When a business first looks at n8n, it sees two messages at once: “starts at €20 on Cloud” and “self-hosted is free anyway.” Both are true and both are incomplete. The gap between them often determines a decision worth a few hundred dollars a year, and there was no Turkish-language article comparing the two with numbers, so we wrote one.
What Is the Real Price of n8n Cloud?
According to n8n's official pricing page (September 2026), there are four plans:
- Starter: €20/month (billed annually): 2,500 executions per month, 5 concurrent runs, 2,300 AI credits, forum support
- Pro: €50/month (billed annually): 10,000 executions per month, 20 concurrent runs, 13,700 AI credits
- Business: €667/month (billed annually): 40,000 executions per month, unlimited concurrent runs, includes a self-hosted option and email support
- Enterprise: Custom pricing, 200+ concurrent runs, dedicated support with an SLA
On all plans the number of users and workflows is unlimited; what you pay for is the number of executions and concurrency. Annual billing is roughly 17% cheaper than monthly.
Is Self-Hosted Really “Free”?
n8n Community Edition is an open-source version you can download from GitHub and install on your own server, and yes, you pay nothing for the software license. But when people say “free”, two cost items are usually left out:
- Server: A simple VPS to run n8n costs $5–20 a month. Managed self-hosting services (third-party providers such as PikaPods and InstaPods) cost $4–40 a month and do the setup for you.
- Maintenance: Updates, backups, security patches and incident response take someone's time. If your own team doesn't take this on, you have to buy it as an outside service, which can multiply the total monthly cost several times over the server fee alone.
So “self-hosted is free” holds if you set up the server yourself and maintain it yourself. If you hand this work to someone else, the real cost can end up far above the server fee.
Which Wins at Which Volume?
A rough break-even looks like this: if you stay under 2,500 executions a month, Cloud Starter (€20/month) is already the cheapest and lowest-effort option; at this volume the server plus maintenance cost of self-hosted usually comes out higher. As execution volume grows (especially for businesses that exceed Pro's 10,000 limit and hit it several times a month), the picture changes: for a team with the technical capacity to maintain it, self-hosted can save around $600–700 a year. But that saving rests on the assumption that the time of the person doing the maintenance is “free”, which is rarely true in a small business.
The KVKK and Data Sovereignty Dimension
Beyond cost there is also the data question. With a self-hosted setup your data stays on the server you choose, in Turkey if you like. On n8n Cloud, the data is processed on n8n's own infrastructure, which may require a data processing agreement and an assessment of transfers abroad. We covered this distinction in more detail in our KVKK-compliant automation article; if you are a business with highly sensitive customer data (such as healthcare, finance or law), this alone can tip the balance in favor of self-hosted.
A Practical Decision Framework
- How many executions do you expect per month? If under 2,500, start with Cloud Starter and scale up if needed.
- Is there someone to take on maintenance? If not, the “free”-looking side of self-hosted quickly turns into a managed service (and a real invoice).
- Where must the data stay? If your industry or contracts require a data location, look at self-hosted.
- Is speed or control the priority? Cloud is set up in minutes; self-hosted offers more flexibility but needs more initial setup effort.
Sources: n8n, Official Pricing Page
Let's work out which one suits you
We'll talk through your expected execution volume and data sensitivity and settle together whether Cloud or self-hosted makes more sense; we can also take on the setup and management.