n8n
4.6
n8n is a workflow automation platform you connect node by node, and the one serious alternative to Zapier that you can run on your own servers. The AI nodes let a workflow call an LLM, hold a vector store and run an agent loop, so the same canvas covers both plumbing between SaaS tools and the agent that decides what to do next. Self-hosting is the reason most teams end up here: the data never leaves infrastructure you control.
- Commercial use OK
- Free tier
- Enterprise contract
- Pricing
- €20/mo〜
- Free tier
- Free tier
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Japanese UI
- Not confirmed
- Enterprise contract
- Available
What it is good for
- Teams that need automation but cannot send business data to a hosted service
- Engineers who want branching, loops and raw HTTP alongside prebuilt connectors
- Running AI agents on a schedule rather than in a chat window
- Replacing a pile of one-off scripts with something a colleague can read
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Self-hostable, so data residency and retention stay your decision
- Fair-code licence: free to run internally, including commercially
- Agent and vector-store nodes sit in the same canvas as the integrations
- Arbitrary JavaScript in a node when the prebuilt ones fall short
Trade-offs
- Fewer prebuilt connectors than Zapier, so niche SaaS often means raw HTTP
- Self-hosting is real operational work — upgrades, backups, queue workers
- The canvas gets hard to read once a workflow passes a few dozen nodes
Editors' review
The automation platform to pick when the data cannot leave your own servers
n8n covers the same ground as Zapier — move data between SaaS tools, react to a webhook, run on a schedule — but it is distributed under a fair-code licence and can be self-hosted. For a team that cannot send customer records or internal documents to a third-party automation vendor, that single property decides it.
The AI side is more than a bolt-on. An LLM node, a vector-store node and an agent node live in the same canvas as the HTTP and database nodes, so a workflow can retrieve from your own index, call a model and write the result back into a system of record without leaving the tool. That makes it a reasonable place to run small production agents, not just experiments.
The cost is operational. Running it yourself means upgrades, backups and queue workers, and the connector library is thinner than Zapier's, so less common services end up as hand-built HTTP calls. If nobody on the team wants to own a server, the hosted cloud plan removes that objection but also the main reason to choose n8n.
Verdict
Choose n8n when self-hosting matters or when workflows need real branching and code. If neither is true, Zapier will be quicker to live.
Compiled from official documentation and public sources, with our own editorial judgement. We do not publish figures we cannot source.