Why self host?

Self-hosting is an option for users using the community edition license or enterprise customers of n8n. For this set-up, the user needs to provide the resources for n8n to run - a computer, either as a physical device on a network or a remote instance in a public cloud.

This actually enables a lot of flexibility in terms of how your run n8n and what you use it for. For community edition users it enables a degree of flexibility not available on the cloud-hosted version, and of course as you are using your own resources rather than paying for a hosted account so there could be a cost saving. For enterprise users the advantages are more direct control over how n8n is run, how it's secured and what resources it has access to.

There are also some caveats though. Self-hosting n8n is only really recommended for people who have the skills, knowledge and experience of running web-based services. Although n8n is actually quite easy to install on your laptop, a home server or a cloud instance, it will be up to the user to configure, maintain and manage the resources that n8n uses. We do have plenty of guides and material to help though. Check out the install documentation for how to get started.