16d • General discussion 💬
n8n Self-Hosted vs Cloud — Cost, Performance, and Control Trade-offs
I’ve been testing n8n in two setups recently: self-hosted and n8n Cloud — specifically from an AI agency perspective.
Here’s the honest breakdown 👇
1. Cost: predictable vs elastic
n8n Cloud
- Fixed monthly pricing
- No infra setup, no DevOps overhead
- You pay for convenience and reliability
Good if:
- You want predictable costs
- You’re running client workflows with clear volume limits
- You don’t want to think about servers at all
Self-Hosted n8n
- Infra cost (VPS, DB, storage, backups)
- Scales cheaper at high volume
- But costs shift from “subscription” → “engineering time”
Good if:
- You’re running heavy workflows (AI agents, scraping, batch jobs)
- You have technical capacity
- You want long-term cost efficiency at scale
👉 At low–medium usage, Cloud is cheaper.
👉 At high throughput, self-hosted wins — if you know what you’re doing.
2. Performance: stability vs tunability
Cloud
- Stable, managed environment
- Limited control over execution environment
- Performance is “good enough” for most use cases
Self-Hosted
- You control:
- You can optimize for:
In practice:
- Cloud = fewer surprises
- Self-hosted = higher ceiling, more responsibility
3. Control & security: this is the real differentiator
This is where the gap becomes very clear.
n8n Cloud
- Limited control over data locality
- Not ideal for:
Self-Hosted
- Full control over:
- Much easier to:
For agencies, this matters a lot.
Self-hosting turns n8n from “automation tool” into infrastructure you actually own.
4. Maintenance: invisible cost most people ignore
Self-hosting isn’t free just because the software is.
You’re responsible for:
- uptime
- backups
- updates
- monitoring
- security patches
If you ignore this, you’ll pay later — usually at the worst time.
Cloud removes this entire surface area.
Final take (practical recommendation)
If I had to simplify it:
- Use n8n Cloud when:
- Use Self-Hosted n8n when:
Cloud is great for execution.
Self-hosted is powerful for ownership.
For AI agencies especially, that distinction becomes more important over time.
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n8n Self-Hosted vs Cloud — Cost, Performance, and Control Trade-offs
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