Workflow deactivates itself after some time

Questions
1

Describe the problem/error/question

:warning: The Problem

Every Couple of days, one or both workflows randomly become inactive, breaking the automation pipeline. Here’s what’s especially confusing:

  • UI Status: The platform UI still shows the workflows as “active.”
  • Webhook Response: Incoming webhook requests to the workflow endpoint fail with an "inactive workflow" response.
  • Temporary Fix: Toggling the workflow “off” and then “on” in the UI temporarily restores functionality—for a while.

This intermittent deactivation has a direct business impact: applications silently fail until we manually intervene.

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: What We’ve Observed

  • No explicit errors or alerts are triggered when the workflows become inactive.
  • Restarting the workflows manually appears to “wake them up.”
  • The issue is not tied to deployment events or memory pressure as far as we can see.
  • Webhook activity remains high and stable, with no signs of abuse or spike anomalies.

:brain: What We’ve Tried

  • Audit logs show no explicit disable action.
  • We’ve verified role and permission scopes—no automated process is disabling the workflows.
  • We’ve tested with minimal traffic and high traffic—issue persists in both cases.

— Thank you all in advance

What is the error message (if any)?

Please share your workflow

(Select the nodes on your canvas and use the keyboard shortcuts CMD+C/CTRL+C and CMD+V/CTRL+V to copy and paste the workflow.)

Share the output returned by the last node

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version:
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): cloud
  • Operating system:
1 Like
2

on the n8n Cloud Starter plan, you are limited to a maximum of 5 active workflows at a time. If you try to activate a sixth workflow, one of your other active workflows will automatically deactivat(Workflow active limit with Starter Plan?) This could explain why a workflow seems to deactivate itself when you activate another one.

If the user needs more than 5 active workflows, they would need to upgrade to a higher plan, combine logic into fewer workflows, or consider self-hosting for more flexibility

3

Hey, thank you for your attention. We are currently in Pro plan which allow 20 active workflows and only have 2 active. Probably not the issue we are having.

Also the workflow deactivation happens subtly. It seems active in the UI, but deactive when sent a request to the n8n webhook.

4

thats a strange behavior. I think n8n support team needs to look into their logs. what kind of support do you get with pro plan?

5

I’ve observed the same issue and my client pings me saying that he is getting a 404 error when calling the API, I manually flip it from Active to Inactive and then back to Active and it starts working. Agree with @Can_Arda_Aydin this has a real world business impact.

Is there a fix available, can you help in getting this tagged to n8n support. I’ve sent them an email too on the same but got no response. @sandy4v can you help here?

1 Like
6

404 means url not found - which signifies that it was not publicaly available
This could be a scaling issue on the n8n cloud server
I am not sure where n8n hosts their own n8n cloud version ( May be AWS ) or how they are scaling the multi-tenant accounts for pro ( shared / dedicated ec2 instances / EKS)

however, I do not work for n8n (yet) n8n support will have to look on the logs for your cloud instance.

fyi on the error
A 404 error, often displayed as “404 Not Found,” signifies that the web server has successfully received a user’s request, but the requested resource (usually a webpage) cannot be located or does not exist at the specified URL. It’s a common error encountered on the internet, indicating a broken or outdated link, a moved or deleted page, or a simple typing error in the URL.