I Automated My Work With n8n For A Month. Here Is What Actually Happened
I moved four repetitive parts of my workflow into n8n and left them running for a month. Here is what broke, what saved real hours, and what it actually costs once you get past the free tier headlines.
n8n
Open source workflow automation platform with an AI agent node and over 500 integrations
n8n.io
Zapier
The most well known no code automation platform, priced per task instead of per execution
zapier.com
Make
A visual automation builder often compared to n8n for its scenario based canvas
www.make.com
Marcus Webb
July 19, 2026
The Task That Pushed Me Into Automation
I was manually checking a folder of blog post files every morning, opening each one, and pinging myself on Slack when something looked off in the schema. It took maybe twenty minutes a day, which sounds small until you add it up over a month. I had heard n8n described as the developer favorite alternative to Zapier, so I gave myself thirty days to build real workflows in it and see if the reputation held up.
What n8n actually is. It is a workflow automation platform that connects apps and services through a visual canvas of nodes. You drag triggers, actions and logic blocks together instead of writing a script from scratch, and it is open source, so you can also run it entirely on your own server.
The First Workflow I Built
I started small on purpose. My first workflow watched a folder for new JSON files, checked each one against my content schema, and posted a message to a Slack channel only when something failed the check. Setup took about an hour, most of which was figuring out where the file trigger node lived rather than fighting the logic itself.
Once that one was stable, I added three more over the following weeks. One pulled new rows from a spreadsheet and formatted them for my CMS. One watched an email inbox for client replies and logged a summary into a project tracker. The last one used the AI agent node to read a batch of draft outlines and flag which ones were missing a required section before a human ever opened them.
- Over 500 app integrations, so most of what I needed already had a ready made node
- The AI agent node lets a language model make small judgment calls inside a workflow, not just move data between steps
- Executions are billed per full workflow run, not per individual step, which changes the math a lot at scale
- Self hosting is free and unlimited if you are willing to run your own server
Where It Actually Saved Me Time
The schema checking workflow alone gave back roughly the twenty minutes a day I mentioned earlier, and it never forgot to run the way I sometimes forgot to check manually. The AI agent node was the bigger surprise. I expected it to be a gimmick bolted onto the workflow builder, but having it read a draft and flag a missing section before I looked at it meant I only opened files that actually needed my attention.
The real win was not any single workflow. It was that once the first one worked, adding the second, third and fourth cost far less effort than building the first one did, because I already understood the node logic.
Where It Got Genuinely Annoying
None of this was plug and play. The learning curve is real, and I hit a wall the first time I needed to transform data between two nodes that expected different formats, which sent me digging through community forums for an evening. If you have never touched a tool like this before, budget a proper weekend for the first build, not an afternoon.
- The visual canvas gets cluttered fast once a workflow passes ten or so nodes
- Cloud execution limits are strict, one workflow polling every few minutes can burn through a lower tier plan faster than you expect
- Self hosting removes the execution limits but hands you the maintenance and security work instead
- Documentation is solid for common integrations but thinner once you go off the beaten path
What It Actually Costs
This is the part most comparison posts get vague about, so here is what I found checking the pricing page directly. The self hosted Community Edition is free with no execution limits, you only pay for the server it runs on, which typically runs about $4 to $7 a month on a basic VPS, roughly €4 to €6, £3 to £5, or ₹350 to ₹600.
If you would rather not manage a server, n8n Cloud starts around $20 to $24 a month for the Starter tier and its 2,500 executions, which converts to roughly €19 to €22, £16 to £19, or ₹1,700 to ₹2,000. The Pro tier moves up to around $50 to $60 a month for 10,000 executions. Above that, Business and Enterprise plans scale into the hundreds a month and are aimed at teams that need single sign on and audit logs rather than solo operators.
Watch your execution count if you go with Cloud. A single workflow checking an inbox every five minutes can quietly use up a Starter plan's entire monthly allowance in under two weeks. I found this out because one of my test workflows was polling far more often than it needed to.
How It Compares To Zapier And Make
I still keep a Zapier account for a couple of very simple one step automations because typing a sentence and getting a working zap in under a minute is hard to beat for something trivial. But Zapier bills per task inside a workflow, so a ten step process costs far more there than the same process costs as a single execution on n8n. Make sits somewhere in between on complexity, with a visual style closer to n8n but a pricing model closer to Zapier.
The honest way I would put it after a month of real use. Zapier wins on speed for a simple one off automation. n8n wins once you need branching logic, an AI step in the middle of the process, or you are running enough volume that per step billing starts to hurt.
Would I Keep Using It
Yes, and I already have the four workflows from this test still running. I would not recommend it as your first automation tool if you have never built one before, the learning curve will fight you early on. But if you already think in if this then that logic, or you are comfortable enough to self host and want to stop paying for every single step of a workflow, n8n earns the setup time back within the first month.