n8n is the workflow automation tool people reach for when Zapier's per-task pricing starts to hurt. It connects hundreds of apps with a visual editor, and it ships in two forms: n8n Cloud, a hosted service starting at 20 euros a month for 2,500 executions, and a free Community Edition you can run on your own server with unlimited workflows and unlimited executions. The software is free either way. The question is what the server costs and whether the maintenance is worth it.

The cheapest honest setup is Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier, where a 2-core Arm instance with 12 GB of RAM runs n8n comfortably at $0 a month. The next cheapest is any small VPS: a $5 to $7 box with 1 to 2 GB of RAM handles light use, and a $12 box with 2 GB is the comfortable choice for daily team use. Measured tests show the full stack using under 500 MB of RAM for light workloads and about 1.1 GB under a 3,000-execution load test. For files, AI agents, and many parallel runs, budget 4 GB or more and add PostgreSQL instead of the default SQLite database.

The install is a Docker Compose file with two services: n8n itself and Caddy, a small web server that fetches a free HTTPS certificate and renews it automatically. The whole setup takes two to four hours the first time, including the domain and DNS, and about thirty minutes once you have done it before. Use PostgreSQL from the start if you plan to run more than a handful of workflows, because migrating from SQLite later is an avoidable chore. Keep the webhook URL and the editor on the same domain with HTTPS, because some integrations refuse plain HTTP callbacks.

The cost math is straightforward. n8n Cloud Starter costs 20 euros a month for 2,500 executions and 50 euros for 10,000. A self-hosted setup on a $6 VPS costs $72 a year with no execution cap, and on Oracle's free tier it costs nothing. A team running automations daily can burn through 2,500 executions in a week, which makes the Cloud Starter plan a false economy at volume. The break-even point is low: if you run more than a few thousand executions a month, self-hosting saves $200 to $700 a year.

The hidden cost is your time. Self-hosting means you own updates, backups, security, and the 3 a.m. moment when a webhook stops responding. Budget two hours a month for maintenance and a monthly backup of the database and the workflow definitions. Managed n8n hosting splits the difference at around $5 to $15 a month with unlimited executions and no server to patch, which is the right choice if you want the savings without the sysadmin work.

The decision rule is simple. Use n8n Cloud if you want zero maintenance and your execution count fits the plan. Use managed hosting if you want unlimited executions without managing a server. Self-host if you run real volume, you already manage a VPS, or your data must stay on your own infrastructure. Whichever route you take, the free Community Edition means the software never holds your automations hostage to a subscription.

Backing up n8n is a two-part job that people often do halfway. The workflows themselves live in the database, so a database backup covers them, but the credentials are encrypted with a key stored in an environment variable, and without that key a restored database is useless. Save the encryption key in your password manager the day you install n8n, and export the workflows as JSON once a month as a second copy. A backup you cannot restore is not a backup, and the encryption key is the part most people discover missing at the worst possible moment.