Reason to use separate workflows?

[Meisner]

I have been creating several automations that work with my Notion workspace for various things.
I have noticed that a workflow can have multiple triggers and they do not need to feed into the same nodes at all, effectively having isolated workflows within the same workflow.

So what are the general guidelines or reasons to use a separate workflow vs having multiple workflows within the one?

I assume that performance might be one reason, assuming that each time a workflow is triggered the entire workflow is loaded/accessed in some way, so if a bunch of it was not going to be used for that trigger it might be a waste to load it.
Node names needing to be unique is the only other thing I can think of.

Using a self hosted instance.

Cheers,

[n8n]

It looks like your topic is missing some important information. Could you provide the following if applicable.

• n8n version:
• Database (default: SQLite):
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):
• Operating system:

[mariana-na]

Hi @Meisner,

You got it! Performance is the main reason why we recommend keeping workflows separate.

Especially regarding memory usage, a workflow with many “inner workflows” in it will consume more. If you’re using a cloud plan you can read more about how to maintain your wfs memory and data usage here - Cloud data management | n8n Docs. And if you’re self-hosting you can see some guidelines here - Memory-related errors | n8n Docs.

Aside from that, having the workflows organised more independently helps with maintaining them and troubleshooting. It also makes them more easily shareable than having several workflows in the same editor screen.

If you have a small sub-workflow that gets triggered by the main one, I wouldn’t see many issues in keeping them together. But if they relate to different integrations, and the more data-heavy they are, I would keep them individualised