n8n Cost Calculator

n8n Cloud bills you a predictable amount. Self-hosting bills you a small amount in euros and an unpredictable amount in your own time. This works out which one is actually cheaper for your volume, once the time is priced in.

Executions per month

VPS cost per month (EUR)

Your maintenance hours per month

What an hour of your time is worth (EUR)

n8n Cloud

€50/mo

Pro plan covers 10,000 executions.

Self-hosted

€124/mo

€24 box + €100 of your time (2h at €50/h). No execution cap.

Cloud is cheaper for you. Self-hosting only wins here if you spend under 0.5 hours a month maintaining it. You have budgeted 2h. Most people underestimate this number, which is exactly why self-hosting looks free.

Cloud plan figures are the published Starter and Pro tiers. For the full breakdown of what self-hosting actually costs in effort - backups, upgrades, the encryption key, the 3am recovery - see n8n Cloud vs Self-Hosted: The Real Cost and Effort Math.