Building n8n workflows for clients is free. Hosting those clients' workflows and credentials on an instance you operate is not. That single distinction is the whole licensing question for automation agencies, and n8n's own help center states it plainly: if your role is limited to helping clients set up their own internal instances, no commercial license is required on your part — but if you host and manage your clients' workflows and credentials inside your own n8n instance, an Enterprise license is required. Community Edition being free software doesn't change that. The software is free; monetizing the runtime on behalf of other companies is the thing you have to pay for.
We run 200+ production workflows for clients, so this isn't academic for us. It's an architecture decision we make on every onboarding call, and it's the question agency owners ask us most often once they get past "self-hosted or cloud."
The one sentence in the license that decides everything
n8n ships under the Sustainable Use License, not MIT or Apache. It's source-available, not open source, and the difference is one clause. The license grants you the free right to "use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use."
Everything hinges on what "internal business purposes" means, and n8n defines it in the license documentation: all use is allowed unless you are selling a product, service, or module in which the value derives entirely or substantially from n8n functionality.
Read that second half slowly, because it's the trap. It doesn't say "unless you make money." It says unless the thing you sell is substantially made of n8n. An ecommerce brand automating its order flow is making money with n8n and is squarely inside the free license. An agency selling "automation as a service" on a shared instance is selling something whose value derives substantially from n8n functionality, and is not.
n8n's docs list two examples explicitly as not allowed: white-labeling n8n and offering it to your customers for money, and hosting n8n and charging people money to access it.
What you're free to do (more than most agencies assume)
The good news is that the free license covers most of what an automation agency actually sells. No paid agreement is needed for any of this:
- Building workflows for clients. n8n permits commercial consulting and support services outright. You can charge whatever you want to design, build, and debug a client's automations.
- Building custom nodes for clients. Same category. We've shipped custom n8n Hyros nodes for attribution pipelines under exactly this provision.
- Running your own agency's internal automations. Lead routing, reporting, onboarding, invoicing, your own content pipeline — all internal business purposes, all free, no execution cap on Community Edition.
- Helping a client stand up and administer their own instance. You can have admin access to their server. You can run their upgrades. The instance is theirs; you're the contractor.
- Migrating a client off Zapier or Make onto their own n8n. The whole Zapier and Make migration is billable consulting work.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Most agencies that panic about licensing discover they were already compliant — they just needed to move one thing.
The three situations that require you to pay
1. You host client workflows and credentials on your instance. This is the big one, and it's the default architecture most agencies drift into because it's operationally easier. One server, a project or folder per client, their API keys stored in your credential vault. n8n's help center calls for an Enterprise license here in exactly those words. The tell isn't whether you charge per execution — it's whose credentials live on a machine you operate and monetize.
2. You embed n8n inside a product you sell. If your users click buttons in your app and n8n executes underneath, that's a white-labeled Embed license, a different SKU entirely. This is the SaaS founder's path, not the agency's, though plenty of agencies stumble into it the moment they productize a client build.
3. You resell access to the canvas. Giving clients logins to your instance and billing them monthly for it is "hosting n8n and charging people money to access it" — the exact phrasing the docs use for what's prohibited. Doesn't matter that you call it a retainer.
There's a fourth case people argue about: the agency that hosts client workflows but never gives the client access, bills a flat monthly retainer, and calls it a managed service. That's still case one. The license language is about hosting the workflows and credentials, not about who logs in. If a client's automations and secrets live on your box and you invoice for it, price an Enterprise agreement.
What it costs, and why the number isn't the point
n8n Cloud starts around €20/month annually for the Starter tier and roughly €50/month for Pro, both metered by workflow executions — one execution is one full workflow run regardless of how many nodes it contains, which is why n8n stays cheap for complex builds compared to step-billed tools. Enterprise is quote-based, and it lands well above both. Check the n8n pricing page for current numbers rather than trusting any blog post, ours included.
But the price comparison most agencies run is the wrong one. They compare "free Community Edition" against "Enterprise quote" and conclude the license is unaffordable. The real comparison is Enterprise against each client licensing their own instance — which is often cheaper, is always compliant, and shifts the infrastructure line item off your P&L and onto theirs. A client paying €20–€50/month for their own instance is a rounding error inside a four-figure retainer, and they own the asset. We've never had a client refuse.
The margin math for shared instances is real and we've written about it in detail in our self-hosted vs cloud breakdown for agencies. Just don't let the margin argument quietly make the licensing decision for you.
The architecture that keeps you compliant by default
Here's what we actually do, and it takes about fifteen extra minutes per client at onboarding:
- The client owns the instance. Their VPS or their n8n Cloud account, their billing card, their license. We get admin access.
- Their credentials never leave their instance. One client's API keys are never stored on a server that runs another client's work. This is also just good credential scoping practice — the licensing benefit is a bonus.
- We keep one internal instance for VIXI's own operations. Our lead routing, our reporting, our content pipeline. Fully internal, fully free, no ambiguity.
- The invoice says "automation development and support." Because that's what it is. It never says "platform access" or "per workflow run."
- Templates travel, runtime doesn't. Our library of reusable builds — the workflows every agency needs — gets imported into each client's instance. The IP is portable; the execution stays home.
The only real cost of this setup is that you administer more instances instead of one. That's a monitoring problem, not a licensing problem, and it's solvable with an uptime check per instance.
If you're already over the line
Don't panic and don't unplug anything. n8n has no license-enforcement telemetry, and nobody is coming to shut down your server on Tuesday. The exposure is commercial, not technical: it surfaces during a client's vendor security review, during acquisition diligence, or when an enterprise prospect asks for your license chain and you don't have one.
Two clean paths. Migrate clients onto their own licensed instances one at a time, starting with your largest account — a workflow export and a credential re-entry is usually an afternoon per client. Or, if the shared instance is genuinely the right architecture for the business you're building, email license@n8n.io, describe the setup honestly, and get a quote. They answer, and they're reasonable. The one option that ages badly is deciding to think about it after you sign the enterprise deal.
None of this is legal advice — I'm an agency owner, not a lawyer, and your situation may have wrinkles mine doesn't. But the license text is short, n8n's help center answers the agency case directly, and fifteen minutes of reading beats a surprise in diligence.
Get a free automation audit
If you're running client automations and you're not sure whether your instance architecture is compliant — or you want it structured correctly before you add client number ten — that's a conversation we have with agency owners most weeks. Get a free automation audit and we'll look at how your instances are laid out, where client credentials live, and what your invoices actually say, then tell you straight whether you're fine, whether you need to move a client, or whether it's time to price Enterprise. If the answer is "you're already compliant," we'll say that too.
Carlos Aragon is the founder of VIXI, an AI-first automation agency in Allen, TX (Dallas area), running 200+ production automation workflows on n8n. License terms summarized here are from n8n's published Sustainable Use License and help center as of August 2026; confirm your specific use case with license@n8n.io before you architect around it.