Workflow automation · cost comparison
Make vs self-hosted n8n: what each actually costs
Make on the Core tier against n8n running on the smallest server that fits it. Every figure below is computed from the sizing model and the dated prices at the foot of this page, and includes the part most comparisons leave out: your own time.
At 10 people, Make is the cheaper option: $10.00 a month against $124 to run n8n yourself. Self-hosting this at this size buys you control, not savings.
- Make
- $10.00per month, Core
- Self-hosted
- $124server, backups and your time
- Server and backups
- $12.00Starter 2 GB, 2 GB RAM
- 36-month difference
- $4,572 extra to self-host
- Break-even
- neverafter $450 of setup time
The same comparison at every team size
Self-hosting has a floor and almost no slope, while per-seat software has no floor and a steep slope. That is the whole story, and it is why the answer flips somewhere in this table rather than being the same for everyone.
| Team size | Make | Self-hosted | Without valuing your time | Server needed | 36-month difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solo | $10.00 | $124 | $12.00 | Starter 2 GB (2 GB) | -$4,572 |
| 5 people | $10.00 | $124 | $12.00 | Starter 2 GB (2 GB) | -$4,572 |
| 10 people | $10.00 | $124 | $12.00 | Starter 2 GB (2 GB) | -$4,572 |
| 25 people | $10.00 | $124 | $12.00 | Starter 2 GB (2 GB) | -$4,572 |
| 50 people | $10.00 | $139 | $26.40 | Starter 4 GB (4 GB) | -$5,090 |
| 100 people | $10.00 | $139 | $26.40 | Starter 4 GB (4 GB) | -$5,090 |
| 250 people | $10.00 | $159 | $46.80 | Starter 8 GB (8 GB) | -$5,825 |
Self-hosting never comes out ahead at any team size on this page, once your time is priced in.
Where the self-hosted money actually goes at 10 people
| Line item | Per month | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Server | $10.00 | Starter 2 GB at VPSServer: 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB disk |
| Backups | $2.00 | Provider snapshots at 20% of the server price. Skipping this is not a saving, it is a bet. |
| Your time | $112 | 1.5 hours a month of updates, upgrades and the occasional broken thing, at $75 an hour |
| Total | $124 | Plus $450 once, for roughly 6 hours of first-time setup |
Make at this size costs $10.00 a month. Make Core is a flat $10.00 a month at this tier, independent of seat count.
What n8n needs to run at 10 people
The base figure covers a single main process with SQLite. Heavy workflow volume wants PostgreSQL and queue mode with separate workers, which roughly doubles the floor.
| Resource | Required | How it is derived |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | 1.5 GB | 1 GB for the stack at rest, plus 20 MB per active user, plus 25% headroom |
| Disk | 11 GB | 10 GB base, plus 0.1 GB per user |
| vCPU | 1 | The project's own baseline. For this workload memory runs out before the processor does. |
What you give up, stated plainly
- Uptime is now yours. Make has an operations team on call. Self-hosted, a failed upgrade at 18:00 on a Friday is your evening.
- Backups only exist if you test restoring them. The $2.00 line above buys snapshots, not a rehearsed recovery.
- n8n is a multi-container stack with a database you have to back up yourself. That is why the maintenance line is 1.5 hours a month rather than zero.
- Licensing: Source-available under the Sustainable Use Licence, not a classic open-source licence. Internal business use is permitted; reselling n8n as a service is not.
- Feature parity is never exact. n8n covers the core of what teams use Make for; the long tail of integrations and enterprise controls is where the gap shows.
We are not going to tell you to self-host this
At 10 people, Make wins on cost once your time is priced at $75 an hour. Self-hosting n8n here only makes sense for reasons that are not on the invoice: data residency, avoiding a vendor, or wanting to run the thing yourself. Those are real reasons. Saving money is not one of them at this size.
Where to put n8n
1.5 GB of memory and 11 GB of disk is what this needs at 10 people. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the Starter 2 GB at VPSServer for $10.00 a month.
We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Hetzner Cloud, Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and Hetzner in particular is usually cheaper per gigabyte of memory than anything quoted above. Price them yourself before you commit.
The VPSServer link above is an affiliate link, run through the same programme as our Kamatera link; VPSServer and Kamatera belong to the same group. If you sign up through it we may earn a commission, but the programme does not state an amount for VPSServer. That never changes the computed costs, which server is chosen, or the conclusion of this page. The sizing model and every price source are published in full.
n8n at a glance
| Licence | Other not a standard open-source licence |
|---|---|
| Written in | TypeScript |
| GitHub stars | 204,061, checked 2026-09-12 |
| Latest release | n8n@2.38.7 |
| Last commit | 2026-09-12 |
| Ships Docker images | Yes |
| Project | n8n.io · n8n-io/n8n |
Get the migration checklist for this tool
A one-page pre-flight list: data export path, sizing, backup plan, and the rollback step most people skip.
Every figure on this page, and where it came from
| Input | Value used | Source | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make Core | USD 10.00 per month | vendor pricing page | 2026-09-14 |
| VPSServer Starter 2 GB | $10.00 per month | provider pricing page | 2026-09-21 |
| Engineer time | $75 per hour | our published assumption | — |
| n8n sizing | 1 GB base, 20 MB per user | project documentation | — |
Prices move. If the vendor has changed theirs since 2026-09-14, the figures above are stale and the source links are the authority, not us. How we handle that.