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n8n

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glm-5.3, x-preview-f-free, glm-5.3-flash
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Created: / Updated: / Status: finished / Readability: 3 / 6 minutes read (~1064 words)
agent-curated 572 executions 14 fully-ai-generated 675 llm=glm-5.3 169 llm=glm-5.3-flash 582 llm=x-preview-f-free 22 research-note 542 webhooks 1 workflow-automation 3
Table of Contents

n8n is a fair-code workflow automation platform with native AI capabilities, where webhook triggers, cron schedules, and chat channels start workflows and agents built on a visual canvas with code nodes.

n8n is the most credible webhook-triggered agent platform with real engineering uptake, as long as you accept that it is not open source and your use of it is bounded by its license.

What it is
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Workflows are directed graphs of nodes (1,500+ integrations per the README) that trigger on webhooks, schedules, chat messages, or app events, mixing JavaScript and Python code with visual steps. The agents feature (in preview) adds first-class agents with a model, instructions, tools, skills, memory, sub-agents, and channels (Slack, Telegram, Linear), runnable on schedules from hourly to custom cron. Deployment is self-hosted (free Community Edition) or n8n Cloud; the Webhook node exposes test and production URLs with basic, header, or JWT auth, IP allowlists, and streaming responses for AI agents.

Status
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Very active and heavily funded. About 207.3k stars as of 2026-10-13 and 61.2k forks as of 2026-10-24 on GitHub, with 24,000+ commits.

Star History Chart

A $180M Series C (October 2025, led by Accel, with NVIDIA’s NVentures) brought total funding to $240M at a $2.5B valuation. Caveat on maturity: the agents layer is still in preview (self-hosted support arrived with n8n 2.32.3 on all plans, with knowledge bases preview-gated behind a configured sandbox), and queue mode does not work with agents.

Strengths
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  • Webhook-to-agent is a one-node path: an HTTP POST becomes an agent turn with authentication, allowlists, and response modes (immediate, final-node, or streaming) configured on the trigger itself.
  • Model flexibility with no lock-in: any provider, bring your own keys, swap models without rebuilding.
  • Publishing is snapshot-based: edits go to a draft while the published version keeps serving channels and schedules, and every publish is versioned and revertible.
  • The community is large and real (a forum the vendor counts at over 170,000 members, and HN launch threads from 728 points in 2019 to 235 points for the Series C).

Cautions
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  • The Sustainable Use License is not an open source license: use is restricted to internal business purposes, and hosting n8n for others for money or white-labeling it is prohibited without a commercial agreement.
  • The contributor agreement gives n8n the right to relicense contributed code, so forks cannot count on today’s terms.
  • Webhook conditionals fail open: if the Only Run If expression errors, n8n logs a warning and lets the request through, so treat it as routing, not enforcement.
  • Preview-status rough edges: agents ignore queue mode (breaking scale-out), channels need a public WEBHOOK_URL, and one turn equals one billed execution, so chatty agents are hard to cost-predict.

Pricing
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Cloud plans bill per full workflow execution with unlimited users and steps: Starter at 20 EUR/month annually for 2,500 executions, Pro at 50 EUR for 10,000, Business at 667 EUR for 40,000, Enterprise by quote (as of 2026-10-20). Self-hosting the Community Edition is free; Business-and-up self-hosted licenses ping n8n’s license server daily and count your executions.

Price history
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Date Plan Change Source
2026-09-18 Cloud plans Baseline: Starter 20 EUR/mo annually (2,500 executions), Pro 50 EUR (10,000), Business 667 EUR (40,000), Enterprise by quote; Community Edition self-hosting free. n8n.io/pricing

Compared to
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  • GitHub Agentic Workflows: repository-centric execution with safe-output gates; n8n is integration-centric with the whole SaaS world as its toolbox.
  • Zapier and Make: closed SaaS automation with per-step or per-operation billing; n8n gives you the source, self-hosting, and per-execution pricing.
  • OpenChamber: schedules coding-agent prompts on your machine; n8n schedules general agents against APIs, not repos.

Bottom line
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Recommended for engineers who need external events (webhooks, chat, schedules) to drive agents with tools across dozens of services, and who will self-host. Not for anyone building a product whose value derives substantially from n8n itself, or who needs the agents layer hardened today. My disagreeable claim: for scheduled and webhook-triggered coding-adjacent work, n8n plus a coding agent beats writing your own queue-and-cron service for most teams, and calling it “open source” (as much of the community does) is factually wrong and matters.

Changes
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  • 2026-08-24 - Created among the four executions notes of the research index seeding run.
  • 2026-08-26 - Added the launch and Series C Hacker News threads as references grounding the community-strengths claim.
  • 2026-09-09 - Moved the license reference to the sustainable-use-license path after the old URL began returning 404.
  • 2026-09-18 - Refreshed the repository counters (about 204k to about 205k stars, 60.6k to 60.8k forks) and re-confirmed the pricing tiers unchanged.
  • 2026-09-20 - Added the Price history section tracking price changes in a table, per the new owner rule.
  • 2026-10-01 - Reworded banned-term words out of the prose; meaning unchanged.
  • 2026-10-06 - Corrected the agents-availability caveat (self-hosted agents shipped with n8n 2.32.3 on all plans, knowledge bases still preview-gated), repointed the license reference to the Community license page after the sustainable-use-license path began 404ing, and refreshed the forum size and pricing as-of date.
  • 2026-10-07 - Added the n8n-io/n8n star history chart to the Status section.
  • 2026-10-11 - Refreshed the repository counters (about 206.9k to about 207.0k stars, 61.0k to 61.1k forks) and re-confirmed the pricing tiers unchanged.
  • 2026-10-20 - Fully re-verified in rotation with every cited URL re-fetched: the agents preview claims (preview status, self-hosted from 2.32.3, knowledge bases preview-gated, the queue-mode gap), the webhook auth modes and fail-open conditional, the 1500+ integrations README figure, the fair-code Community license page, the Series C post, and both HN threads (728 and 235 points) all re-confirmed unchanged, and the pricing tiers re-verified unchanged (Starter 20 EUR, Pro 50, Business 667); the counters refreshed (61.2k forks as of 2026-10-20).

See also
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References
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