n8n

n8n (pronounced "n-eight-n") is a workflow automation tool: a node-based visual editor for connecting APIs, databases, and AI models, with the option to drop into JavaScript or Python for custom logic inside any workflow. It positions itself against Zapier and Make but differentiates on two things a buyer can verify: it can be self-hosted for free, and workflows can mix no-code nodes with actual code rather than being locked into whatever the vendor's node library supports. The GitHub repo has 201,373 stars and 60,249 forks (checked 2026-08-21), and n8n itself cites this as evidence of developer/technical-team adoption rather than end-user adoption.

n8n's core is released under the Sustainable Use License (SUL), a source-available license, not an OSI-approved open-source one. Per the license file in the repo: you may use, modify and self-host the software for your own internal business purposes or personal use, and may only redistribute it free of charge for non-commercial purposes — you cannot resell it as a competing hosted service. Separately, any file with '.ee.' in its name or directory is licensed under a distinct Enterprise Edition license and requires a paid n8n Enterprise license to use; these files are excluded from the SUL entirely. This matters for anyone planning to build a paid product on top of n8n, or who assumed 'GitHub stars + self-hostable' meant conventional open source (MIT/Apache).

Verified on n8n.io/pricing (2026-08-21, annual billing, EUR): Starter is €20/month for 2,500 workflow executions/month, 1 shared project, 5 concurrent executions, and 2,300 AI Workflow Builder credits; Pro is €50/month for 10,000 executions, 3 shared projects, 20 concurrent executions, and up to 13,700 AI credits; Business is €667/month for 40,000 executions, 6 shared projects, SSO/SAML/LDAP, Git-based version control, and separate dev/staging/prod environments — note Business is explicitly self-hosted, not cloud-hosted; Enterprise is custom-priced, available hosted or self-hosted, and adds unlimited shared projects, 200+ concurrent executions, external secrets integration, log streaming, and SLA support. All paid tiers include unlimited users and unlimited workflows — pricing scales on monthly executions and concurrency, not seats, which is a real point of difference from most per-user SaaS automation tools. The free Community Edition (self-hosted, no execution cap disclosed on the pricing page) covers core workflow building but not the Enterprise-only features listed above. A 'Start-up Plan' offers 50% off Business for companies under 20 employees.

The 'AI credits' included in each plan meter usage of n8n's own AI Workflow Builder (the assistant that generates or edits a workflow from a prompt) — they don't cover AI Agent nodes that call OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or other LLMs inside your workflows; those bill through your own API keys with those providers, separately from your n8n subscription.

n8n GmbH is based in Berlin. It raised a €55M Series B in March 2025 led by Highland Europe (with Sequoia, Felicis, HV Capital and Harpoon Ventures participating), at a reported €300M valuation, and a $180M Series C in October 2025 led by Accel with participation from Meritech, Redpoint, Evantic, Visionaries Club, and corporate investors including NVIDIA's NVentures and Deutsche Telekom's T.Capital, valuing the company at $2.5B and bringing total raised to $240M. The Series C announcement cites 6x user growth and 10x revenue growth over the prior year but does not disclose absolute ARR or user-count figures in that post; an earlier (March 2025) blog post put active users at over 200,000 and enterprise customers at 3,000+ — both are vendor claims, not independently verified.

n8n publishes a Trust Center (trust.n8n.io, via SafeBase) offering SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports, and a security page (n8n.io/legal/security) describing AES-256 encryption at rest on n8n Cloud (Azure-hosted), TLS in transit, quarterly third-party vulnerability scans, and required annual penetration testing; self-hosted deployments are explicitly the user's own responsibility for at-rest/in-transit encryption. Separately, GitHub's advisory database lists 157 published security advisories affecting the 'n8n' npm package as of 2026-08-21 (5 critical, 42 high, 53 medium in the most recent 100 alone), the large majority published between January and July 2026 — covering issues like SQL injection in the Postgres/MySQL/Snowflake nodes, RCE via prototype pollution in the expression sandbox, authorization bypasses in OAuth callbacks and MCP triggers, and credential leakage into LLM node execution data. All reviewed advisories carried GitHub-assigned CVEs and fix references to specific patched n8n versions; we found no evidence of unpatched, actively-exploited advisories in the sample checked. The high count reflects n8n's large surface area — hundreds of integration nodes, a code-execution sandbox, and credential handling across all of them — paired with an unusually fast release cadence (multiple point releases were published on 2026-08-20 alone).

n8n holds 4.7/5 across 301 reviews on G2 (g2.com/products/n8n/reviews, checked 2026-08-21) but only 3.2/5 ('Average') on Trustpilot (trustpilot.com/review/n8n.io, same date). Reading both: G2's technical-buyer audience rates the product itself highly, while Trustpilot's reviews — skewing toward newer or less technical users — more often cite a steep learning curve relative to Zapier, slow email-only support response times (particularly on the Starter plan), and billing/account-access frustrations. One Trustpilot review also described a phishing-related account takeover that n8n's support resolved with a full refund and a detailed audit trail, which is at least one data point on incident handling. The split is consistent with n8n's own positioning as a tool for technical teams rather than a drag-and-drop consumer product.

The GitHub repo shows continuous commit and release activity — multiple tagged releases were published on 2026-08-20, the day before this check, and the repo's most recent push was 2026-08-20T23:12 UTC. Monthly npm downloads for the core 'n8n' package were 461,688 for the period 2026-07-21 to 2026-08-19.