Lost Access to n8n Web UI – How to Reset Admin Password

Questions
1

:closed_lock_with_key: Lost Access to n8n Web UI – How to Reset Admin Password (Self-hosted, SQLite)

Hi n8n community,

I have a self-hosted instance of n8n running on a VPS (Hostinger, Ubuntu 24.04, KVM). It’s accessible via the following URL:
:point_right: https://n8n.[my].hstgr.cloud

When I try to log in with my admin email and password, I receive this error:

“Problem logging in – Wrong username or password. Do you have caps lock on?”

What’s the recommended and secure way to reset the admin password for a user in n8n (via SQLite, CLI, or other methods)?
Is there an official procedure for this?

Thanks in advance for your help :pray:
I’m also open to any best practices to avoid getting locked out in the future.

2

You can reset user management using the n8n CLI. This returns user management to its pre-setup state. It removes all user accounts.

Use this if you forget your password, and don’t have SMTP set up to do password resets by email.

n8n user-management:reset

To avoid getting locked out you can simply add SMTP environment variables to have to possibility use the “forget password” method.