n8n vs Activepieces pricing

n8n bills by execution, and an execution is one run of a whole workflow, regardless of how many steps that run touches. According to n8n's pricing page, every plan includes unlimited users, workflows and integrations, so the meter is the only variable that scales with activity. A workflow with twelve nodes and a workflow with two nodes each consume one execution per trigger firing. That makes the count predictable from trigger volume: a webhook that fires 5,000 times a month consumes 5,000 executions, whatever the flow does inside. Before choosing a tier, ask n8n to confirm how the counting applies to your flows, including sub-workflows, retries and error handling, since those patterns change how often a trigger leads to a run.

Activepieces meters credits against a monthly allowance, and the Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month and up to 5 users, per its pricing page. Credit burn depends on which pieces run and how many steps a flow takes, so two flows triggered equally often can cost very different amounts. The practical check is to build your three or four most important flows on the Free plan, run them at realistic volume, and record the credits each run consumes. Confirm with Activepieces how credits are assigned to each piece and step type, and whether AI or MCP steps are metered differently, because those details are not settled by the headline allowance alone.

The two units are not directly comparable, so a side-by-side figure of executions against credits will mislead. One n8n execution can contain many steps that would each cost Activepieces credits, while a single Activepieces credit may map to a very small action. Model your own flows instead: list each workflow, its trigger frequency per month, its step count and the pieces it uses, then price that load under each vendor's current plan. Keep the self-hosting side of the bill in the same model, since the free community editions still carry infrastructure, database and operations effort, and the paid features you need, such as SSO, may decide the tier before volume does.

Both self-hosted Community editions cost nothing to license, but the infrastructure around them is a bill you pay yourself. For n8n, the Community edition is free to self-host under the Sustainable Use License, while the database, Redis, backups, upgrades and monitoring fall to your team or your partner. For Activepieces, the MIT-licensed Community Edition carries the same pattern: the automation core is free, and the hosting, storage, patching and monitoring are yours. The one-time cost is the initial build of that stack and its runbooks. The recurring cost is the people who keep it current, the compute it runs on and the backups you test. Ask any quote to separate these lines explicitly.

For n8n in queue mode, the stack is larger than a single process. The main instance handles triggers and webhooks and passes executions through Redis to workers that read and write workflow data in PostgreSQL, so you provision and operate all three tiers. Every worker and webhook processor must receive the main instance's encryption key so it can read stored credentials, which makes key distribution and rotation a recurring operational task to plan for. Multi-main high availability, which runs several main instances, is restricted to Enterprise self-hosted deployments. If your availability target depends on it, the license cost moves from zero to a paid Enterprise license, and that decision belongs in the comparison before you size the infrastructure.

Activepieces recommends self-hosting with Docker Compose using PostgreSQL and Redis, and it offers a Helm chart for Kubernetes. Community-maintained hosting templates usually ship the Community edition, so a template that deploys quickly may not include the audit logs, Git sync, SCIM or external secret managers that the pricing page places in the Ultimate plan. Before you commit to a template, confirm with Activepieces which features the deployment includes, and confirm the same for any n8n template with SSO or Git environments, since those sit in the Business and Enterprise plans. Your quote should state which paid features are required, who installs and patches the stack, and what support window applies.

Pricing should decide the shortlist only when the workload, the licensing position and the feature needs are already settled. If you are a small internal team that needs a self-hosted automation core, the free Community editions of both tools may cover the work, and the paid question becomes which features you truly need. Under n8n's pricing page, the free self-hosted Community edition is paired with paid plans that add SSO, LDAP, Git environments and log streaming in Business and Enterprise. Under Activepieces' pricing page, SSO starts at the Team plan, while audit logs, Git sync, SCIM and external secret managers are listed for Ultimate. Map each feature you require against the tier that includes it, then compare totals only for the tier that actually passes your controls review.

Licensing can outweigh price, and it should be checked before any quote is signed. n8n is licensed under the Sustainable Use License, which allows use and modification only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. That limits commercial use and embedding in a product you sell, and files with .ee in their name require a valid n8n Enterprise License. Activepieces' community edition is MIT licensed, but the enterprise features in packages/ee are under a commercial license. Ask legal to confirm whether your intended use is internal, customer-facing or embedded, because a cheaper plan does not help if the use case falls outside the license.

Treat AI features, integrations, deployment and the cost of switching as factors that can outweigh a lower monthly figure. Activepieces lists more than 280 pieces and says they can be used as MCP servers with LLM clients, and n8n advertises more than 1,500 integrations and counts an execution as one run of a whole workflow. Check how each platform bills your expected volume, and confirm the integrations you rely on are present and maintained. Also ask who pays for the self-hosting work, the database, Redis and upgrades, and what migrating workflows later would cost. For the full side-by-side view, read our overall n8n vs Activepieces comparison.