Form submission hangs forever

Questions
1

Hello, when testing and submitting my form (which is the trigger for my workflow) the submission hangs forever. I test the form and hit submit and it just spins and spins and never submits or hits the rest of the workflow.

Is this a known issue? Any thoughts on how I might address this issue? My form is long it has about 55 elements to it including a file upload, date pickers, tags, checkboxes, etc. I’m not doing a multi-page form, just one long single form.

Describe the problem/error/question

What is the error message (if any)?

Please share your workflow

(Select the nodes on your canvas and use the keyboard shortcuts CMD+C/CTRL+C and CMD+V/CTRL+V to copy and paste the workflow.)

Share the output returned by the last node

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: latest stable. I updated it and restarted.
  • Database (default: SQLite): default
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): cloud
  • Operating system: testing form from chrome on MacOS. I have tried with all extensions disabled.
2

Hey @Hing_Lee Welcome to the n8n community!

It almost never has anything to do with the form being “too long”. It’s nearly always environment or proxy related. There are multiple Reasons

From what I’ve seen (and fixed), it usually comes down to one of these:

1. A reverse Proxy or a Webhook URL Issue
If you’re self-hosting behind NGINX, Traefik, Caddy, ingress, etc., the form page can load fine but the submit POST never actually reaches n8n.

If you’re behind a proxy, make sure:

  1. WEBHOOK_URL is set to the public URL you actually access n8n on
  2. N8N_PROXY_HOPS is set correctly
  3. Your proxy forwards X-Forwarded-For, X-Forwarded-Proto, X-Forwarded-Proto

Example if your n8n lives at https://deepankar.n8n.com:

N8N_PROTOCOL=https
N8N_HOST=deepankar.n8n.com
N8N_PORT=443
WEBHOOK_URL=https://deepankar.n8n.com
N8N_PROXY_HOPS=1

A lot of “form never finishes” issues disappear immediately once this is correct.

OR

2. CORS or the security headers blocking the submit
This one’s sneaky. The form UI loads, but the actual submit request gets blocked.

Best move here:

Open DevTools → Network tab

Submit the form

Look for a failed request like /form-waiting/… or execution status polling

Check the Console for CORS errors (especially origin: null)

Traefik setups in particular often need explicit CORS headers.
Some people also had to relax overly strict headers like Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy or CSP rules, especially when forms are sandboxed.

If you see origin ‘null’ errors, it’s almost always CSP or proxy headers biting you.

  1. Payload or “File size“ limits

Please check if your proxy allows the file size that you’re uploading sometimes n8n will allow but your proxy may not.

Things to check:

client_max_body_size (NGINX / ingress)
N8N_PAYLOAD_SIZE_MAX (default is 16 MiB)
N8N_FORMDATA_FILE_SIZE_MAX (default 200 MiB)

Quick test:
Remove the file upload field and submit.
If it suddenly works, congrats, you’ve found the problem.

As some VPS Providers have default configs that break form submissions even though workflows are fine elsewhere.

I hope one of these solutions solves your problem @Hing_Lee
Happy to help.

3

Hi @Hing_Lee Welcome!
I Agree with that @Deepankar have mentioned but i recommend removing the file upload and then testing your form, and decreasing some elements of your form and add those in the next form node as this will separate the load and would not take much time, as this issue is not known and I also use forms and never faced this issue, please consider these steps and let me know if it helps.

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