Help Needed: License Key Not Unlocking Features on Self-Hosted Community Edition (macOS Docker)

Fathi7 · May 24, 2025, 2:16pm

Hi n8n Community,

I’m hoping someone can shed some light on an issue I’m having with a license key. I received an email with a key (aa8cb630-c056-4e05-adc0-0d4973d0193f) which stated it would unlock selected paid features on my Community Edition of n8n, specifically: “Workflow history, Debug in editor, Folders, and custom execution search” with lifetime access.

I’m running n8n self-hosted via Docker on macOS. My n8n version is [your n8n version, if known, e.g., 1.xx.x].

The Problem: Despite my attempts, these specific features are not unlocked. The n8n UI shows “you’re on the Community Edition Registered,” and I sometimes see prompts like “Upgrade to unlock the ability to create additional admin users” (which is different from what my key is for).

Troubleshooting Steps I’ve Already Taken:

I’ve tried the following to get the license activated correctly:

UI Activation: Pasted the key into Settings → Usage and Plan and tried to activate it there. This usually resulted in an “Activation key has already been used on this instance” message.
Environment Variable: Stopped the container and restarted it using the N8N_LICENSE_ACTIVATION_KEY="<my-license-key>" environment variable in the docker run command.
Clearing License State: Used the n8n license:clear command (executed via docker run --rm --entrypoint n8n -v ~/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n n8nio/n8n license:clear). This reported “License cleared.”
Completely Fresh Start:

Stopped n8n.
Deleted my entire ~/.n8n data directory.
Restarted n8n using the docker run command with the N8N_LICENSE_ACTIVATION_KEY environment variable set from the very beginning.
Set up a new owner account.

Even after the completely fresh start, the specific features (Folders, Workflow History, Debug in Editor, Custom Execution Search) are still not available.

Log Observations: Throughout these steps, I’ve seen various messages in the n8n Docker logs, sometimes including [license SDK] license successfully activated or [license SDK] license successfully renewed, and other times [license SDK] license activation failed: consumer already has a valid entitlement for this reservation. Despite these, the features remain locked.

Could anyone from the n8n team or the community offer any advice on what might be going wrong or what else I can try? It seems like the license key is recognized at some level but isn’t translating into the promised feature set.

Thanks so much for your help!

Here is my n8n setups:

n8n version: Version 1.82.3
Running n8n via: Docker
Operating system: Macos ventura

King_Samuel_David · May 24, 2025, 2:24pm

Hey @Fathi7

That seems frustrating, I assume your internet access is okay, as I do see license activations from the messages provided, I have docker running n8n locally too on mac m1, When you enter the key, you you get thid page:

It seem that the key your using may have issues now, what I would recommend is redeploy fresh, and use another email account to get a new key and try enter again.

what ure docker file you using, can help review it quickly see if any issues too.

Best regards,

Samuel