Is self-hosting free for internal company use with simple workflows?

[mj2134]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to confirm the licensing for our use case before we proceed.

We plan to self-host the Community Edition on our own infrastructure and use it internally within our company. The workflows are fairly simple and only for our own internal operations — we are not redistributing or reselling n8n, and we won’t be embedding it in any product offered to external customers.

For this kind of internal-only, self-hosted usage, is there any license fee or cost we need to pay to n8n? Or is the Community Edition free for this purpose?

Thanks in advance!

[Anshul_Namdev]

Hi @mj2134 Welcome!
See this:

@Rene_Lutz

Confirmed, for the exact use case described (internal, self-hosted, no sharing with third parties), there are no costs. The n8n Sustainable Use License explicitly permits this.

One thing to keep in mind for the future, in case your use case changes: As soon as you host n8n for external customers (i.e., let other companies use your n8n instance) or embed it in a product you sell, the license no longer applies. The exact wording can be found here: n8n/LICENSE.md at master · n8n-io/n8n · GitHub , it’s worth bookmarking before your use case grows.

Additionally, the n8n community edition is available to all users at no cost. This edition includes a community licence key that, once activated, grants access to additional features.

Community edition features | n8n Docs

Just for your requirement and it fits or not, you can see this as well:

Choose your n8n | n8n Docs