n8n vs Make pricing and hosting for European teams

n8n vs Make comes down to workflow design and hosting. n8n counts whole executions; Make generally counts module actions. Longer workflows can favour n8n, while short, event-driven workflows may favour Make. Self-hosting adds server costs and maintenance.

In brief

n8n generally bills a complete workflow execution, while Make generally bills module actions as credits. Some Make modules are unbilled and some AI features consume more credits. Batching can reduce execution counts but does not establish a price saving by itself. n8n Community Edition avoids a cloud execution allowance while adding hosting and maintenance work; paid self-hosted plans have their terms. Managed hosting still leaves the buyer responsible for configuration, contracts and the data they process.

n8n vs Make plans, cloud, free and self-hosted

n8n’s pricing page has an oddity. The self-hosted Community Edition has no execution cap. The hosted plans with a published price stop at 10,000 executions a month on Pro. The plan above that, Business at €667 a month on annual billing for 40,000 executions, is listed as self-hosted only, with a waitlist for a version n8n would host. The free route and the most expensive public route both end with a server that someone at your company runs.

Make has the opposite problem. It’s sold as a managed service, so there’s no server to run, yet Make’s GDPR page describes sub-processors, standard contractual clauses and a Celonis, Inc. registration under the Data Privacy Framework. A team that picks Make to avoid infrastructure work takes on vendor assessment instead.

n8n executions vs Make credits, how billing works

n8n’s pricing page defines an execution as one complete run of a workflow, whatever the number of steps or the volume of data in it. Starter is €20 a month on annual billing for 2,500 executions and Pro is €50 for 10,000, with unlimited users and workflows on every plan. For Business and Enterprise, n8n lists overage at €4,000 for each extra 300,000 executions and says runs continue when a quota is exceeded.

Make bills in credits. According to Make’s pricing FAQ, reading, searching, creating, updating, deleting and transforming data each cost one credit per action, as does iterating a row, while the Router and the error-handler modules (Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit and Ignore) cost nothing. Features that use Make’s AI Provider can cost more than one credit. Our Zapier vs Make vs n8n vs Gumloop pricing comparison recorded Core at $12 a month for 10,000 credits and Pro at $21 on 14 October.

When credits run out on Make, scenarios stop. Incoming webhooks queue up to the plan’s allowance and run once credits are added, and extra credits are sold in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000 at the price in the subscription.

The table draws on the n8n pricing page and the Make pricing and GDPR pages, checked 14 October 2026. Prices are annual billing figures where the vendor page defaults to them.

Batch vs event workflows, 30 or 15,000 n8n executions

The billing unit decides which architecture is cheap. Take a support triage job that handles 500 tickets a day, with five module actions per ticket (read, classify, draft, write back, notify).

On Make that is 2,500 credits a day, or about 75,000 a month at one credit per action, whether the tickets arrive in one nightly batch or one at a time. On n8n a nightly batch is one execution a day, about 30 a month, which sits inside Starter’s 2,500. If each ticket starts a separate run from a webhook, n8n counts 500 executions a day, about 15,000 a month, which is above the 10,000 on Pro’s published listing.

The same job therefore costs 30 executions or 15,000 depending on how it’s triggered, while Make’s count stays at 75,000. Routing decisions are free on Make, so a Router that sends most records down an empty path spends credits only on the records that need work. Our guide to workflow automation cost per run shows how to count this for your flows.

Industry Contents calculated these figures from the vendors’ published counting rules. They’re illustrative and exclude model charges.

AI steps add costs neither unit covers

n8n’s Starter plan lists agents, MCP and AI nodes, plus AI models that run without an API key. Those features change costs once a workflow calls a model several times. The same page caps a single execution at five minutes on Starter and 40 minutes on Pro, so an agent loop could reach the time limit before it reaches the 2,500 execution cap. On n8n an agent loop still counts as one execution, which keeps the platform fee flat while the model bill arrives separately. Ask n8n where the models that run without an API key are hosted before sending personal data through them.

Make’s FAQ says features that use its AI Provider can consume more than one credit. When a team supplies a model key on either platform, the model provider bills tokens separately and neither platform’s fee covers that. Price the model line beside the platform line before comparing totals.

n8n vs Make hosting and European data checks

n8n says data on its hosted plans is stored in Frankfurt, Germany, and that on self-hosted plans it sits wherever the customer hosts it, according to its pricing FAQ. Self-hosting therefore moves processing inside the company’s perimeter and moves the obligations with it. Saved executions exist so users can inspect and debug runs, which means they can hold the data a run handled. The pricing page lists seven days of execution log retention on Starter, 30 on Pro and unlimited on Enterprise.

The outbound connections need a decision too. The n8n deployment docs show anonymous telemetry and version notifications switched on by default, and workflow templates loading from n8n’s API. Turning telemetry off also disables the Ask AI feature in the Code node. Self-hosted Business and Enterprise licence keys must report to n8n’s licence server every day, including the number of production executions, according to the pricing FAQ. In our reading a data protection officer would want those connections either switched off or listed in the record of processing.

Agencies need to check the licence. n8n’s Sustainable Use License allows use and modification only for internal business purposes or non-commercial use, and allows distribution only free of charge for non-commercial purposes. A consultancy running workflows for clients on Community Edition should read it before building a service on top.

Make’s route is a contract. Its GDPR page describes a privacy programme run by Celonis, with an external data protection officer for Celonis SE, and links a data processing agreement and sub-processor list from its terms page. It says Celonis, Inc. is registered to the Data Privacy Framework and cites standard contractual clauses for sub-processors in countries without an EU adequacy decision. A hosted tool needs an Article 28 agreement and an entry in the record of processing, and the sub-processor list is where a transfer review starts. A third-party directory, European Purpose, says customers choose an EU data centre when they create a Make organisation. Make’s GDPR page doesn’t state that, so confirm the region in the account before loading personal data. Our AI agent privacy and approval checklist covers the approval questions that apply to either tool once agents are involved.

Limits of the self-hosting case

Self-hosting’s saving is on the invoice. Third-party reviews put server costs between about $6 a month for a small VPS (Toolradar) and $150 for a production setup (SyncGTM), before engineering time. ShadowGen, an automation consultancy writing on Automation Atlas, calls the choice between self-hosted and cloud a staffing question more than a pricing one. A ten-person team with no platform engineer may find that n8n Cloud at €20 to €50 a month on Frankfurt hosting, or Make, meets its GDPR needs without anyone patching a server.

The execution advantage has a limit too. It exists when work is batched or when a workflow has many steps per run. A team that triggers one run per event pays for events, and Starter’s 2,500 executions cover about 83 events a day.

n8n describes its telemetry as anonymous and its licence ping as usage data. Industry Contents didn’t test what either sends.

Matching each tool to the buyer

For a risk or legal lead, self-hosted n8n keeps processing on infrastructure the company controls and brings retention settings, patching, outbound connections and licence terms with it. Make keeps those with the vendor and replaces them with a processor agreement, a sub-processor list and a transfer review.

An operations lead should start with the trigger pattern. Batch-heavy or many-step workflows favour n8n’s per-run unit. Short event-driven workflows favour Make’s per-action unit, provided they stay short. Both buyers end up asking who in the company can run the server or sign the agreement.

n8n’s paid ladder ends in a licence key that reports usage to n8n every day, and Make’s ends in a vendor file with sub-processors attached. Each puts a different name in the record of processing. Your company needs to identify who answers for the workflow before comparing invoices.

Method

Industry Contents read the vendors’ pricing, licence, documentation and privacy pages on 14 October 2026 and applied their counting rules to one illustrative workload. We didn’t run either tool, time executions or review the vendors’ data processing agreements. This isn’t legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

Is n8n cheaper than Make?

It depends on how workflows are triggered. n8n counts complete executions, so batching and long workflows may improve its economics, depending on the plan and other costs. Make counts a credit per action, so short event-driven workflows can cost less there. In the example above a nightly batch is 30 executions on n8n against 75,000 credits on Make, while one run per ticket is 15,000 executions against the same 75,000 credits.

Is n8n GDPR compliant?

n8n says hosted data is stored in Frankfurt and self-hosted data stays wherever the customer hosts it. Compliance still depends on configuration and contracts, including retention settings, telemetry and, on hosted plans, the agreement signed with n8n.

Can Make be self-hosted?

The European Purpose directory describes Make as a managed service only, and Industry Contents found no self-hosted edition on Make’s pricing page. n8n’s Community Edition is the self-hostable option.

Is n8n free for business use?

The Community Edition is free to self-host for a company’s internal business purposes under the Sustainable Use License. Hosted plans start at €20 a month on annual billing, and the self-hosted Business plan lists at €667 a month on annual billing.

Sources

• n8n pricing and FAQ, n8n licence file and n8n deployment variables, checked 14 October 2026.
• Make pricing and FAQ and Make privacy and GDPR page, checked 14 October 2026.
• Third-party sources, not independently verifiedEuropean Purpose, Toolradar, SyncGTM and Automation Atlas.

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