n8n offers five plans with clear feature differentiation: the free
self‑hosted Community Edition for unlimited unrestricted prototyping;
Cloud Starter (€20/month or $24/month) and Cloud Pro (€50/month or
$60/month) for hassle‑free managed hosting; and two enterprise‑grade
tiers—Business (€667/month, billed annually, self‑hosted) and Enterprise
(custom pricing)—that unlock RBAC, SSO, Log Streaming, external secrets,
queue mode, and dedicated support SLAs. Below is a complete feature‑by‑
feature breakdown to inform your choice.
[1]
[2]
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How does the deployment model differ across n8n plans?

Community Edition is always self‑hosted via npm, Docker, or Kubernetes,
requiring users to provision servers, manage SSL, and configure databases
and Redis individually. Cloud Starter and Pro are fully managed by n8n—
no setup, no server maintenance, and automatic updates. Business is
self‑hosted only, while Enterprise offers hosted or self‑hosted options.
[1]

Cloud plans eliminate DevOps overhead entirely: n8n manages PostgreSQL,
backups, scaling, and TLS certificates. The trade‑off is execution caps
and reduced configuration flexibility. For deployment walkthroughs of
each model, see the
self‑hosting security guide
and related
first workflow tutorial.

What execution and scaling limits are imposed by n8n plans?

Cloud Starter provides 2,500 executions per month with 5 concurrent
executions and 320 MiB memory per run. Cloud Pro increases this to
10,000 executions, 20 concurrent executions, and 640 MiB (with Pro‑2
offering 1,280 MiB). Only Business and Enterprise unlock Queue Mode—
backed by Redis—for distributing workloads across multiple workers.
[1]
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Community Edition has no execution limits by license, but scales only as
far as your hardware permits—typically constrained by CPU cores and RAM
unless you configure Queue Mode manually. For a typical $20–150/month VPS,
you can run thousands of executions without cap
[3].
Enterprise pushes to 200+ concurrent executions with environment scaling
to dev, staging, and production. For detailed scaling internals of Queue
Mode, see the
n8n architecture guide.

Which n8n plans support SSO, SAML, LDAP, and RBAC?

SSO (SAML and LDAP) and RBAC are exclusively available on the Business
and Enterprise plans—neither Community nor Cloud Starter/Pro include them.
The Business plan supports SAML integration with identity providers like
Okta, Azure AD, and Auth0, while Enterprise adds Custom Project Roles
with granular permissions for workflows, credentials, and variables.
[1]
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Enterprise SSO user provisioning automatically syncs user accounts from
the identity provider—when someone joins the organisation, they appear
in n8n with the correct role; when they leave, access is revoked. For
a complete setup walkthrough and the required
N8N_EDITOR_BASE_URL callback, refer to our
n8n security hub.

How does Enterprise log streaming send n8n events to Datadog or Splunk?

Log streaming—exclusive to the Enterprise plan—sends n8n execution events,
audit logs, and user activities to external monitoring platforms via
Settings → Log Streaming → Add new destination. Supported targets include
Datadog, Splunk, and the ELK stack, providing centralised observability
alongside your existing infrastructure alerting pipelines.
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Enterprise buyers also gain 365 days of insights retention with hourly
granularity. For compliance‑heavy industries, this satisfies archival
requirements that lower tiers cannot meet. See our
DevOps monitoring guide
for end‑to‑end observability patterns.

How do shared projects and collaboration features scale across n8n plans?

Cloud Starter includes 1 shared project with unlimited members; Pro
expands to 3 shared projects with admin roles and 30 days of workflow
history. Business provides 6 projects, RBAC with project admins/editors/
viewers, and Git‑based version control with workflow diffs. Enterprise
tops out at unlimited projects with custom role definitions.
[1]

Community Edition has no RBAC layer—any user with instance access can
edit any workflow. For securing your self‑hosted instance against this
gap, combine the
self‑hosting security guide
with an external identity layer. For further reading, the
credential security guide
covers how credentials map into project‑scoped access.

How does the Enterprise external secret store integrate with AWS and Vault?

Enterprise enables External Secret Store integration
under Settings → External Secrets, supporting AWS Secrets Manager, Azure
Key Vault, GCP Secrets Manager, Infisical, and HashiCorp Vault. You
configure a vault provider, enter its credentials, and then reference
secrets in credential fields using {{$vault.secret.path}}
syntax.
[10]
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This feature decouples secrets from n8n’s database entirely—ideal for
SOC2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA compliance workloads. Combined with Log
Streaming for audit trails and SSO for access control, Enterprise
provides the governance layer required in regulated environments. For
detailed step‑by‑step vault configuration, refer to
credential security.