Best free self-hosted workflow automation: Node-RED vs n8n

Who this is for: you have a product with signups and want the follow-up automated (customer list, team alert, retries, a scheduled check) on a server you control, without per-task bills and without writing a backend for it.

Our pick: Node-RED (96/100), by a nose. It did the whole job right in both runs, on about 110 MB of memory, under a true open-source licence. Before you put it online, turn on its login: the editor is open by default.

Runner-up: n8n (94/100). It did the job just as well, and its editor is friendlier: a retry setting on every node, a login from the start, and a history of every run. It costs you about 5 times the memory, it sends usage data to n8n unless you switch that off, and its licence limits reselling it.

It’s close. Both passed every check. The 2 points come from different trade-offs, not from the work itself, so pick on the trade-off that matters to you.

Results (two runs each, identical)

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Gotchas

Node-RED: lock the editor first. On our fresh install the editor and its API answered without any login, so anyone who can reach it can change your flows. Set adminAuth in settings.js, as the securing guide shows.

Node-RED: clear msg.headers between HTTP calls. The HTTP request node puts the response headers on the message, and the next HTTP node or reply will reuse them. Delete them with a change node.

n8n: CLI changes need a restart. import:workflow imports workflows inactive, and publish:workflow (which replaced update:workflow --active in n8n 2.0) only takes effect after you restart n8n.

n8n: turn off telemetry if you care. Set N8N_DIAGNOSTICS_ENABLED=false (and the related variables in n8n’s isolation guide).

n8n: claim the owner account straight away. A fresh instance asks the first visitor to create the owner account. Do it before you expose the port.

Check your Node.js version. We ran both on Node.js 22; see each tool’s install docs for the versions it supports.

Scores

Scored with our published rubric. Tested 2026-10-16. Two runs each, because the first runs were within 10 points; both runs scored the same. The tie-breaker (task success, then safety) didn’t separate them, so the higher average score decides.

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The 7 checks: installed and active using documented commands only, all 20 customer records exact, exactly the 7 expected alerts, recovers the failed call, every reply 200 within 1 s at the 95th percentile, the schedule runs at least twice in 150 seconds, and the workflow survives a restart.

What it costs

Both are $0 to self-host with no execution limits; you pay only for your server. n8n’s Sustainable Use License lets you use it free for your own internal business or non-commercial use, but limits offering it to others as a service. Node-RED is Apache-2.0. Our runs cost $0.

Caveats

• A small, local test. The customer list and chat were local stand-ins, not real Slack or HubSpot accounts, and we sent 21 events, not thousands.
• Written as JSON, not dragged in the editor. Our agent has no screen, so it wrote each workflow in the tool’s own format using documented nodes. Built-in expressions (n8n’s {{ }}, Node-RED’s JSONata) were allowed; code nodes were not. The test kit includes both workflows.
• Our harness slipped twice (a restart signal that missed n8n, and an interrupted Node-RED run); we redid those steps. Details in the test script.
• Neither tool’s integrations library was compared; n8n has many more ready-made app nodes.

Next step: feed your AI clean text. See our tested pick for turning web pages into clean text.

Not tested yet

• Activepieces and Windmill: other self-hosted options, queued.
• Zapier and Make: hosted only, with per-task pricing.

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