n8n self-hosted or cloud: costs, security and who maintains it

Edited by Solucom · 5 November 2026

n8n can be used in two ways: n8n Cloud, managed by the company that develops it, or installed on your own server (self-hosted). The version you install, the Community Edition, is free. The cloud starts at €20 a month billed annually.

Put like that it looks like an easy choice, but the licence price is the least important part. The real question is a different one: who takes care of the server, the updates and the backups, and what happens when something stops. We run n8n self-hosted, on our own server: here we lay out costs, risks and criteria for deciding.

The two options, with prices

n8n Cloud runs on n8n’s servers, in Europe (Frankfurt). Updates, backups and availability are their responsibility. You pay by executions, i.e. how many times a workflow starts and runs to the end, whatever the number of steps:

• Starter: €20 a month (annual), 2,500 executions a month, 5 concurrent executions;
• Pro: €50 a month (annual), 10,000 executions, up to 50 concurrent, admin roles and workflow history;
• Enterprise: priced on request.

n8n self-hosted runs on your own server, on-premises or in a private cloud:

• Community Edition: free, with unlimited executions. Registering an email address unlocks a few extra features, still free;
• Business: €667 a month (annual), self-hosted only, for companies with up to 100 employees working as a team;
• Enterprise: priced on request.

Prices are those published by n8n in October 2026: they change often, so check them again before deciding.

What self-hosting really costs

The Community Edition is free, but running it well is not. You need:

• a server, usually a VPS. Normal workloads need few resources: our n8n instance runs on a VPS with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM;
• a proper database. n8n uses SQLite by default, but in production you use PostgreSQL, which is required if you want to scale with queue mode;
• HTTPS and a domain, in front of n8n, with a reverse proxy;
• backups of the database and of the encryption key. Without that key the credentials stored in n8n can no longer be read: losing it means reconnecting every service by hand;
• updates on a regular basis. n8n releases new versions all the time, and some of them contain security fixes;
• monitoring, to notice straight away if the server or a workflow stops.

The server is cheap, from a few euros to a few tens of euros a month. The real cost is the hours of whoever maintains it. If nobody in the company does it, those hours become either a supplier or a risk.

Security: n8n holds the keys to everything

An n8n instance contains the access credentials for your CRM, email, invoicing, e-commerce and databases. It often also exposes public webhooks, i.e. addresses that anyone on the internet can call. It is one of the most sensitive systems a company can have.

In 2026 critical vulnerabilities were published, with the maximum score of 10 out of 10, that allowed code to be executed on the server (CVE-2026-21877 and CVE-2026-21858). n8n fixed them with updates. On the cloud n8n applies the updates; with self-hosting someone on your side has to apply them, quickly. Michele Rocco described a similar case in what happens when automation becomes a risk (Italian).

The minimum rules for a self-hosted instance:

• the editor accessible only to those who need it, with two-factor authentication;
• security updates applied within a few days of release;
• a server with the bare minimum exposed to the internet;
• encrypted backups, stored off the server, with a restore tested at least once.

What the free edition lacks

The Community Edition has almost all of n8n’s features. What is missing is mainly what you need for teamwork and company controls:

• sharing of workflows and credentials between users: only the instance owner and whoever created them can see them;
• projects, SSO (SAML, LDAP), environments for development and production, and version control with Git;
• log streaming to external systems, external secret stores and custom variables.

Queue mode for scaling across several workers is included, though. For one person or a small technical team the Community Edition is enough; when several departments build workflows and you need control over access, you look at the Business plan or the cloud.

Watch the licence. n8n is not open source in the strict sense: it is distributed under the Sustainable Use License. You can use and modify it for your own company’s internal processes, but not resell it as a service to others. An agency that wants to offer “n8n as a subscription” to its clients needs an agreement with n8n.

When to choose which

n8n Cloud is the right choice if:

• you have few workflows and low volumes, within the plan’s executions;
• nobody in the company can look after a server;
• you want to start straight away and pay a predictable fee.

Self-hosting is the right choice if:

• volumes are high: with unlimited executions the cost stays that of the server;
• the data must stay on your own infrastructure, by choice or by contract;
• you need custom nodes, scripts or direct access to the server;
• someone maintains it, internal or external, with clear response times.

If in doubt, you can start with the cloud and move later: workflows can be exported and re-imported. Credentials, on the other hand, have to be reconnected carefully, and any move is worth planning.

If you are still deciding what to automate, start there: we cover it in how to tell whether a process can be automated and in the n8n workflows that save hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: n8n pricing, comparison of the self-hosted editions, n8n licence, queue mode. Checked on 10 October 2026.

Do you have n8n on a server and nobody looking after it? We handle installation, updates, backups and monitoring, or we help you choose the cloud. See how we work on automations.