After trying out the 14-day n8n cloud trial, I was impressed by what it could do. When the trial ended, I still wanted to keep building workflows but wasn’t quite ready to host in the cloud or pay for a subscription just yet. I started looking into other options and after a bit of research, I got n8n running locally on a Raspberry Pi 5.
Not only is it working great, but I’m finding that my development workflows actually run faster on the Pi 5 than they did in the trial. I’m now able to build and test everything locally on my own network, completely free, and without relying on external services.
I put together a full write-up with step-by-step instructions in case anyone else wants to do the same. You’ll find it here along with a video walkthrough:
This all runs locally and privately on the Pi, and has been a great starting point for learning what n8n can do. I’ve added a Q&A section in the guide, so if questions come up, I’ll keep that updated as well.
If you’ve got a Pi 5 (or one lying around), it’s a solid little server for automation projects. Let me know if you have suggestions, and I’ll keep sharing what I learn as I continue building.
Hey, that sounds quite fun, btw I havn’t tested it, but maybe something like k3’s could work https://k3s.io/ good for lower power devices, or even a dockers build.
Hi Jon, thank you for your message, I greatly appreciate your reply. I researched prior to releasing the video/guide and the npm install seemed to be a common method (and recommended by several over Docker). Do you have an idea on the timeline when npm won’t be supported or if there will be an official announcement?
Great writeup. running into some issues with the PM2 part though. When I run n8n on it’s own and use the cookies=false command everything works. But once I run it with PM2, I get stuck on the ‘configured with a secure cookie’ page. You mention that you can add that command in the PM2 environment, but I’m not having any luck there. Any tips to get that to work?
