n8n

Free

By AI Bookmarks Editorial Team, Directory editors Last reviewed 2026-10-23

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Workflow automation that combines visual nodes with real code, self-hostable and free at the core.

Quick facts

Pricing	Free
Free tier	Yes — self-hosted community edition is free
Platforms	Web, self-hosted, desktop
Developer	n8n
Website	https://n8n.io/

What n8n is

n8n is a workflow automation platform. You build automations as graphs of nodes — triggers, HTTP calls, database steps, model calls — and can drop into JavaScript or Python inside a node when the visual editor is not enough. That combination is why it appeals to technical teams: faster than writing a service from scratch, less constrained than a pure no-code tool. It runs in the cloud or self-hosted, and self-hosting is free under a fair-code licence, which matters when workflows handle internal data. It includes AI nodes and agent steps for LLM-based automation. The limits are operational: self-hosting means you own upgrades, backups and scaling, complex workflows become hard to read, and the node library is smaller than in mature automation platforms. Credentials are stored per node rather than in code, and workflows export as JSON for version control. Queue mode lets several workers share load when self-hosted.

Best for

Automations that need a few lines of real code
Teams that must keep workflow data on their own servers
Connecting internal systems with AI steps in between

Not ideal for

Non-technical users who want a fully managed service
Very large integration catalogues without custom work

Pros

Code nodes remove the limits of pure no-code
Self-hosting keeps data in-house and costs no licence
AI and agent nodes are built in

Cons

You own upgrades, backups and scaling when self-hosted
Complex graphs become hard to maintain
Smaller integration library than mature platforms

Pricing in detail

The self-hosted community edition is free under a fair-code licence, with cost limited to the server and maintenance. The cloud version is billed monthly or annually and scales by executions, active workflows and seats; enterprise self-hosting is licensed separately. Because cloud pricing counts executions, a workflow that polls frequently can consume a plan faster than one that runs on a schedule.