n8n vs OpenClaw: Drawn Workflows or an Agent You Message

The short answer: if a marketing team needs the same process to run up to 2,500 times a month and leave a record anyone can open, n8n fits: Starter costs $24 a month on monthly billing for 2,500 executions, checked on 26 October 2026 on n8n's pricing page. If one person wants an assistant to message from WhatsApp or Slack that triages an inbox, drafts and researches, OpenClaw is free, open source and runs on your own computer; what it costs to run is the model account you connect (OpenClaw, API usage and costs).

Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.

OpenClaw here means the open-source personal AI assistant at openclaw.ai, stewarded by the OpenClaw Foundation, a US 501(c)(3) that keeps it MIT licensed with no paid edition (OpenClaw). What it changes is where the work starts. You do not draw a flow and wait for a trigger: you send a message on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Signal or iMessage, and the agent browses, fills forms, reads files and runs commands on the machine it lives on, remembering your projects between conversations. The job it wins is personal: one inbox, one calendar, one research question. n8n starts from the other end, as the platform for agents and workflows you can follow, where any step can be opened and explained to whoever runs it next (n8n).

Three checks on your own week first:

1. Price the runs, then the model. For example, a lead-routing flow that fires 80 times a working day for 22 days is 80 x 22 = 1,760 executions, inside Starter's 2,500 at $24 a month (n8n pricing). OpenClaw has no plan to buy; its cost page names the model provider behind every reply and tool call as the main source of spend (API usage and costs).
2. Start from where requests arrive today. Requests from a form, a CRM or a webhook fit an n8n trigger. Requests from you, typed into a chat app between meetings, fit OpenClaw.
3. Decide where the evidence will sit. n8n lists every production run, with 7 days of logs on Starter and 30 on Pro (n8n pricing). OpenClaw's Control UI totals tokens and estimated cost by provider, model and channel from local session history (API usage and costs). Choose the record your team will open when something breaks.

The two on paper

Where the two part company

A process, or a person

n8n runs the same path every time its trigger fires, and its AI Agent node chooses only among the tools you attach, at least one of which is required (AI Agent node). OpenClaw starts from a conversation and works out the steps as it goes; its docs spell out the cost, since without the Lobster tool daily email triage is a back-and-forth with no memory of what was already triaged (Lobster). A process wants a canvas. A person wants a chat.

Whose machine carries the risk

OpenClaw's security guide assumes one trusted boundary per gateway: a single operator, or a team whose members trust each other, never users who distrust each other sharing one agent (security). The same page notes that agents with message-tool access can send across conversations and channel providers by default. n8n Cloud stores hosted data in Frankfurt, and a self-hosted instance keeps it wherever you run it (pricing FAQ).

Who pays for the thinking

n8n meters runs, not tokens: a run of 30 steps counts the same as a run of 3, and manual test runs and error workflows are not counted (executions). OpenClaw sends every reply and tool call to the provider you configured, and /usage full adds an estimated cost to each reply when local pricing is set (API usage and costs).

One agent step, stopped before it sends

The job: every weekday at 8:00, triage the shared partnerships inbox and draft answers to new requests. On OpenClaw, an automation wakes the agent on schedule (automation) and a Lobster pipeline runs the triage as one call, ending at a checkpoint such as "Send 2 draft replies?" with a resume token, so nothing leaves until a person approves (Lobster). On n8n the same job is a Schedule Trigger, a Gmail read and an AI Agent node whose send tool sits behind human review in Slack, where the reviewer sees the tool and its parameters before approving (human review).

What each costs, checked on 26 October 2026

n8n, from its pricing page, where annual billing is marked as a 17% saving and its yearly figures appeared in US dollars on some loads and in euros on others:

OpenClaw publishes no price at all: no subscription, no hosted tier, no paid version (OpenClaw, checked on 26 October 2026). You pay the model provider, through a subscription login or API usage.

n8n's own FAQ answers why a self-hosted Business customer, who runs the servers, still pays per execution: the price follows the value automation brings you, not what it costs n8n to run (pricing FAQ). That is a defensible way to sell software, and it means the meter climbs as your flows succeed. Size the tier from a month of the executions list, not from the plan cards.

Choose n8n if your job is

• A repeatable process started by a form, a CRM change or a schedule, run hundreds or thousands of times a month.
• Something a colleague must be able to open, read and repair without you.
• A flow with one AI decision inside it and a person's approval before anything leaves.

Choose OpenClaw if your job is

• Your own inbox, calendar and research, handled from the chat app on your phone.
• Trying agents at no software cost, on a machine you control.
• Work that changes daily and would never repay the effort of drawing a workflow.

Free on both before any card

OpenClaw starts with npx openclaw@latest, and onboarding reuses a Claude Code or Codex login you already hold (getting started). n8n's self-hosted Community Edition is free, and a Cloud trial runs 14 days with 1,000 executions and no card (choose n8n, pricing FAQ). Run the inbox job on OpenClaw for a week with the checkpoint on, and the lead-routing job on n8n with its executions list open, before paying for either.

Once agents are live, the harder question is which marketing jobs belong to an agent and who signs each off; that design work is what my agentic marketing service is for, and I sell it.

FAQ

Does OpenClaw replace n8n for a marketing team?

Rarely. OpenClaw assumes one trusted operator per gateway, and its webhooks and Lobster workflows stay off until you enable them (security, inbound webhooks, Lobster). n8n is built around the shared process and its run history.

Can n8n and OpenClaw work together?

Neither documents a ready-made connector to the other. OpenClaw's inbound webhooks let an external service wake an agent with a dedicated bearer token (inbound webhooks), and every n8n plan includes custom HTTP requests (pricing). An n8n workflow can call that endpoint, as glue you build and test yourself.

What does OpenClaw cost to run?

The software costs nothing. The spend is the model behind each reply and tool call, plus any paid APIs that skills or media features use, which the cost page maps feature by feature.