I have a workflow that occasionally fails due to rate limits (for example with Google Sheets).
When this happens, the workflow stops and requires manual intervention.
What I’m looking for is a way to automatically restart the workflow after an error, without having to constantly monitor whether it’s still running or to use a “schedule” trigger. Ideally, this would be something like a global workflow setting such as “restart on error”.
I am already using the “Error Workflow (to notify when this one errors)” feature, but so far I haven’t found a good workaround that actually restarts the original workflow automatically.
My questions:
Is there any existing setting or built-in mechanism to automatically restart a workflow after an error?
If not, is this something that could be considered as a feature request?
Alternatively, is there a community node or recommended pattern to handle this reliably?
Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
there’s no built-in “restart on error” setting right now, what I usually do is handle this inside the workflow
enable retries on the node (especially for rate-limited APIs),
or add a wait node + retry loop (for example with IF + static data or counter),
or catch the error and re-trigger the workflow via webhook after a delay,
the Error workflow is great for alerts. But it can’t restart the same execution automatically, a native restart-on-error option would definitely be a nice feature request
For the ‘restart’ i recommend setting up another workflow on error which waits notifies you about the error and starts that workflow again using the Sub Workflow execution, this method helped me in production workflows, you can click on those 3 dots in your workflow space and see the settings you would get something like this:
And here set a Error Workflow which Sends a notification to you and in your main workflow set a Sub workflow as the workflow trigger so that in case of errors it would notify and can be executed automatically. Hope this helps. Please be aware of AI generated replies do not take advice which you have not cross verified yourself.
Is there any existing setting or built-in mechanism to automatically restart a workflow after an error?
No, I don’t think n8n has a built-in global “restart on error” mechanism .
Is this something that could be considered as a feature request?
Yes. Several community members have requested this feature, and n8n staff have acknowledged it as a useful idea . You can add your support to the “Automatic Retry of Workflows” feature request thread on the community forum to show demand .
Is there a community node or recommended pattern to handle this reliably?
No single community node exists, but the Supervisor Workflow Pattern
(Supervisor Workflow Pattern
Idea: Create a separate “supervisor” workflow that runs on a schedule . It checks if your main workflow is healthy (using data tables or execution history) and restarts it via webhook if it has failed.
Best for: Monitoring workflows with unpredictable or external failures (e.g., API outages). This avoids duplicate runs .)
is the most robust community-recommended solution for complex, long-running workflows . It gives you full control over checks and prevents duplicate runs.
