Hola equipo de n8n,
Estoy usando n8n en un contenedor Docker en mi Mac M4 2025. Ya conecté Notion y Gmail, pero al intentar activar mi licencia recibida por correo, aparece el error: “La clave de activación ya se ha utilizado en esta instancia”.
El contenedor tiene persistencia activa (/home/node/.n8n) y no he usado esta clave en otra máquina. ¿Podrían ayudarme a generar una nueva clave o reactivar la actual?
Gracias por el soporte.
— Germán Echavarría
Hey @ger_echavarria Welcome to the n8n community!
The “Activation key has already been used on this instance” message usually means one of two things:
If you clicked the activation link in the email, that alone typically activates the license you don’t need to paste the key manually.
Please check in your n8n UI:
Go to Settings → Usage and plan.
If you see a “Registered” tag next to “You’re on the Community Edition”, the license is active already and the error can be ignored.
Also note that some features (like Folders) only show up in the Personal project space, not in the global Overview.
2. License is stuck and needs to be cleared
If Usage and plan still shows plain Community Edition and you don’t have the extra features, try clearing the stored license and re‑applying it:
From your Mac, run this against your n8n container (replace n8n-container-name):
docker exec -u node -it <n8n-container-name> n8n license:clear
This clears the existing license info from n8n’s DB.
Then:
Restart the container:
docker restart <n8n-container-name>
Either:
Click the Activate your license key button from the email again, or
Go to Settings → Usage and plan → Enter activation key, paste the key, and activate.
This “clear → restart → reactivate” flow is exactly what’s recommended in similar “key already used” cases.
Let me know if this helps