Clarification on execution-time limits for Starter Plan after Trial

Questions
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Hi n8n Team,

I’m evaluating n8n Cloud for a production workflow that:

  • Ingests large PDF files
  • Sends their content page by page to the OpenAI API for analysis
  • Performs post-processing before returning the results

During the 14-day trial I ran several real-world tests. Each execution lasted a little over three hours—almost all of that time was spent in the OpenAI node waiting for the API response—but every run completed successfully.

I am now ready to subscribe to the Starter Plan, yet the documentation states a “max execution time: 5 min” limit. Could you please clarify:

  1. Why were my >3-hour executions allowed during the trial?
  2. Will the same workflows continue to run end-to-end on the Starter Plan, or should I expect them to be terminated after five minutes?

Understanding how the timeout is applied in production will help me choose the most appropriate plan.

Thank you for your guidance.

B.

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: 1.100.1
  • Database: SQLite
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting default
  • Running n8n via n8n cloud
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