Activation Key has already been used on this instance

Questions
1

Hi,

I received a free license key from n8n to unlock premium features in the community edition. However, when I try to activate it in Settings > Usage & Plan, I get the error message “Activation Key has already been used on this instance”, and it does not allow me to activate it.

Details:

  • n8n installation: Self-hosted (Docker on Windows)
  • I have tried restarting n8n and re-entering the key, but it still doesn’t work.

Could you help me resolve this issue or provide a new valid license key?

Thanks in advance!

2

Could you on chrome/browser, open developer console / networking and when you submit the key, send the output logs, there may be another issue happening and its defaulting to that error.

Did you also happen to deploy the n8n instance from a pre-built image? You may have to start fresh.

3

Hi,

I installed n8n using Docker with the following command:

docker run -it --rm --name n8n
-p 5678:5678 -v ${HOME}/n8n:/home/node/.n8n
n8nio/n8n
I followed your instructions and checked the Network tab in the developer console while entering the license key. Here’s what I found:

:one: Network request when submitting the key:
{“code”:400,“message”:“Activation key has already been used on this instance”}

:two: Docker installation details:

I ran docker ps -a and confirmed that n8n is running as a container.
I used the official n8n Docker image (n8nio/n8n), not a pre-built modified image.
Would you recommend restarting the container, or is there another possible fix?

Thanks in advance!

4

I’d recommend using the provided docker compose file rather than a direct docker image. But I am unsure if that could be of any help for this.

5

It was not.
It still does not work

6

Are you still receiving the same error?