n8n Cloud pricing is one click away, but the cost of self-hosting it —the option almost everyone ends up choosing— doesn't appear on any official table. Hosting n8n costs between USD 5 and 60 per month in infrastructure depending on your volume: USD 5-8 for personal use on a basic VPS, USD 12-25 for a small business with workflows in production, and USD 40-60 for a serious operation with a dedicated database and queue mode. The number the pricing page doesn't show is maintenance: 2 to 4 hours a month that, outsourced, add USD 80-200. Here's the full breakdown so you can budget without surprises.
What resources n8n actually needs
n8n is lightweight: the base process consumes around 300-500 MB of RAM at idle. What defines how much server you need isn't the number of saved workflows but how many simultaneous executions you have and how much data each one moves. Processing a webhook with a 2 KB JSON payload is nothing; transforming a CSV with 100,000 rows or manipulating PDFs does consume resources.
Practical references by monthly volume:
| Volume | Executions/month | vCPU | RAM | Database |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal / testing | up to 5,000 | 1 | 1-2 GB | SQLite (default) |
| Small business in production | 5,000 - 50,000 | 2 | 4 GB | PostgreSQL on the same VPS |
| Serious operation | 50,000+ | 4 | 8 GB | Dedicated PostgreSQL + queue mode |
Two tips that prevent painful migrations: move to PostgreSQL the moment the project gets serious (SQLite degrades with a large execution history), and configure automatic history pruning (EXECUTIONS_DATA_MAX_AGE) from day one — 80% of the "my n8n got slow" cases that reach us are databases bloated with months of execution logs.
The three setups, with concrete pricing
Hobby setup: USD 5-8/month
A VPS with 1-2 vCPU and 2 GB, Docker, SQLite, HTTPS with Caddy or Traefik. Enough to learn, for personal automations, and to validate a use case before investing. On Hetzner the entry plan (2 vCPU, 4 GB) costs ~USD 5; on DigitalOcean, the 2 GB droplet runs USD 12.
Small business setup: USD 12-25/month
2 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM, PostgreSQL on the same server, automatic volume backups (+20% of the VPS cost with most providers), your own domain, and basic uptime monitoring. It's the sweet spot for companies running 10-40 business workflows: collections, leads, reports, WhatsApp.
Serious production setup: USD 40-60/month
For high volume or critical workflows: 4 vCPU / 8 GB, separately managed PostgreSQL (USD 15-20), n8n in queue mode with separate workers (webhooks always respond, even when heavy executions are queued), backups with retention, and error alerts. If your business goes down when n8n goes down, this is your floor.
Hetzner vs DigitalOcean vs local providers
| Provider | 2 vCPU / 4 GB approx. | Location | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | USD 5-6/month | Germany, Finland, US | Unbeatable on price/resources | No datacenter in LATAM, support in English only |
| DigitalOcean | USD 24/month | US and others (no LATAM) | Ecosystem, snapshots, documentation | 3-4x Hetzner's price |
| Vultr | USD 18-24/month | Has São Paulo | Datacenter in South America | Mid-to-high price |
| Local (DonWeb, etc.) | USD 15-30/month | Argentina | Local invoice in pesos, support in Spanish | Fewer resources per dollar |
The good news: for automations, datacenter latency is almost irrelevant. Your workflows talk to APIs (Mercado Pago, Meta, Google) that are in the US anyway; the webhook taking 150 ms longer to reach Germany changes nothing. Choose by price and reliability, not by proximity — unless you need local invoicing or in-country data residency for compliance.
Not sure which setup matches your volume? Book 30 minutes with us and we'll size the exact server for your case, free.
The hidden cost: maintenance
This is where "n8n is free" becomes relative. A self-hosted n8n in production requires, every month:
- Updates: n8n ships new versions almost weekly; staying 6 months behind means unapplied security patches and a riskier future migration.
- Monitoring: someone has to find out when a workflow fails or the disk fills up, before the customer does.
- Verified backups: a backup you've never tested restoring is not a backup.
- Incidents: an API that changed, an expired certificate, a container that won't start.
In total: 2-4 hours a month in stable operation. If someone internal with a technical profile does it, it's part of their role. If you don't have that person, outsourcing it costs USD 80-200 a month — and it's still cheaper than a collections incident on a Friday night. This maintenance is part of what we include in our AI automation projects: implementation plus operation, with a fixed monthly fee.
The real monthly number, all in
| Scenario | Infrastructure | Maintenance | Realistic total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | USD 5-8 | You do it | USD 5-8 |
| Small business | USD 12-25 | USD 80-150 outsourced | USD 90-175 |
| Serious production | USD 40-60 | USD 150-200 | USD 190-260 |
Even in the most expensive scenario, an operation with 50,000+ monthly executions pays less self-hosted than on any equivalent cloud plan. The details of that comparison —and the exact point where it crosses over— we cover in n8n Cloud vs self-hosted; this article gives you the "how much does the server cost" side, that one helps you decide whether the server is your path.
When self-hosting is NOT worth it (even if it's cheaper)
- There's no technical person or partner: if a failed update leaves you without collections for three days, that USD 40/month saving was extremely expensive.
- You run fewer than ~2,000 executions per month: n8n Cloud's entry plan (USD 24) takes the problem off your hands for less than a VPS + your time.
- Your team is maxed out: the "nobody-watches-it" server is the classic project that works perfectly until it stops working at the worst possible moment.
If you still want self-hosted control without operating the server, that middle ground exists: we set it up on your infrastructure (or one you contract under your name) and maintain it for you. The technical step-by-step for the installation is in how to install self-hosted n8n with Docker, and if the installation needs to connect with your own systems, that's where our API development team comes in.
Budget it properly, just once
The final math is simple: infrastructure (USD 5-60) + maintenance (0 to USD 200) + the initial implementation of the workflows, which is where the real value lives. A perfect server with poorly designed workflows saves nothing.
At Deepyze we size the server, install n8n with the complete production configuration —Postgres, backups, monitoring, HTTPS— and build the workflows your operation needs, with a fixed price closed before we start. Proposal in 24 hours, a team in your time zone, and custom software when the project exceeds what n8n should solve. Tell us about your case and we'll send you the exact number for your volume.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to host n8n per month?+
Infrastructure alone runs between USD 5 and 60 per month depending on volume: a basic USD 5-8 VPS is enough for personal use, a small business needs USD 12-25, and a serious operation with a dedicated database and workers lands around USD 40-60. On top of that, you have to add maintenance.
How much RAM does n8n need?+
n8n boots with 512 MB, but in practice we recommend 2 GB as a floor for real use and 4 GB for a small business running several active workflows. Memory spikes come from processing large files or many items per execution, not from the number of saved workflows.
Which VPS is better for n8n, Hetzner or DigitalOcean?+
Hetzner has the best price-to-resources ratio (from ~USD 5 for 2 vCPU and 4 GB), ideal if latency to Europe or the US doesn't affect you. DigitalOcean costs 2-3 times more for the same resources but has a better ecosystem and documentation. For automated workflows, server latency barely matters.
Is self-hosted n8n really free?+
The community license is free with no execution limit, but hosting it has real costs: the VPS (USD 5-60/month), backups, and above all maintenance: updates, monitoring, and incident resolution, which adds up to 2-4 hours a month or USD 80-200 if you outsource it.
Want this working in your company?
At Deepyze we turn manual processes into systems that work on their own: AI automation, web and mobile apps, and custom software. Tell us your case and you will have a concrete proposal within 24 hours.
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