n8n Hits 100K Users: The Open-Source Automation Giant Scales Up

The 100K Milestone

n8n announced on February 4, 2025 that its cloud service had crossed 100,000 active users — representing only a fraction of total deployments, since most installations are self-hosted. The company estimated over 350,000 total active deployments when including self-hosted instances. This growth was fuelled primarily by the explosion of interest in AI agents and agentic workflows.

What n8n Does

n8n is a node-based workflow automation platform similar in concept to Zapier or Make.com, but open-source, self-hostable, and far more flexible for complex conditional logic. At version 1.x, n8n supported over 400 built-in integrations and allowed custom HTTP request nodes for any API not covered. It supports sub-workflows, allowing complex automation to be modularised into reusable components.

The AI Agent Push

n8n's growth was driven largely by its LangChain integration, allowing workflow creators to include AI agent nodes that reason about which tools to call in what order. These agent nodes connected to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Ollama, with tools for web search, calculator, database lookup, and email. Non-programmers could build systems previously requiring Python developers: AI-powered email triage, intelligent document routing, and research assistants.

Pricing

n8n Cloud Starter starts at $24/month (2,500 executions, 5 active workflows), Growth at $50/month (10,000 executions, unlimited workflows). Self-hosted n8n is free for internal automation under the fair-code licence — commercial resale of the software itself is restricted, but use for internal business automation is unrestricted.

What This Means for Indian Businesses