Hi There,
After reading multiple (old?) threads about pricing, I thought I’d offer my $0.02 to the n8n team.
I’ve used multiple automation platforms, including Zapier and Make. Production workflows that scale from 1 to 1M+ workloads. The beauty of no-code/low-code systems is in prototyping ideas and making it easy for creators to experiment and pivot. Picking a pricing model that stifles this innovation will alienate your customers.
But rather than criticize existing pricing, let me instead offer a constructive suggestion on how n8n could drastically undercut the market and massively grow their customer base.
Self-Hosting Pricing:
- $1 per active workflow per month (unlimited executions)
- All enterprise features unlocked; no more feature-based pricing
- Unlimited execution time per running workflow
Cloud Pricing:
- $2 per active workflow per month (unlimited executions)
- All enterprise features unlocked; no more feature-based pricing
- 40 minutes max execution time per running workflow
Why:
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It’s simple to understand. It’s simple to enforce. And it’s predictable.
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Self-Hosted customers are still paying additional infrastructure costs beyond the n8n license. Keep in mind, if you make your licensing costs too high, you completely drive away this business.
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Cloud customers are paying for turn-key, so paying double makes sense here. Keep in mind, “unlimited executions” isn’t really “unlimited” because:
- An active workflow can’t run multiple times in parallel (I think?)
- The total run time of an active workflow needs to complete within 40 minutes (otherwise it will get cancelled)
- So for any complex workloads, you’ll have to naturally split the work across multiple workflows for scalability, which directly increases the number of active workflows at any given time
- During experimentation phases, customers will naturally make mistakes and generate larger (temp) usages while they “learn” the right way to build workflows – you really don’t want to penalize them on costs while they are learning to use the platform