Self-hosted n8n has no license fee, so the monthly cost is the server, backups and your time. Published list prices in October 2026 put a small instance at about $6.49 to $14 a month and a production stack with Postgres and a worker at about $9 to $29 on a VPS, before upkeep hours. n8n Cloud Starter (€20 a month billed annually) is often cheaper for small workloads once your time counts.
Self-hosted n8n pricing is the cost of the server plus your time, because the Community Edition itself is free: in October 2026 a small instance lists at roughly $6.49 to $14 a month and a production stack with Postgres and a queue worker at roughly $9 to $29 a month on common VPS plans. Backups, renewals after introductory deals, and the hours you spend on updates are what turn "free" into a real monthly number.
Prices are list prices checked October 2026 on DigitalOcean Droplet pricing, Hostinger VPS pricing, Railway pricing and n8n pricing, with license terms from n8n's license FAQ and edition comparison. They exclude tax and change often; check before you buy.
This page is the cost sheet behind our n8n Cloud vs self-hosted decision guide. For the wider picture of what to run once you are set up, see our n8n hub with workflow templates.
Findings at a glance
- The license is free; the work is not. The Community Edition has no fee and no execution cap. Queue mode is included; SSO, environments, Git version control, projects and external secrets are not.
- Small instances cost about the same as Cloud Starter. A $12 droplet with weekly backups is $14.40 before your time; Starter is €20 billed annually and needs no time.
- Introductory VPS prices roughly double at renewal. Hostinger's KVM 1 lists at $6.49 a month introductory and $11.99 on renewal; KVM 4 goes from $12.99 to $28.99.
- Backups are a line item. DigitalOcean charges 20% of the droplet price for weekly backups and 30% for daily; Hostinger includes free weekly backups.
- Upkeep is the largest variable. n8n recommends updating at least monthly, and a full backup needs both the database and the encryption key folder.
Method
We did not benchmark servers for this page. It is a desk study of published prices: we took the list price of each provider's plan that matches three workload sizes, added the provider's published backup cost, and compared them with n8n's Cloud and license prices. Workload sizes follow n8n's own guidance: its Hetzner guide says its CPX11 server type is enough for most usage levels of a single n8n container, and its Docker Compose guide asks for 4 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs once you add the sandbox for n8n Assistant. We sized the queue-mode stack at 4 GB or more ourselves, because it runs seven containers.
Hetzner, the provider n8n documents first, is not in the figures: its pricing pages load prices in the browser and we could not capture a list price to cite. Check Hetzner Cloud yourself; it belongs in any shortlist for European hosting.
n8n VPS cost: the monthly cost sheet
| Workload | DigitalOcean Basic | DigitalOcean price | Hostinger VPS | Railway |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small: 1 n8n container, SQLite or Postgres | 2 GiB / 1 vCPU | $12.00 + $2.40 weekly backups | KVM 1 (4 GB / 1 vCPU): $6.49 intro, $11.99 renewal | Usage-billed; e.g. 1 GB RAM + 0.2 vCPU average ≈ $14 (illustrative) |
| Medium: Postgres, Redis, 1 worker, runners, proxy | 4 GiB / 2 vCPU | $24.00 + $4.80 weekly backups | KVM 2 (8 GB / 2 vCPU): $8.99 intro, $14.99 renewal | Grows with each always-on service; price your own usage |
| Large: several workers, heavy AI or file workflows | 8 GiB / 4 vCPU | $48.00 + $9.60 weekly backups | KVM 4 (16 GB / 4 vCPU): $12.99 intro, $28.99 renewal | Pro plan ($20) once you need more than Hobby limits |
Sources, all checked October 2026: DigitalOcean (Basic droplets; weekly backups at 20% of the droplet price), Hostinger (introductory monthly price on a prepaid term, then the stated renewal price; free weekly backups included), Railway (Hobby is $5 a month including $5 of usage; memory is about $10 per GB a month, CPU about $20 per vCPU a month and volumes $0.15 per GB a month, billed per second). The Railway figure is an illustrative input, not a measurement: your bill depends on what n8n actually uses.
Droplet list price plus 20% for weekly backups. Source: digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets, checked October 2026
Introductory prices apply to a prepaid term; budget on the renewal price. Source: hostinger.com/vps-hosting, checked October 2026
Which provider fits which owner
The three providers price in different ways, and the way they price matters as much as the number. Everything below comes from the same pricing pages, checked October 2026.
- DigitalOcean: predictable, priced per resource. Basic droplets have fixed monthly prices, and since January 1, 2026 they bill per second with a 60-second minimum, so a test server you delete after an afternoon costs cents. Bandwidth is included from 500 GiB a month on the smallest plan. Backups are the add-on to budget for: 20% of the droplet price for weekly, 30% for daily. n8n's hosting docs include a DigitalOcean guide and describe it as suited to small and medium deployments.
- Hostinger: the most RAM per dollar, if you commit. KVM 1 includes 4 GB RAM, 50 GB of NVMe disk and 4 TB of bandwidth; KVM 2 doubles that. Weekly backups and manual snapshots are included. The catch is the term: the low monthly price is introductory, so the number to plan around is the renewal price, which is roughly double on KVM 1 and KVM 2 and more than double on KVM 4.
- Railway: pay for what n8n uses, within plan limits. Railway bills memory, CPU and disk per second, so an instance that idles most of the day can cost little. Check the limits before you commit: the Free plan caps services at 0.5 GB of memory, and Hobby caps volumes at 5 GB, which an n8n Postgres database with saved executions and binary data can outgrow. Pro raises the volume cap to 1,000 GB for a $20 monthly fee that includes $20 of usage.
A fair rule of thumb: pick DigitalOcean if you want monthly billing and nothing to renegotiate, Hostinger if you are happy to prepay for the most memory, and Railway if your usage is light and you prefer a platform to a server. Whichever you pick, the setup is the same Docker Compose stack.
How much does it cost to self-host n8n, all in?
The server is the visible part. The full monthly cost has four lines, and only the first two appear on an invoice:
- Server: from the table above.
- Backups: the provider's backup add-on, plus somewhere off the server to keep copies.
- Upkeep time: updates, backup checks, log reviews and fixing what an upgrade breaks, at your hourly value.
- Licenses you still need: only if your team needs SSO, environments or other paid features.
Two things are not on this list because they cost the same either way. Model API calls inside AI nodes are billed by OpenAI, Anthropic or Google whether n8n runs on your server or in n8n Cloud; our LLM API pricing comparison covers that bill. And your domain name, which you need for HTTPS either way.
Self-hosted vs n8n Cloud pricing
| Option | Price (checked October 2026) | Volume | Who runs it |
|---|---|---|---|
| n8n Cloud Starter | €20 a month billed annually | 2,500 executions, 5 concurrent | n8n runs everything |
| n8n Cloud Pro | €50 a month billed annually | 10,000 executions, up to 50 concurrent | n8n runs everything |
| Community Edition, self-hosted | €0 license | No execution cap | You run the server |
| Business license, self-hosted | €667 a month billed annually | Annual quota; overage billed per 300,000 executions | You run the server; adds SSO, Git, environments |
From the n8n pricing page. Annual billing saves 17%, and prices are in euros. Execution quotas for Starter and Pro are confirmed in n8n's help center. Business is a license key for your own instance, not a hosted plan, and its overage is billed at €4,000 per extra bucket of 300,000 executions. Our n8n pricing guide explains which runs count as executions, which is what decides your Cloud tier.
- You run well over 10,000 executions a month
- Someone already maintains Linux servers
- You want no execution cap or concurrency limit
- Data has to stay on infrastructure you control
- You fit Starter or Pro 10k comfortably
- Nobody on the team wants to own a server
- An outage you notice late would cost you clients
- Your hourly value is high relative to the plan gap
The hidden costs most cost posts skip
- A tested restore, not just a backup: database plus the .n8n folder with the encryption key
- Monthly n8n updates, as n8n recommends, and reading release notes for breaking changes
- Major upgrades such as n8n 3.0, scheduled for October 2026, which removes legacy nodes
- Postgres major version upgrades, which need a dump and restore rather than a tag change
- Uptime monitoring and an error workflow, so you hear about failures before clients do
- Security: firewall, HTTPS, owner account, two-factor authentication, community node review
- Paid features you may still need: SSO, environments, external storage, log streaming
- Day 1Install and secure
Server, Docker, HTTPS, owner account, backups scheduled.
- WeeklyGlance at backups and logs
Confirm the nightly backup ran and nothing is failing quietly.
- MonthlyUpdate n8n
Back up, read release notes, change the version, pull and restart.
- QuarterlyTest a restore
Restore to a spare server and log in.
- Major releasesPlan the upgrade
Check the migration report and breaking-changes page first.
Source: n8n update and backup docs, checked October 2026
None of this is hard, but it is regular. Our n8n Docker Compose setup guide includes a nightly backup script that covers the database, the n8n volume and the encryption key, which removes most of the weekly work. If you are building automations to sell rather than to run your own business, our AI SaaS Builder program covers turning them into a product, and the license section below matters to you.
What the free license does and does not cover
n8n's license FAQ says that if workflows are only created or modified by you or people in your organization, you can use the Community license for free. It allows running your business on it, building automations for clients on your own instance as long as they cannot create or edit them, and charging for setup, maintenance, training and consulting. It does not allow hosting n8n as a service where clients build workflows, letting end users configure workflows through your product, forking it into your own automation product, or white-labelling it. Those need a commercial agreement, which is a cost no VPS table shows.
Limitations of these numbers
- They are list prices, not invoices: tax, currency, regional pricing and promotions change what you pay.
- Hostinger's introductory prices depend on a prepaid term; we used the stated introductory and renewal prices only.
- Railway bills actual usage, so any Railway figure without your own usage data is an estimate.
- Server sizes for the medium and large tiers are our recommendation, not an n8n requirement.
- Hetzner is missing because we could not capture a citable list price; that is a gap, not a verdict.
Self-hosted n8n pricing: FAQ
Is self-hosted n8n free?
The software is. The Community Edition has no license fee and no execution limit under n8n's Sustainable Use License, which covers internal business, personal and non-commercial use. What you pay for is the server, backups and your own time. Paid features such as SSO, Git version control, environments, projects and external secrets need a Business or Enterprise license even on your own server.
How much does it cost to self-host n8n per month?
For a small instance, published list prices in October 2026 put the server at roughly $6.49 to $12 a month (a Hostinger KVM 1 introductory price, or a 2 GiB DigitalOcean droplet), plus backups. A production stack with Postgres and a queue worker on a 4 to 8 GB plan lists at about $9 to $29 a month depending on provider and term, and more if you size up to 8 GB on DigitalOcean. Add the hours you spend on updates and backups.
What is the cheapest way to host n8n?
On list price alone, a long-term introductory VPS deal or a small droplet is cheapest. Railway can cost less for a lightly used instance because it bills per second for the memory and CPU you use, with $5 of usage included on Hobby. The cheapest option on paper often stops being cheapest at renewal, so compare renewal rates, not first-term promotions.
When is n8n Cloud cheaper than self-hosting?
When your volume fits a small Cloud plan and your time is worth more than the gap. Checked October 2026, Cloud Starter is €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions and Pro is €50 for 10,000. A $12 server plus one hour of upkeep a month at any reasonable rate already lands near Starter, so self-hosting pays off mainly at higher volume or when you need no execution cap.
Do I need the n8n Business plan to self-host?
No. The Community Edition runs without a license key and includes queue mode. The Business plan, €667 a month billed annually when checked in October 2026, is a license key you add to your own instance to unlock SSO, LDAP, multiple environments and Git version control. If your team needs those, compare Cloud Pro or Enterprise against Business plus hosting, not against free.
What hidden costs come with self-hosting n8n?
Backups and a tested restore, monitoring, security patches, monthly n8n updates with occasional breaking changes, and downtime you have to notice yourself. Model API calls inside AI nodes are billed by the model provider whichever way you host. Paid features you still need, such as external storage for binary data, require a license. Most of these costs are hours, not dollars.
Host it cheaply. Then make it earn.
AI SaaS Builder, included in All Access, covers n8n automations, AI agents and shipping a paid AI product, with the other three programs, live coaching and the private community in one subscription.
Pricing out an n8n server?
Ask in the free Discord, where members compare hosting setups and share n8n workflows, or follow our Docker Compose guide to set one up.