n8n Pricing in May 2026

n8n's pricing follows tiered structure: n8n Cloud Starter at $20/month for 2,500 workflow executions, Pro at $50/month for 10K executions, Enterprise custom-quote. Self-hosted n8n is genuinely free under fair-code license. Real-world n8n Cloud bills for managed deployment land at $50-300/month for early-stage; teams self-hosting pay only their infrastructure costs (often $20-100/month total).

The Free Self-Hosted offer is genuinely valuable — n8n self-hosted is feature-complete versus the cloud version. Eligibility is broad. The strategic decision: n8n's value is the open-source workflow automation platform with self-hostable model and node-based visual editor. For teams committed to self-hosted automation with technical-team focus, n8n is one of the most credible open-source alternatives to Zapier. The self-hosted option is the right time to validate whether n8n's specific approach matches your team's automation needs. For broader workflow automation, Zapier dominates non-technical user automation with broadest app catalog. Make (Integromat) targets visual workflow building with strong branching. Pipedream targets developer-friendly with code-first. Workato and Tray.io target enterprise integration. For specifically self-hosted workflow automation (n8n's distinctive position), Activepieces is the newer open-source alternative. Huginn is the much-older open-source automation tool. Windmill bundles workflows with internal tools and scripts. Apache NiFi targets data-pipeline automation. For specifically AI-powered workflow automation with LLM agents, n8n with AI nodes has become genuinely capable; Stack AI, Relevance AI, and dedicated AI workflow tools target this. For specifically embedded integrations (different use case), Nango, Paragon, and Merge.dev serve product-side integration. n8n has captured significant momentum in 2024-2026 as AI-workflow features have grown and self-hosting has become more attractive for cost-sensitive teams.