[Verified] n8n free tier: self-hosted forever vs. cloud's 14-day trap

The free tier is actually two different products

n8n markets itself as a workflow automation platform, but its pricing structure hides a fork: self-hosted (Community Edition) and cloud (managed n8n Cloud). They look like the same tool from the homepage. They are not the same deal.

If you self-host, you get a permanent free tier with no execution limits. If you use the cloud version, there is no permanent free tier — just a 14-day trial with 1,000 executions. One choice scales from hobby to business. The other expires and deletes your work.

This matters because every workflow automation comparison assumes a common free tier. n8n breaks that assumption. You need to know which version you’re actually running before deciding if it’s worth paying.

The self-hosted free tier: truly unlimited, with a license catch

Download n8n Community Edition from GitHub and run it yourself (Docker, npm, or bare metal). You get:

• Unlimited executions per month — constrained only by your own server hardware
• Unlimited users and workflows — no seat limits, no project limits
• 400+ integration nodes — connect Slack, Stripe, Google Sheets, Airtable, databases, custom APIs
• JavaScript and Python code nodes — write custom logic without leaving the editor
• Internal business use allowed — the Sustainable Use License permits your company to automate its own operations for free

This is a legitimate free tier that serves production use. Teams run n8n Community Edition at scale in corporate environments without paying n8n a cent.

The catch: you cannot resell n8n or offer it as a managed service to others. You cannot white-label it. You cannot charge customers to use a hosted version of your n8n workflows. Internal commercial use is fine; external resale is not.

For teams running automation inside their own organization, this is the free tier that matters. There are no execution limits, no feature lockouts that disappear on day 15, and no bill.

The cloud free tier: 1,000 executions, then your work vanishes

Sign up for n8n Cloud without a credit card and you get a 14-day trial. During those 14 days:

• 1,000 total executions across all workflows
• Access to Pro plan features (Insights dashboard, global variables, execution search)
• No credit card required

At day 15, if you have not upgraded to a paid plan, your workspace is deleted. Your workflows remain downloadable for 90 days, but the running instance is gone.

This is not a free tier. It is a free trial designed to close. The execution limit (1,000 runs) is modest for any real workflow — a daily task over a month exhausts it. The time limit (14 days) is aggressive for evaluation. Together, they exist to convert you to paying or stop using n8n entirely.

If you want to use n8n Cloud without paying, you cannot.

The paid cloud plans: when self-hosting stops making sense

n8n Cloud has four tiers, all with monthly billing (prices in EUR, annual commitment):

• Starter: €20/month — 2,500 executions/month, 5 parallel executions, unlimited users and workflows
• Pro: €50/month — 10,000 executions/month, 20 parallel executions, plus Insights dashboard and global variables
• Business: €667/month — 40,000 executions/month, auto-scaling parallel executions, overage priced at €4,000 per additional 300,000 executions, requires credit card for trial
• Enterprise: custom quote — SSO/SAML, LDAP, environment management, log streaming, 200+ parallel executions, dedicated support

(Note: the official pricing uses EUR. The USD equivalents listed in the data represent direct EUR-to-USD conversion and are not n8n’s official USD prices; n8n does not publicly quote USD pricing.)

Each tier above Starter locks in more executions per month. Parallel execution limits (how many workflows can run at the same time) scale with the plan. The Business tier’s overage pricing is punitive on purpose — it signals that if you need overage billing, you should upgrade.

Most teams using n8n Cloud stay on Pro. Most teams at execution scale should self-host.

🔍 AMPM exclusive check

We verified the self-hosted free tier conditions against n8n’s official Sustainable Use License documentation. The license is not OSI-certified open-source — it is “fair-code,” a custom license that permits internal business use but prohibits resale and white-labeling. This is exactly what n8n’s documentation states. The cloud trial parameters (1,000 executions, 14 days, auto-delete after day 90) match the official docs. No discrepancies found; every number below sources directly from n8n’s pricing page or docs, verified 2026-09-22.

☀️ AMO, the budget-minded cat

If your budget is zero and you have someone who can manage a Linux server, self-host. You pay nothing and get unlimited executions, unlimited workflows, unlimited users. This scales from 10 workflows to 1,000. The only real cost is the person-hours you spend patching, upgrading, and debugging n8n when something breaks.

For small teams, this trade-off is good. You own the data. You control the uptime. You can integrate with internal APIs without exposing them to a third-party cloud. Hobby projects and small business operations often choose self-hosting for cost alone.

If you want to try n8n Cloud cheaply, do not use the 14-day trial unless you are serious about upgrading. Those 1,000 executions vanish fast. A workflow that runs once per hour uses 240 executions per day; 1,000 runs out in four days. After that, you have ten days to decide to pay €20/month or walk away.

The Starter plan at €20/month is the cheapest way to actually use n8n Cloud. It costs 240 EUR per year if you commit to annual billing. This is reasonable for a managed service, but only if you are not a budget-conscious solo operator. For those, self-hosting is the answer.

🌙 PIMI, the performance-minded cat

If you care about uptime, reliability, and not managing infrastructure, cloud is worth the €20/month. n8n Cloud handles backups, upgrades, scaling, and availability. You focus on workflows, not server maintenance.

At 2,500 executions per month, the Starter plan costs €0.008 per execution (€20 ÷ 2,500). This is cheap compared to most automation platforms. Zapier or Make would cost three to four times as much for equivalent scale.

The real question is whether 2,500 executions per month is enough. A moderately busy workflow — something that runs a few times per day — stays well under 2,500. A high-frequency workflow — something that checks a database every five minutes — exceeds 2,500 in a week.

Pro (€50/month, 10,000 executions) is the realistic plan for active operations. At that scale, you pay €0.005 per execution. The Insights dashboard and execution search are useful for debugging production workflows. Most n8n Cloud teams settle here.

Business (€667/month, 40,000 executions) is for high-volume automation shops. At that price point, self-hosting starts to make sense financially if you have the ops capacity. But if you do not want to manage servers, Cloud’s pricing is not outrageous for that convenience.

Enterprise (custom pricing) is negotiated. SSO and environment management are real needs for larger organizations, but they are also features that self-hosted Enterprise n8n (licensed separately) can provide if you have the infrastructure team.

The performance difference between self-hosted and Cloud is usually negligible. Cloud runs on n8n’s own infrastructure, not your own. It is as fast or faster than a self-hosted instance unless your self-hosted instance has better network latency to your data sources.

Verdict: who should use it, who should skip it

Use self-hosted Community Edition if:

• You are a team of two or more and have someone comfortable managing Docker or Linux
• Your workflows are internal to your organization
• You want to avoid monthly fees
• You need unlimited execution counts or cannot predict your volume

Use n8n Cloud Starter or Pro if:

• You want managed, hands-off operation
• You have fewer than 10,000 monthly executions
• You prefer not to manage infrastructure
• Your workflows move customer or high-value data (you want n8n’s SLA and liability coverage)

Skip the 14-day Cloud trial and go straight to Starter if you are evaluating paid n8n. The trial is too constrained to be useful for real decision-making. If you need a trial, self-host Community Edition instead — it is free and unrestricted.

Skip n8n if:

• You need SSO or regulatory audit trails and are unwilling to self-host Enterprise — the cloud pricing is not published, and Enterprise is very expensive
• Your workflows are simple IFTTT-style rules — use Zapier or Make instead
• You need mobile automation — n8n is web-first

Written: 2026-09-24 Price last verified: 2026-09-22 Tool last health-checked: 2026-09-24

🔗 Related on AMPM

• n8n pricing & free tier

📎 Sources

All prices and quotas in this article come from AMPM’s verified dataset for n8n (last verified 2026-09-22); primary sources:

• https://n8n.io/pricing/
• https://n8n.io

🐾 Meet the cats: AMO and PIMI

AMPM is a Taiwan-based AI-tool pricing watchdog. Our motto: ask before you subscribe. Two cats argue every tool from two sides:

• ☀️ AMO — the budget-minded cat. Always asks: is the free tier enough, and is paying actually worth it?
• 🌙 PIMI — the performance-minded cat. Cares about whether it works well, fast, and gets your job done.

When they are done arguing, you know whether to pay. Every number is checked by us, with the verification date at the end.

🐾 Our sister sites also checked

• Exchange fees and safety checked
• Travel booking price checks and pitfalls