Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links; if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It was produced with AI assistance and human review — see How We Work.
What n8n Cloud Costs in 2026 — and When Self-Hosting Beats It
n8n’s cloud plans are priced by executions — one complete workflow run counts once, regardless of how many steps it contains. As of mid-2026 the lineup is: Starter at $28/month (2,500 executions), Pro at $70/month (10,000 executions), and a Business tier (~$930/month, 40,000 executions) that sits below custom-priced Enterprise. Every cloud plan includes unlimited active workflows and unlimited users; only execution volume moves your bill. Annual billing saves roughly 17%.
The self-hosting math
The Community Edition is free software with unlimited executions — you pay only for a server. Managed hosts run n8n for around $4–7/month; a raw VPS is $5–15/month with a bit of admin work. That makes the break-even against cloud simple:
| Your monthly executions | n8n Cloud | Self-hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2,500 | Starter $28 | ~$5–15 (server only) |
| 2,500–10,000 | Pro $70 | ~$5–20 (bigger server) |
| 10,000+ | Business ~$930 | still ~$20–40 |
Note: n8n lists its cloud prices in euros; dollar figures are conversions at the August 31, 2026 rate (€1 ≈ $1.16) and may drift from n8n’s checkout price.
Self-hosting wins on cost at almost every real-world volume. What you give up: n8n handles updates, backups, and uptime on cloud; self-hosted, those are your job. If an automation silently failing at 2am would cost you real money, factor that labor in.
What we’d do
Start cloud Starter for a month and count your actual executions — most people overestimate. If you’re under ~1,000 runs/month and comfortable with a VPS, self-host and redirect the savings to LLM API costs, which will usually dwarf your orchestration bill anyway. If your workflows are business-critical, stay on cloud until you’ve built ops discipline.
Sources
- n8n Pricing 2026 Guide — tier lineup and annual discount, citing n8n’s pricing page
- InstaPods: n8n Cloud vs Self-Hosted Costs (2026) — unlimited workflows/users on all cloud plans
- TechJack: n8n pricing guide — vendor-reported figures verified 2026-06-09
- Goodspeed Studio: n8n pricing 2026 — Business tier and startup discount
Verified August 2026. n8n prices in euros; US customers pay the dollar equivalent. Confirm current rates on n8n.io before purchase.


