n8n
AI workflow automation platform for technical teams: code when you need it, visual UI when you don't.
By n8n GmbH · HQ Berlin, Germany · 4.7/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Technical teams in IT ops, DevOps and SecOps automating cross-system workflows
- Companies that want self-hosted or on-prem automation with full source access
- Teams building AI agents that need human-in-the-loop checks, guardrails and evaluations
- Builder teams that want a visual canvas plus JavaScript or Python code steps in one workflow
- Enterprises needing SSO/SAML/LDAP, RBAC, audit logs and SIEM log streaming
Ideal size: 10–5,000+ (technical teams) people · Scale-up or enterprise with at least one platform/automation engineer
Not for
- Business users who need a fully no-code, click-only automation tool
- Teams that only need a handful of simple point-to-point app connections
- Buyers who want a fully managed service with the vendor owning every workflow
- Organisations unwilling to accept usage-based execution pricing or overages
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
First workflow in hours; production value in days
~7 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$8,000/yr
Starts at $240 · Annual plan subscription (20€–667€/mo) with monthly workflow-execution quotas; unlimited users; Enterprise custom; execution overages invoiced on self-hosted Business
Implementation Friction
2/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Unlimited users on every plan including Starter; limits are on executions, concurrency, projects and history retention, not seats
Add-on costs
- Business plan execution overage: 4,000 EUR per additional 300,000 executions
- AI Assistant credits cannot be bought separately; upgrade the plan for a larger monthly allowance
Company & support
Who is behind n8n, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- 2019 · 7 yrs in business
- Headquarters
- Berlin, Germany
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailPaid plans
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsEnterprise only
- Community forumAll plans
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Enterprise plan adds dedicated support with SLA-backed response times (specific targets not published)
Community forum support is listed for Starter, Pro and Business; dedicated, SLA-backed support is Enterprise-only. Sales, marketing and partner contacts are not support channels.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where n8n sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- n8n
- monday.com
- Docusign
- Supermetrics
- BetterCloud
- Veryfi
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including n8n. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
Ships an official MCP server. Connects to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT connectors and Cursor out of the box.
AI & MCP readiness
What n8n ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Sources evidence an AI Assistant (preview) that plans, builds and repairs workflows, agentic workflow building blocks, RAG/document Q&A templates, MCP-based workflow building with Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, plus governance features: human-in-the-loop approvals, guardrails, evaluations, and per-execution prompt/response inspection with log streaming.
Your data & models
- Trains on your data
- Never trains on your data
- Runs on
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google
- AI pricing
- Included in the plan
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Official MCP server
- Model key
- Either
- AI usage audit
- Full audit trail
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
n8n is a source-available workflow automation platform for technical teams, combining a visual node editor with JavaScript and Python code steps. It runs self-hosted or as an EU-hosted cloud service, with 2,200+ integrations, AI agent building blocks, human-in-the-loop guardrails, evaluations, and an official MCP server that lets AI clients build and debug workflows. Pricing is per plan with execution quotas (€20–€667/month billed annually), unlimited users, SSO/SAML/LDAP, RBAC, audit logs and log streaming at higher tiers.
Frequently asked questions
How does n8n's pricing work, and what counts as an execution?
Plans are billed annually and include a monthly execution quota: Starter 20€/mo (2.5K executions), Pro 50€/mo (10K), Business 667€/mo (40K), and Enterprise custom. An execution is one full run of a workflow no matter how many steps it contains or how much data it processes, so spend is more predictable than per-step or per-task models. Business overages are invoiced in buckets of 300,000 executions for 4,000 EUR.
Can we self-host n8n, and where is cloud data stored?
Yes. n8n is source-available and can be self-hosted via Docker, and a hosted version is also available. On hosted plans data is stored in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. On self-hosted deployments, storage location, at-rest encryption and TLS termination are the customer's responsibility.
What compliance and security controls does n8n offer?
The security page states n8n aligns its programme to SOC 2 with annual independent audits, publishes a SOC 3 report, and points to how it complies with GDPR. Product controls include SSO/SAML/LDAP (Enterprise), RBAC on all paid plans, MFA, encrypted secret stores, audit logging retained at least 12 months, and log streaming to external services. No HIPAA, ISO 27001 or FedRAMP claims appear there.
Does n8n support MCP and building workflows with AI assistants?
Yes. n8n ships an official, n8n-maintained MCP server included on all plans, including the free Community edition from version 2.18.3 up. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor and other MCP clients can create, validate, run and debug workflows; you choose which workflows are exposed and whether the AI's write tools must ask permission first.
What should we budget in total, and is there an implementation fee?
There is no mandatory implementation fee: cloud trials need no credit card and the self-hosted Community edition is free. Expect roughly 240 USD a year for Starter, 600 USD for Pro, and about 8,000 USD for the self-hosted Business plan (667€/mo billed annually). Enterprise, quoted by sales, is required for SSO/SAML/LDAP, external secret stores, log streaming and SLA support.
What support is included at each tier?
Community forum support is available to every n8n user. Paid plans add email support, and the Enterprise plan adds a ticket-based customer support centre with dedicated, SLA-backed response times. Dedicated support is not part of the Starter, Pro or Business plans.