n8n is free if you run it yourself. The self-hosted Community Edition costs nothing under n8n's Sustainable Use License, with no cap on executions, workflows or users, and n8n Cloud starts at 20€ a month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions. Zapier's cheapest paid plan is $19.99 a month billed yearly for 750 tasks, and a task is one step, not one run. Every price here was checked on Oct 30, 2026 from the vendor's own pricing page; the n8n prices are the euro prices its page shows to a visitor in Europe.
Is n8n free if self hosted?
Yes. The self-hosted n8n Community Edition has no licence fee and no meter on executions, workflows or users. n8n's pricing page says “A standard, self-hosted version of n8n is available on GitHub”, and that repo had about 209,000 stars on Oct 30, 2026 (repo). The catch is the licence. n8n calls it “fair-code”, and it is not open source by the OSI definition. The Sustainable Use License, version 1.0, lets you “use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use”, and source files with “.ee.” in the name need a paid n8n Enterprise License. Running n8n for your own company is free. Selling n8n as a hosted product to other people is not. You still pay for the server, and you are the one upgrading it.
What n8n Cloud costs
n8n Cloud sells executions, not seats. On Oct 30, 2026 the pricing page lists Starter at 20€ a month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions, Pro at 50€ for 10,000, Business at 667€ for 40,000 (self-hosted only, with SSO and LDAP), and Enterprise at “Contact Sales”. The page says “All plans include unlimited users & workflows”, and an execution is one workflow run “with unlimited steps”. Overage on Starter and Pro is listed as “Capped”, so the plan stops at its limit instead of billing more. The trial is 1,000 executions with no card, and there is no permanent free cloud plan.
Zapier vs n8n pricing
Zapier bills per task and n8n bills per execution, and that difference matters more than either sticker. Zapier's Free plan allows 100 tasks a month on two-step Zaps for 1 seat. Professional is $19.99 a month billed yearly, or $29.99 billed monthly, for 750 tasks, and climbs through task tiers up to 2 million. Team starts at $69 a month billed yearly ($103.50 monthly) for 2,000 tasks. Zapier's own definition: “A task is counted whenever Zapier successfully completes a unit of work for you.” Each action step is one task, triggers and built-in tools such as Formatter and Filter are not counted, and an MCP tool call is 2 tasks. Overage is automatic at 1.25 times the base rate on annual plans and 2.5 times on monthly plans (checked Oct 30, 2026).
Run the numbers on one workflow. A trigger plus 9 app actions, firing 1,000 times a month, is about 9,000 Zapier tasks and exactly 1,000 n8n executions. n8n Starter covers that month at 20€; on Zapier it is twelve times the Professional allowance. Zapier is not expensive per task. It is expensive per step, and workflows grow steps.
Make, since Aug 27, 2025. Make switched its billing unit from operations to credits, converting existing operations 1 to 1, and its help centre says “1 operation still uses 1 credit” for non-AI steps; the Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month (checked Oct 30, 2026). Make's plan prices did not render on the page we fetched, so they are missing from the table.
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | What it meters | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|
| n8n, self-hosted | $0 | Nothing | Community Edition, no limits |
| n8n Cloud | 20€/mo Starter, billed annually | Workflow runs (2,500/mo) | 1,000-execution trial |
| Zapier | $19.99/mo Professional, billed yearly ($29.99 monthly) | Tasks (750/mo), one per action step | 100 tasks/mo, two-step Zaps |
| Make | Not shown on the page we loaded | Credits, 1 per operation | 1,000 credits/mo |
| Activepieces Cloud | $20/mo Plus | Credits (10,000/mo), 1 per run | 1,000 credits/mo, 5 users |
| Windmill, self-hosted | $0 (Enterprise from $120/mo) | Nothing on the free edition | Unlimited executions, 50 users |
Zapier bills the step. n8n bills the run. On a ten-step workflow that is a ninefold difference before anyone has read a price.
Of the 265 automation tools in the AppClap catalog (Oct 30, 2026), 39 are open source and 81 can be self-hosted.
Zapier alternatives that are open source
Activepieces, Windmill and Node-RED are open source Zapier alternatives under OSI licences, which n8n is not. The AppClap flat-price test applies to each: a tool passes when the price on its pricing page is the price on the invoice, with no credits, no usage add-ons and no second meter.
Activepieces. Activepieces is MIT licensed outside its packages/ee folder, with about 25,300 GitHub stars and a release on Oct 28 (repo). Its cloud Free plan is $0 for 1,000 credits a month, unlimited flows and up to 5 users; Plus is $20 a month for 10,000 credits; Team is $200 for 50,000 credits and 25 users; overage on paid plans is $0.007 a credit (checked Oct 30, 2026, billed monthly). The pricing page says “A run is one credit however many steps it has”. The self-hosted Community Edition is free and passes the flat-price test. The cloud fails on credit overage, though the Free plan simply “Waits for tomorrow” when it runs out.
Windmill. Windmill is AGPL-3.0 with proprietary enterprise features, about 18,300 stars, and version 1.854.2 shipped on Oct 30 (repo). The self-hosted “Free and Open-source” edition lists “Unlimited executions.”, up to 50 users and 3 workspaces. Enterprise starts from $120 a month (checked Oct 30, 2026). Steps are scripts in Python, TypeScript, Go or Bash, for teams that would rather write code than drag boxes. Self-hosted, it passes.
Node-RED and Automatisch. Node-RED is Apache-2.0 with about 23,800 stars and free at any size (repo). Automatisch is AGPL-3.0 with about 14,000 stars and calls itself “The open source Zapier alternative”, but its repo has not been pushed to since Feb 11, 2026 (repo), so treat it as paused.
n8n Cloud passes the test on Starter and Pro, because the overage is capped and the price on the page is the invoice. Zapier fails, because overage is billed automatically at a multiple.
Why is Zapier so expensive?
Zapier is expensive because it counts every successful action step and sells you the absence of a server. What the money buys is real: nothing to install, nothing to upgrade, connectors maintained by someone else, retries you never see. A three-step Zap that runs 200 times a month costs less on Zapier than any virtual machine. A ten-step workflow that runs every hour flips the maths inside the first invoice.
How to read an automation pricing page
- What is the unit? A task is a step (Zapier), an execution is a run (n8n), a credit is an operation (Make, Activepieces).
- What is not counted? Zapier excludes triggers and built-in tools. n8n counts the run whatever it contains.
- What happens at the limit? Zapier bills overage at a multiple. n8n Starter and Pro stop. Activepieces Free waits until tomorrow.
- How many people are included? n8n Cloud unlimited, Zapier Free 1, Activepieces Free 5.
- Can you leave with your workflows? Self-hosting gives you the database. A cloud plan gives you an export, if the vendor offers one.
What we do about it
AppClap reads pricing pages so you do not have to, we never take vendor money, and when a page hides a number we say so. The Zapier alternatives and n8n alternatives pages list the rest of what we track.
Or describe what you need in plain words: an automation tool I can self-host that does not bill per task.
Sources: n8n.io, Pricing; n8n-io/n8n on GitHub, LICENSE.md (Sustainable Use License 1.0); zapier.com, Plans & Pricing; make.com, Pricing FAQ; help.make.com, “Introducing credits: new billing unit live in Make”; activepieces.com, Pricing; windmill.dev, Pricing; GitHub repos activepieces/activepieces, windmill-labs/windmill, node-red/node-red and automatisch/automatisch; AppClap catalog counts, Oct 30, 2026. All checked Oct 30, 2026.
