Do I need an enterprise License? My use case details

Questions
1

Hi Community,

I’m seriously considering implementing n8n at the company I work for, as I believe it could take our processes to a whole new level. I’m absolutely in love with n8n! Huge congratulations to everyone on the team who’s been developing and supporting it—it’s truly amazing work!

However, after reviewing the licensing terms, I have a feeling we might need an Enterprise license for the way we intend to use it.

We’re a small MSP, and my goal is to use n8n to build automations not just within our internal environment, but also in ways that interact with our clients’ systems. For example, when we receive a request through our PSA system to create a new Microsoft 365 user, n8n would automatically trigger the corresponding workflow. Initially, this would involve connecting with 2–4 client environments.

Since these automations would interact directly with our clients’ infrastructure, I’m concerned that using the community version might violate the license terms. I could be wrong, so I’d really appreciate it if someone from the sales team could clarify what’s permitted in this scenario.

In the future, we might explore deploying n8n directly within our clients’ environments, especially since many of them have technical teams who would likely appreciate and benefit from the tool. That would be a different setup from our current plan. In that scenario, while the n8n instance would live inside the client’s infrastructure, certain workflows could still be triggered remotely from our own centralized system or environment. In this case—where we’re initiating workflows on a client’s self-hosted n8n instance from our system—would that still be compliant with the community license, or would it also require an Enterprise license due to the cross-organization interaction?

I submitted the online form to reach out to the sales team last week, but I haven’t heard back yet—so I’m following up here in case this channel is more active.

I also noticed that the Enterprise license appears to start at €10,000, which may unfortunately be beyond our budget—but I’d love to confirm the details before making any decisions.

Thanks in advance!

2

I don’t represent n8n, but have spent some time with the community edition and have seen some answers about what licenses are required for what types of uses. Until you get an official answer, I can give you another user’s perspective.

Nothing you described sounds like something that you couldn’t do with the community edition, except if you were somehow charging your clients for the use of n8n (i.e. not just providing them assistance setting it up).

Where you will probably want the enterprise edition/license/features is related more to how you will manage n8n in your environment.
Particularly…

  • External Secrets - hooking n8n into something like Hashicorp Vault would allow you to rotate keys, and centrally manage credentials for access to those client systems.
  • Variables - If you have settings (strings, urls, etc) that are buried deep in a workflow, or especially multiple workflows sharing the same common values, it is far easier to reference a common variable than to remember every place those things are buried.
  • Git integration - Assuming you maintain multiple environments for development, QA, and production, you may find that exporting, importing, and migrating workflows between multiple n8n instances becomes a tedious chore that is handled much more easily by putting your workflows (JSON) in a git repo/project.
  • Support - If you are depending on any technology for mission critical stuff, having experts who are obligated to help you out within a specified timeframe, is always worth considering.

There are other enterprise features that may also be compelling, and again, I’m just offering some insight as another user, not trying to sell you on anything or even advise you one way or another.

Hope some of that helps.

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3

Hey @hubschrauber thanks a lot for your response, it definitely gives me hope that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. I really appreciate it!

Just to clarify, we would absolutely NOT be charging our customers specifically for the use of n8n. We’d continue to offer the same services we currently provide, at the same pricing. The main difference is that instead of performing certain tasks manually, we’d use n8n to automate those workflows.

What’s been a bit confusing for me is the fact that we’d be connecting to our clients’ systems using an n8n instance hosted within our own environment. So while we’re not reselling n8n in any way, we are dealing with data and systems that belong to our clients—and we do charge for those managed services as it is part of our managed services contract. A simple example is the Microsoft 365 user creation I mentioned earlier: we’d be managing a few client M365 environments centrally from our own n8n instance.

Hopefully I’ll hear back from the Sales/Licensing team soon with a definitive answer. I’m really looking forward to moving forward with this if it turns out we can use the Community Edition.

Thanks again for your help!

4

One thing you could further clarify (and give the n8n guys more context) is whether you would be using n8n to:

  • Automate steps of a task you are performing (App-Only access) in response to an independent request from your client.
    OR
  • Provide a function that individual users from your client can execute, on their own, under their own login context (delegated access).

Reference

In the latter case, you might actually need to look at an Embed license.

5

Hey @hubschrauber thanks again for your response.

We typically work with a service account provisioned within our client’s environment. All n8n workflows would be triggered by our backend services (RMM/PSA system, etc) and run using that centralized service identity, not individual users.

6

Hi Guilherme, did you manage to get more info? I’ve been trying to get similar info from n8n but they are slow to reply.

7

Hi everyone,

Jumping in here after reviewing the n8n Sustainable Use License (SUL) in depth, since we’re evaluating n8n.

The license is quite clear that use is restricted to your own internal business purposes. While it’s okay to automate your internal operations with n8n—even if those operations support client work—the license draws a hard line when it comes to accessing third-party data using client credentials.

From the official FAQ:

“You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes…”

And more specifically:

Not allowed:
“Bob sets up n8n to collect a user’s HubSpot credentials to sync data in the ACME app with data in HubSpot.”

That’s directly applicable if your workflows use client-provided credentials to access their systems (e.g., Microsoft 365, PSA tools, etc.). Even if clients aren’t using n8n directly, this use case is seen as going beyond internal use, because the automation connects to and operates on infrastructure you don’t own or control.

However, the license also clarifies what is allowed:

Allowed:
“Using n8n to sync the data you control as a company, for example from a CRM to an internal database.”
“Providing consulting services related to n8n, for example building workflows, custom features closely connected to n8n, or code that gets executed by n8n.”
“Supporting n8n, for example by setting it up or maintaining it on an internal company server.”

So if you’re only building n8n-based automations for internal use or offering consulting/support around n8n (without using client credentials), that’s fine under the Community Edition.

In your case—using n8n in a centralized way to automate tasks that directly interact with multiple client environments—this likely crosses into needing a commercial license (Enterprise or Embed). Especially if you plan to scale up or potentially deploy into client infrastructure.

I’d definitely recommend following up with the n8n licensing team at [email protected] to confirm your exact use case, but hopefully this provides some clarity based on what’s published.

Hope this helps others in a similar situation!

8

@King_Samuel_David and @Brieuc_Panhelleux thanks for following up and also provide some further clarification.

I reached out to their licensing team after my initial post and explained our use case. From their response, it seems our setup is still within the allowed usage — since we use service accounts provided by our clients to manage their data and infrastructure, and the clients themselves don’t access or interact with n8n in any way. I can’t share their full reply now as I need to find it on my company email (can’t do it now), but the gist is that because our clients won’t use or even be aware of n8n, it doesn’t violate the community usage policy. We’re the only ones using it, purely to support our internal workflows, which may or may not involve accessing client environments.

That said, we’re not using n8n just yet. I still need to put together a business case to explain why we should use it over other systems. I haven’t had time to do that, and even once that’s done, we’ll need approval from other senior team members, including the security team, to make sure it meets all our security/ISO requirements. So yeah — it’s a bit of a long and boring process.

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9

Nice this is good to know, am building still and this is good knowledge. I’m thinking to reach out soon with my usecases and double check, better to check. Btw this page might help n8n Legal

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