n8n Community Edition is free and unlimited on workflows and executions — self-hosting it costs whatever the VPS underneath costs, roughly $5-7/month on a budget provider. n8n's own Cloud plan starts around $24/month for a tier capped at a few thousand executions. Self-hosting is cheaper unless the administration work isn't worth it to you.
Key takeaways
- n8n the software costs nothing to self-host. The Community Edition is open source with no license fee and no cap on workflows or executions — every dollar spent is for infrastructure, not the software.
- A budget VPS is enough for most individual or small-team use — commonly cited specs are 2 vCPU/8GB RAM for comfortable headroom, at roughly $6-7/month on a budget provider.
- n8n Cloud starts at roughly $24/month for a capped execution tier — several times the self-hosted VPS cost, for not having to manage a server.
- One-click Docker templates remove most of the setup friction some hosts now offer n8n as a pre-built VPS application template, so "self-hosted" doesn't necessarily mean manual server configuration from scratch.
- The real trade-off is time, not money. Self-hosting is cheaper in every realistic scenario here; the ongoing server administration is worth it mainly if you're already doing that work for something else.
What you're actually paying for
"Self-hosted n8n" is a slightly misleading phrase, because n8n itself has no price — what has a price is the server. On a budget VPS, n8n commonly runs as a one-click Docker template, so the entire "self-hosting" step is picking a server and deploying a pre-built image, not writing configuration from scratch.
| Option | Monthly cost | Execution cap | Administration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted, budget VPS | ~$5-7 | None | Yours |
| n8n Cloud, entry tier | ~$24 | A few thousand/mo | Handled for you |
The gap is roughly 4-5× in n8n Cloud's favour for cost, in the opposite direction — the self-hosted VPS is the cheaper option by a wide margin, and has no execution ceiling to run into. What n8n Cloud buys instead is zero server administration: no OS patching, no Docker updates, no monitoring the process stays up.
Bar length = monthly cost, scaled to n8n Cloud's $24. Sourced October 2026.
Documented vs. inferred vs. unsupported
| Claim | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| n8n Community Edition is free, open source, with no workflow or execution cap | Documented | Stated directly in n8n's own licensing and product documentation |
| n8n Cloud's entry tier starts around $24/month with an execution cap in the low thousands | Inferred | Cited consistently across third-party comparison articles checked October 2026, not independently confirmed against n8n's own live pricing page in this pass |
| A $5-7/month budget VPS is sufficient for self-hosting n8n | Inferred | Matches commonly recommended specs for light-to-moderate individual or small-team workflow volume — heavier concurrent automation may need a larger tier |
| Self-hosting is always the right choice over n8n Cloud | Unsupported | Depends entirely on whether the administration time is worth the price difference for a given person or team — not a universal answer |
Which one to pick
- Already running a VPS for something else: self-host — the marginal cost of adding n8n to an existing server is close to zero.
- No server experience and don't want any: n8n Cloud's higher price buys you out of that administration work entirely.
- High or unpredictable execution volume: self-hosting removes the execution cap that would otherwise force an upgrade on n8n Cloud.
- Want the one-click convenience without configuring Docker yourself: Hostinger's VPS application catalog includes n8n as a one-click template at the same VPS price.