What Is n8n? Workflows and AI Agents Billed per Run
By Joris van Huët · n8n's own site
The short answer: If your workflows have many steps but run a few thousand times a month, n8n charges one execution per complete run however long the run is, and Starter costs $24 a month on monthly billing for 2,500 executions, checked on 24 October 2026 on its pricing page. It is a workflow and AI agent builder you can rent as n8n Cloud or run on your own servers, with a free Community Edition for the second route.
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Three checks before choosing a plan:
- Count runs, not steps. Only production executions count: a webhook counts one per inbound request, a schedule one per firing, while manual test runs and error workflows are free (executions docs). The pricing FAQ adds that a workflow every 5 minutes is about 8,600 to 8,900 executions a month, already more than Starter's 2,500.
- Decide who runs the servers. If your team already keeps Docker hosts patched, the self-hosted Community Edition is free with almost the whole feature set; if nobody does, Cloud is the safer default (choose n8n).
- Know where the evidence will be. Every run lands in the executions list, and Starter keeps logs for 7 days against 30 on Pro (pricing page).
What n8n does
A workflow is a canvas of nodes: 500+ native integrations, an HTTP node for any other API, and MCP for agents and coding assistants (n8n). The AI Agent node connects a chat model and at least one tool and decides which tool to call (AI Agent node). Any tool can be put behind human review, so the workflow pauses until someone approves or denies the call in Slack, Teams, Gmail, Telegram or the n8n chat (human-in-the-loop). Hosted plans store data in Frankfurt, Germany, according to the pricing FAQ.
Who it suits
It suits a marketing operations lead or a technical founder who is comfortable with expressions and JSON, or has a developer nearby, and wants long workflows with branching, code steps and agents at a predictable price. It suits less well a team that wants SSO and shared environments without running servers: the Business plan, which adds SSO and Git version control, is self-hosted only for now (pricing page).
Plans and prices
Per month, checked on 24 October 2026 on the n8n pricing page. All plans include unlimited users and workflows.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly, per month | Executions a month | Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $24 | $20 | 2,500 | Cloud |
| Pro | $60 | $50 | 10,000 | Cloud |
| Business | $960 | $800 | 40,000 | Self-hosted |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Contact sales | Custom | Either |
The Cloud trial includes 1,000 executions without a credit card, and Business overage is 4,000 EUR per extra 300,000 executions, per the same page. Starter also caps a single run at 5 minutes, against 40 on Pro.
The pricing page is written to sell Pro's concurrency and evaluations. The tier you need is the one whose limits you hit: executions, the 5-minute run cap, or log retention.
How it compares
- Make charges a credit each time a module runs (Make operations). For example, a trigger and 19 modules is 20 credits per run there, and one execution on n8n.
- Zapier also counts every step in tasks, with Professional from $29.99 a month billed monthly, checked on 24 October 2026; it offers a free plan where n8n Cloud offers a trial.
- Albato charges a transaction per step after the trigger, with a permanent free plan of 100 transactions (Albato pricing).
Getting started
Start a Cloud trial, build one workflow, and read the executions list before paying. How to use n8n builds a demo-request responder with an AI agent and a Slack approval step.
FAQ
Is n8n free?
The self-hosted Community Edition is free, published on GitHub; the Cloud plans are paid after the trial (pricing page, choose n8n).
Do test runs use my executions?
No. Manual runs from the editor, sub-workflow calls and error workflows do not count toward the quota (executions docs).
What happens if a Business plan goes over quota?
Workflows keep running; n8n's sales team gets in contact, and overages are invoiced 45 days after they occur if there is no upgrade (pricing page).