Self-hosting n8n or paying for Cloud: where the economics actually change

The Community edition does not include several features, among them projects, SSO, environments, external secrets, version control with Git and workflow sharing between users; they come with the paid Business and Enterprise plans. Registering a Community instance by email is free and adds folders, debug-in-editor and custom execution data.

• Backups. A complete backup is the .n8n folder (it holds the credential encryption key) plus your external database if you use one, plus any external storage. Without the encryption key a restored database cannot decrypt credentials. n8n recommends a full backup before every update.
• Updates. n8n recommends updating at least once a month and reading release notes for breaking changes. A test copy of your instance for trying updates uses Environments, which is a paid feature.
• Infrastructure and expertise. n8n's own comparison lists installation and maintenance as the self-hoster's responsibility, and Cloud as fully managed.

Self-hosting the Community edition costs no licence fee, so its monthly cost is whatever you spend on a server (with its database and backups) plus the value of the hours you spend keeping it healthy. Neither number is published by n8n and this page does not guess them. What the page does give you is a ceiling: if your own monthly total is below the plan price, self-hosting is cheaper on price alone; if it is above, it is not.

Example of the arithmetic only: with an assumed server of 40 and 4 hours a month at 50 an hour, the total is 240 a month, a figure that is your assumption, in your currency, not an n8n or hosting price. Put your own numbers into the calculator; it keeps them apart from the plan prices.

Cloud is priced up to 50,000 executions a month (Cloud Pro). Above that the published plans are the self-hosted Business licence sizes (75,000 to 500,000) and, beyond that, Enterprise by quote. At that volume self-hosting is not only a choice about money: it is the only published way to run more executions yourself, and a Business licence still needs your own server. Capacity of your own server then matters: n8n documents queue mode for scaling and has a page on measuring performance. The pages read do not say whether the Community edition includes queue mode (the pricing page lists it on the Business card), so check n8n's documentation before you plan around it. The Business card describes the plan as for companies with fewer than 100 employees and mentions a 50% Start-up Plan discount for companies under 20 employees; check eligibility on n8n's page.

For how n8n's executions compare with Make's credits and Zapier's tasks, see workflow automation pricing: credits, tasks and executions; a worked example is Make vs n8n: what 4,000 orders a month cost. The hosted plans are summarised on the n8n Cloud product page.

• Anyone who needs 10,000–50,000 executions and has no spare engineering hours: Cloud Pro 50K (€120/mo on annual billing) is the published Cloud answer, and it is cheaper than the Business licence before you add a server.
• Anyone who cannot spare the hours for updates and backup checks, or cannot afford to lose credentials if a backup lacks the encryption key.
• Teams that need projects, SSO or environments but do not want to pay for the Business plan: these are not in the Community edition.
• Anyone whose use falls outside the licence's internal-business-use terms.