(Once you’ve read this post, we’d love your feedback on this idea here)
It may surprise you to learn that self-hosted n8n currently has no telemetry (analytics). This isn’t ideal: if we don’t know how n8n is being used, it’s hard to be sure we’re taking the best actions to improve it.
For example, it would be helpful to know:
- Which errors are most common (to prioritise fixing them)
- Which nodes are the most used (so we can improve them, and prioritise building related ones)
- What people are forced to use the HTTP node for (so we can build a dedicated node for those things)
- What people search for when looking for nodes (so we can make them easier to find, e.g. type ‘code’ and get the function node)
For these reasons we think everyone would benefit if we introduced very targeted, anonymous telemetry in future versions of n8n. But we also want to respect privacy, and avoid collecting sensitive information. And of course we’d also like to hear how you feel about it.
What we propose to collect
- The error code and message that failed executions return (but without any payload data, and not for custom nodes)
- The graph of a workflow (i.e. only the types of the nodes used and which other nodes they are connected to — not their names, for example)
- From node parameters, only:
- The resource and operation that a node is set to
- The domain for HTTP nodes (excluding subdomain, path or any query parameters)
- How many times a workflow has executed
- Information on how the UI is used (e.g. nodes panel searches, or how often the expression editor is used)
- Diagnostic information
- n8n version
- Certain settings:
- DB_TYPE
- N8N_VERSION_NOTIFICATIONS_ENABLED
- N8N_DISABLE_PRODUCTION_MAIN_PROCESS
- Execution variables
- N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE
- Operating system, RAM and CPUs
- An anonymous instance ID
What we would NOT collect
- Any personally identifiable information
- Credential information
- Node parameters (apart from those listed above)
- Execution data
- Sensitive settings (e.g. endpoints, ports, DB connections, username/password)
- Error payloads
It also goes without saying that we would only use data this to better understand how n8n is used. We would keep it anonymous, and would never sell any data we collect to anyone.
And of course, you would be able to opt out! You could turn telemetry off completely with an environment variable.
We’ve tried to keep this list down to the core things that would help us make n8n better for everyone, while respecting privacy.
We’d love to get your thoughts on this
If you can spare 2 mins please take this survey!