"How much should I charge for this n8n build?" shows up in r/n8n almost every month. I went back through two years of those threads, read the substantive answers, and turned the repeated advice into a quoting model. This post is that model, with the numbers I would defend to a client.
Price the whole job, not the workflow
A client does not buy 14 nodes. They buy a working thing that keeps working. My quote starts from five blocks:
- Discovery. What the process actually does today, who answers when it fails. I default to 3 hours.
- Build hours by complexity. Simple workflow, one trigger and one or two actions: 4 hours. Medium, several branches, error paths, a sheet or database in the loop: 8 hours. Complex, multiple systems, retries, custom code: 16 hours.
- Migration. Moving existing logic into n8n. I default to 6 hours, because there is always an ugly spreadsheet.
- Hand-over. Accounts in the client's name, credentials rotated, a short runbook. 3 hours.
- Testing buffer. 25 percent on top, stated as its own line. If I do not need it I say so afterwards. That line builds more trust than a discount.
Worked example with those defaults, one simple and one medium workflow:
| Block | Hours |
|---|---|
| Build (1 simple + 1 medium) | 12 |
| Discovery | 3 |
| Migration | 6 |
| Hand-over | 3 |
| Buffer (25%) | 6 |
| Total | 30 |
At $50 per hour that is a $1,500 project price. Change the rate and the hours for your own market. The point is the shape: the workflow itself is less than half the job.
The retainer is a separate product
Every seasoned answer in those threads separates the build from the month after. Practitioner consensus from the most substantive thread on running costs:
- Maintenance is 1 to 2 hours per client per month on a mature setup, more in the first 90 days. I default to 1.5 hours. At $50 per hour that is $75 per month before hosting.
- Hosting is cheap and should not be your margin. A $6-12 VPS carries 5-10 small clients, so about $1.33 per client per month on an $8 box shared across six. A dedicated instance for one client is around $24 per month.
- The client owns the instance and the billing once you hand over. The top-scored advice is blunt: you never get paid once and then keep paying for the client's compute out of your own pocket.
- A flat $50-150 per month per client for reliability and maintenance is a common working pattern. You are charging for the pager, not the hours.
Variable costs go on the client's account, with a cap
AI calls, OCR, SMS, enrichment APIs. These compound. One practitioner in that same thread reports teams that budget $30 per month and hit $300 in month two when per-call volume grows. Two rules from the threads handle this:
- Run the workflow on the client's own API accounts. Estimate their token use from real traffic, not from your demo data.
- Split fixed costs (hosting, monitoring, support time) from variable costs, and set a monthly usage cap per workflow. Over the cap means a conversation, not a surprise invoice.
The same discipline applies to AI features specifically: measure what the workflow consumes before you quote the retainer. I wrote a separate piece on measuring what n8n AI workflows cost with a ledger pattern for exactly that.
What the quote must say
From the pricing thread where this is spelled out best:
- What maintenance includes: fixes, monitoring, updates, and how many hours.
- What it excludes: new features are a new project, priced separately.
- A hosting pattern people recognize: 3 months free, then a fixed amount per month per workflow.
- Contract length: 6-12 months is normal, longer is better for both sides.
- Hand-over terms: everything created in the client's name, so leaving is clean.
An ambiguous quote is a future argument. One page, includes, excludes, cap, term.
The calculator
I turned this model into a free tool: the n8n client price calculator. Every default you see above is an editable field, the totals use only the numbers on the page, and it runs entirely in your browser. It also builds the include/exclude checklist for the quote. It is the same stance as my other calculators: honest arithmetic, no signup, nothing sent anywhere.
If you deliver automation to clients for a living and want a head start, I sell a ready-made client-delivery kit: seven production-shaped n8n workflows with demo data, import checks and validation transcripts, for EUR 29. You charge the client; the kit saves you the build hours. Details on the Vlotstroom hub and the store page.
All practitioner figures in this post come from public r/n8n threads, linked above. The hours and rates are defaults, not truths. Edit them until they match your market, then defend the shape.
Top comments (0)