Why I Stopped Paying for n8n Cloud (And Switched to a $4 VPS in 2026)

#n8n #selfhosted #automation #hosting

I was paying n8n Cloud $20 a month for the Pro tier. Eight workflows, mostly daily syncs. Nothing crazy.

Then I looked at the execution counter. I was at 14,200 executions for the month. Pro caps at 10,000. Next tier up: $50 a month. For workflows that mostly just call APIs and write to a database.

So I spent a Sunday afternoon migrating to self-hosted. Here's what I learned.

n8n Cloud pricing in 2026 (the math nobody shows you)

n8n Cloud's pricing is execution-based, not user-based. Real numbers from their site:

Tier	Price	Executions	Active workflows
Starter	$20/mo	2,500	5
Pro	$50/mo	10,000	15
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Unlimited

The catch is that "executions" counts every workflow run. A daily sync that runs 30 times a month uses 30 executions. A webhook-triggered workflow that fires 50 times a day uses 1,500. Eight workflows running a few times a day each adds up faster than you'd think.

If you have AI-heavy workflows (LLM calls, embeddings, vector search loops), executions stack even faster. Each LangChain agent step counts.

I crunched my own numbers: at Pro tier ($50/mo, 10K executions), I'd burn through the quota in 22 days. The next overage tier was disproportionate. Self-hosted made sense.

The self-host options in 2026

Three real paths:

1. Raw VPS (Hetzner CX22 at $4.51/mo)

You rent a 2 vCPU / 2GB RAM box from Hetzner, install Docker, and run n8n with Docker Compose:

services:
  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"
    environment:
      - N8N_HOST=n8n.yourdomain.com
      - WEBHOOK_URL=https://n8n.yourdomain.com
    volumes:
      - ~/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n

Then nginx in front for SSL, certbot for a Let's Encrypt cert, fail2ban for SSH, ufw for firewall, automated backups for the data volume. Maybe 90 minutes of setup if you've done it before. Multiple hours if it's your first time.

Total monthly cost: $4.51 for the VPS. You handle everything else.

2. Managed PaaS (Coolify, Dokploy, InstaPods, Sevalla)

These sit between raw VPS and n8n Cloud. You get a control panel that handles SSL, backups, and updates, but the n8n instance is yours. Pricing is flat, not execution-based.

I tried Coolify (self-installed on the same Hetzner VPS) and InstaPods (which has a pre-baked 1-click n8n image). The InstaPods approach was faster because the image is pre-configured: deploy n8n in under a minute, SSL auto-provisioned, terminal access in the browser. $3/mo on their Launch tier.

The Coolify approach takes longer to set up but you own the entire stack. Both are valid; the choice depends on whether you want to manage the platform itself.

3. Docker on a Raspberry Pi or home server

If you already have a Pi 4 or a homelab box, you can run n8n on hardware you own. Zero monthly cost beyond electricity. The trade-off is exposing it: you need Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale, or a public IP plus dynamic DNS.

I considered this but my Pi was already running Plex and Home Assistant. Adding n8n was one container too many for the SD card.

What I actually do now

I'm on a $3/mo InstaPods pod with n8n pre-installed. Total monthly bill: $3. That's a savings of $17/month versus n8n Cloud Starter, or $47/month versus Pro.

The workflows that mattered:

Stripe webhook -> Postgres -> Slack (30-50 executions/day)
RSS feed monitor -> Discord (4 daily)
GitHub issue triage -> Linear (5-20 per day depending on day)
OpenAI summarization of long emails -> Notion (10-30 daily)

None of them needed n8n Cloud's SLA. The whole point of self-hosting was: I control the database, I control the credentials, I can SSH in and debug, and the bill is fixed.

Migration took 90 minutes total. Export workflows as JSON from n8n Cloud, import into self-hosted, re-add credentials (n8n encrypts them, so they don't export). Done.

When NOT to self-host

To be fair, self-hosting isn't always the right call:

If your workflows handle critical production traffic with strict uptime requirements, n8n Cloud's SLA is worth the premium.
If your team isn't comfortable with Linux/Docker, the setup time eats the cost savings.
If you're below 2,500 executions/month forever, the $20 Starter tier might genuinely be cheaper than your time.

Self-hosting wins clearly above 5,000 executions/month or when you want to own the data.