Zapier vs n8n: what “free and self-hosted” actually costs.

If you’ve heard of n8n at all, it was probably from a YouTube thumbnail with an arrow pointing at an AI agent. The pitch writes itself: Zapier charges by the task while n8n is free and self-hosted, so switch. We build automations on both, and the pitch is half true in a way that costs people real weekends.

The comparison needs two answers, because the two products disagree about what you’re buying. Zapier sells a metered service. n8n hands you software and wishes you luck with the server.

The meters aren’t the same shape

Zapier counts tasks: every action step in a zap burns one, so an eight-step zap that runs 500 times a month bills 4,000 tasks, and we’ve broken down where that meter leads. n8n counts executions: one run of a workflow is one execution no matter how many steps it contains. That same workflow on n8n is 500 executions a month, and n8n’s cloud Starter includes 2,500 of them for €20 a month, steps explicitly unlimited, with a Pro tier at €50 for 10,000.

Step-heavy workflows are exactly where AI automation lives. An agent that reads an email, checks a calendar, drafts a reply, and logs the thread is one execution on n8n and a fistful of tasks on a task meter. That, more than ideology, is why the AI crowd standardized on n8n.

What “free and self-hosted” buys you

The community edition is genuinely free: download it, run it on your own server, no execution meter at all. The license (n8n calls it the Sustainable Use License) permits internal business automation and forbids one specific thing: reselling n8n itself as a hosted service. Automating your own company is squarely allowed, at zero software cost, forever.

The software costs nothing. The system is another story. Self-hosting means a VPS to rent and patch, backups somebody actually tests, and a queue of workflows that stops cold when the container falls over on a Saturday.

A meter you don’t pay in dollars gets paid in attention.

We run our own servers, so this isn’t self-hosting scaremongering; it’s a staffing question. If nobody in your business enjoys being root on a Linux box, the free tier isn’t free — the €20 cloud tier is, functionally, the cheap option.

Where Zapier still earns the subscription

The honest case for Zapier hasn’t changed since our Make comparison: the biggest app catalog anywhere, and a form-style builder a non-technical owner can ship with in an afternoon. n8n’s canvas is closer to visual programming, expressions and real error handling included. Wonderful if you think in flows; a wall if you don’t. Zapier is for the office manager. n8n is for whoever already has Docker installed.

The decision, sorted by who you are

No technical owner: stay off n8n entirely

Cloud or self-hosted, somebody has to debug a failed node at some point, and if the answer to “who fixes it” is an agency you’d have to call anyway, buy the layer where failures are the vendor’s problem. Better yet, ask whether the workflow belongs on middleware at all or inside the platform that runs your business, where the core loops are native and unmetered.

Technical owner, real volume: n8n cloud first, metal later

Start on the €20 cloud tier and prove the workflows matter. Move to self-hosting when execution volume, data-privacy requirements, or sheer tinkering joy makes owning the box worth it. Migrating n8n-to-n8n is painless; the workflows export with you. What you shouldn’t do is start with a bare VPS on day one to save €20 before you know the automation earns anything.

Agencies: mind the license

If you’re reading this as an agency planning to “offer n8n” to clients, read the license first. Hosting n8n and charging customers for access to it is the exact thing the Sustainable Use License forbids without a commercial deal. The clean lane is the one that’s better for the client anyway: the instance lives in an account the client owns, and you charge for building and running the workflows, not for the software.

The bill in three currencies

Zapier charges dollars per task and hides the ops. n8n cloud charges euros per execution and hides most of them. Self-hosted n8n charges no money and bills you in ops: the patching, the backup you forgot, the 2 a.m. restart. There’s no free tier anywhere, just a choice of currency, and the right one depends on whether your business has more spare cash or spare engineering.

Sorting workflows across those layers is the actual job, and it’s the first thing we do in our automation practice — often cutting the metered volume before any tool switch happens, Zapier included. Book a 20-minute strategy call and we’ll price your workflows in all three currencies before you commit to any of them.