that discuss license limits or paid tiers, 10 raise them as a concern.
The execution fee is usually the smallest line in an n8n bill, so budget the server, the upkeep hours, and the paid key first. Each production run counts as one execution whatever its length, which keeps long workflows cheap. On Cloud, limits on run time and concurrency decide the plan, and a team that needs SSO or Git needs a Business key.
What each platform counts
A 28-node workflow running once counts as one n8n execution. Zapier counts each successful action as a task. Make counts each module operation as a credit, with error handlers and the Router free.
n8n does not count manual runs, sub-workflows, error workflows, or polls that return nothing new. A schedule every 5 minutes runs about 8,600 to 8,900 times a month, so polling intervals set the floor of a Cloud bill.
| Plan | Hosting | Monthly executions | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | n8n Cloud | 2,500 | €20 a month billed annually, €24 billed monthly |
| Pro | n8n Cloud | 10,000 | €50 a month billed annually, €60 billed monthly |
| Community | Self-hosted | No quota | Free, internal use only |
| Business | Self-hosted | 40,000 | €667 a month billed annually |
| Enterprise | Cloud or self-hosted | Custom | By quote |
n8n pricing page, checked October 12, 2026
Self-hosting moves the cost to servers and hours
Self-hosters report small infrastructure bills. Two builders run n8n on a US$6 a month VPS. After a year, one puts the saving against Zapier at US$320 to US$500, for 1 to 2 hours a month of updates, backups, and log checks. A team on Hacker News processes millions of runs a year on a very small server.
For some, the hours are the larger cost. Brian Christner went back to Zapier after self-hosting became a second job of updates and security, and 8 of the 11 public accounts that discuss self-hosting upkeep raise it as a concern.
Limits beyond executions
Cloud plans also cap run time and concurrency. Starter allows 5 minutes per execution and 5 concurrent runs, and Pro 40 minutes and up to 50, so a long nightly job can outgrow Starter before it runs out of executions.
The self-hosted Community edition has no execution quota. Every instance using a Business or Enterprise key counts toward one shared quota, reported to n8n's license server daily.
The paid key arrives with governance
Business starts at €667 monthly billed annually and includes SSO, Git source control, and environments. External secrets and log streaming require Enterprise. The Start-up Plan discounts Business by 50% for companies under 20 employees.
Teams rolling n8n out widely buy the higher tier for these controls. Stepstone moved to Enterprise in early 2025 for credential and workflow permissions and execution monitoring, according to n8n's case study. A former Enterprise customer found the price had risen sharply between quotes. Individual users hit the same gates. A cloud engineer called the price of a self-hosted Business license rough, and Cameron Eagans released an OIDC add-on to avoid what Eagans called an SSO tax.
Methodology
GILD read n8n's pricing page and documentation, and Zapier's and Make's help pages on task and credit counting, on October 12, 2026. Figures from users come from 74 public accounts published between January 9, 2025 and October 23, 2026, each in the author's own currency. Every cost figure is a vendor list price or a user's reported bill, linked in Sources, such as a US$6-a-month Hetzner VPS running one developer's self-hosted n8n for a year.
Products in this piece
Sources
- Official documentation
- 10
- Public source
- 7
- n8n pricing
- n8n docs: Understand executions
- n8n docs: Understand concurrency (Cloud)
- n8n docs: Compare editions
- n8n docs: Manage your license
- Zapier Help: How is task usage measured in Zapier?
- Zapier pricing
- Make Help Center: Credits
- Make pricing
- Aman Suryavanshi: Why I Chose n8n Over Zapier for Production Lead Automation (Apr 23, 2026)
- n8n Community: n8n vs Zapier, my honest cost breakdown after 1 year of self-hosting (Apr 11, 2026)
- Hacker News comment on millions of workflow runs a year on a small server (Oct 9, 2025)
- Brian Christner: Why Zapier Won My Time Back from n8n (Aug 12, 2025)
- n8n case study: How Stepstone moved from four early adopters to a 3,000-employee rollout
- n8n Community: Feedback on self-hosted pricing, a former Enterprise customer (Feb 9, 2025)
- Reddit r/n8n: My thoughts on n8n as a Cloud Engineer with 10+ years of experience (May 3, 2026)
- Cameron Eagans: Announcing n8n-oidc (Dec 29, 2025)