Hiya all! First post here. Let me start off by giving props to everyone working on n8n. We’re actively using it for automation and general quality of life improvements in our day to day work. Sometimes we’re running into small issues that we can either work around or we look for other ways. However, we’re now running into an issue, and I can’t find a reason why this is happening. So I thought it might be a valid bug to report.
Describe the issue/error/question
Summary:
The Execute workflow
node seems to cause a lot of overhead, even if not actively used.
More information:
When setting up a workflow with the following nodes:
- Webhook trigger (connects to:)
- Answer to webhook trigger
Separate node (doing nothing):
- Execute workflow
If set the webhook trigger to immediately respond, I see response times of 62 ms on simple GET requests.
If I set the hook to respond with the respond to webhook
node, the response times immediately shoot up to 2.10 seconds. This is still manageable, though not optimal.
However, if I have a Execute workflow
node anywhere in my flow, not even connected or configured with a valid flow ID, the response times shoot up to around 6 seconds. If I disable the Execute workflow
node, the response times drop again.
Context:
I am looking to respond to Slack interactive hooks, and they require, for example for opening a modal, that you perform your actions within 3 seconds. This is impossible with n8n in our instance due to these response times. Even the 2.10 second response times come dangerously close to the 3 second limit.
Invalid / tried solutions:
Set the execution to main instead of own worker
Valid, but impractical in production due to the large number of flows and the possibility to crash the full process (while having a lot of people depending on it).
Don’t use the execute flow
node
Since Slack only allows one callback URL for interactivity, we’d have to build ALL interactive elements into one flow. This will turn into a way too large of a flow to keep organized.
If you need more information, please let me know. I’m hoping we can get to a cause / solution here regarding the execute workflow
node overhead, though any tips to get the general response times down are welcome as well
What is the error message (if any)?
N/A
Please share the workflow
Share the output returned by the last node
N/A
Information on your n8n setup
- n8n version: 0.178.2
- Database you’re using (default: SQLite): Postgres 13.7
- Running n8n with the execution process [own(default), main]: own
- Running n8n via [Docker, npm, n8n.cloud, desktop app]: cloud kubernetes