n8n vs Power Automate: Self-Hosted Workflows or Microsoft 365 Automation?

n8n vs Power Automate at a glance

n8n is a workflow engine you run on n8n's cloud or on your own server, billed by workflow runs. Power Automate is Microsoft's automation service inside the Microsoft 365 and Power Platform licences, billed per user or per bot. A Microsoft 365 seat already includes basic cloud flows with standard connectors. Checked 23 October 2026.

Every row comes from the vendors' own pricing pages and documentation. Power Automate here means cloud flows plus Power Automate for desktop, Microsoft's tool for automating Windows apps. n8n shows euros or dollars depending on where you visit from; we use the dollar prices it shows US visitors.

What's the real difference between n8n and Power Automate?

n8n is a workflow engine you can host yourself. Power Automate is automation built into the Microsoft licence you may already pay for. Most of the other differences follow from that, starting with where flows run and what you're billed for. Checked 23 October 2026.

n8n's code is on GitHub under its Sustainable Use License, which is free for your own internal business use. n8n doesn't call itself open source, because that licence limits how the software can be used. Its home page claims "500+ native integrations. Any API via HTTP."

Power Automate has two kinds of flow. Cloud flows run in Microsoft's cloud when something happens: an email arrives, a form is submitted, a schedule fires, someone presses a button. Desktop flows click through Windows applications the way a person would. Connectors come in two classes, standard and premium. A Microsoft 365 licence covers standard ones. Premium and custom connectors need a paid Power Automate licence.

Microsoft's licensing pages we read don't list which connectors are premium, so check the ones you need before you budget. n8n has no such split: its pricing page says every plan includes "every integration".

Not on Microsoft at all? We compare n8n with the other two common choices in Make vs n8n vs Zapier.

How much do n8n and Power Automate cost?

Power Automate Premium is $15 a user a month, paid yearly. n8n Cloud Starter is $20 a month billed annually, or $24 billed monthly, for 2,500 workflow executions and unlimited users. Microsoft charges per person or per bot; n8n charges per workflow run. Because the units differ, the table lists each vendor's plans without pairing them. Checked 23 October 2026.

Every Power Automate price card says "paid yearly". The page shows no monthly-billing price and no minimum seat count, and Microsoft adds that its prices "may not be reflective of actual list price due to currency, country, regional, and organizational variant factors".

n8n's Business plan, aimed at companies with fewer than 100 employees, is self-hosted only ("Not yet" on n8n Cloud, says the FAQ). It costs $800 a month billed annually, or $960 billed monthly, for 40,000 executions, and adds SSO, Git version control and queue mode. Without a licence key, self-hosted n8n "runs as the free Community edition".

Sources: https://n8n.io/pricing/ and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-automate/pricing, both read on 23 October 2026.

Is Power Automate included in Microsoft 365?

Partly. A Microsoft 365 licence lets each user build and run cloud flows with standard connectors, up to 6,000 actions a day. Premium and custom connectors, attended desktop bots, the on-premises data gateway and AI Builder credits aren't included. For those you need Power Automate Premium at $15 a user a month. Checked 23 October 2026.

In Microsoft's words, these licences "entitle the user to create and run cloud flows with standard connectors." Dynamics 365 and Power Apps licences add an exception: a flow can use premium connectors "if the flow is in-context and associated to the application from which the seeded license is inherited". Otherwise, "If the cloud flow is isolated and has nothing to do with the application, then a standalone Power Automate Premium must be purchased."

Anyone with a work or school account also gets Power Automate Free: cloud flows you can't share, desktop flows run on your own PC, and standard connectors only. Personal @outlook.com or @gmail.com accounts can use the Free licence too.

The paid features come with a 90-day self-service trial (30 days if an admin assigns it). Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/power-automate-licensing/deep-dive-on-specific-license, updated 17 October 2026.

What does a 20-person team pay in a year?

In our scenario the licence bills are close: n8n Cloud Pro costs $600 a year, and Power Automate Premium for five flow builders costs $900. The gap opens when all 20 people trigger premium flows, which takes Power Automate to $3,600, or when runs pass 10,000 a month, which moves n8n Cloud to $1,440. Our arithmetic at list price, before tax. Checked 23 October 2026.

The scenario: 20 staff on Microsoft 365, five of whom build flows, about 10,000 workflow runs a month, and one premium connector, say to a CRM. Building the flows, AI credits and the Microsoft 365 licences you already pay for are left out.

On Power Automate, the question is who triggers the flows. Microsoft says the premium connectors entitlement "is needed to add a premium connector to a cloud flow and trigger it". If the flows start on their own, from a new CRM record or a schedule, the five builders need Premium: $900 a year. If all 20 people start flows themselves, all 20 need it: $3,600. A Process licence at $150 a month covers one flow "no matter what license the owning or triggering user has", so it pays off once more than ten people trigger the same flow. That flow has to sit in a solution.

On n8n Cloud, 10,000 runs a month is exactly the Pro plan's cap: $50 a month billed annually, $600 a year, or $720 billed monthly. Users are unlimited, so the other 15 people cost nothing. n8n's pricing page doesn't say what happens when a Pro plan goes over its cap, so budget for the next size: 50,000 executions for $120 a month billed annually, $1,440 a year.

Self-hosted n8n has no licence fee. You pay for a server and for someone to keep it updated. A DigitalOcean Basic droplet with 2 to 4 GB of memory lists at $18 to $24 a month, $216 to $288 a year (https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets, read 23 October 2026). n8n doesn't publish a minimum server size, so that size is our assumption, not n8n's.

None of these figures covers building the flows. We break that cost down in what an AI automation agency costs.

Run limits, request limits and what happens at volume

n8n counts a whole workflow run as one execution. Power Automate counts every action inside a run as a request. So a 10-step flow that runs 1,000 times a day uses 1,000 n8n executions but about 10,000 Power Platform requests. Checked 23 October 2026.

n8n's pricing FAQ: "An execution is a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn't matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes." At 1,000 runs a day, that flow needs the 50,000-execution Pro plan.

Microsoft counts every connector call and built-in action: "Both successful and failed actions count toward these limits. Retries and requests from pagination also count as action executions." The official limits per 24 hours are 40,000 requests per Premium user, 250,000 per Process licence, and 6,000 per user on Microsoft 365 or Power Automate Free. On top of that, any five minutes allow 100,000 requests, whatever the licence.

Those per-user limits aren't enforced yet. "All organizations are currently in a transition period", during which limits apply per cloud flow: 200,000 a flow on Premium, 10,000 a flow on Microsoft 365. Microsoft hasn't published an end date. When enforcement comes, "If the first person uses more than 40,000 requests in a 24-hour period, their flows slow down".

So the 10,000-request flow fits on Premium but is over the official 6,000 limit of a plain Microsoft 365 seat. A Process licence gives one flow 250,000 requests a day, and up to 10 can be stacked on it. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/api-request-limits-allocations, updated 14 October 2026.

On n8n, the Business plan charges 4,000 EUR for each extra 300,000 executions. For Starter and Pro, the pricing page doesn't say. Self-hosted Community edition isn't billed by execution at all; how much it runs depends on the server you give it.

Desktop automation (RPA): where Power Automate has no n8n equivalent

If the job is clicking through a Windows app that has no API, Power Automate is the tool. Power Automate for desktop records and replays those steps on Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server. n8n has nothing like it: it works with apps through their APIs, webhooks and code steps, not through the screen. Checked 23 October 2026.

The free licence covers "authoring and running desktop flows locally (attended)". Triggering desktop flows from cloud flows, sharing them and running them unattended need a paid licence. Premium includes one attended bot. A Process licence at $150 a month is one unattended bot that "can run one desktop flow at a time". Hosted Process, at $215, runs the bot on a virtual machine that Microsoft manages.

It needs Windows 10 or 11 (Home, Pro or Enterprise) or Windows Server 2016 to 2025, not on ARM processors, and on Home editions "you can't trigger desktop flows from the cloud". Desktop flow runs don't count against Power Platform request limits. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/requirements.

This is the clearest case for Power Automate. If an old Windows-only system with no API is part of the process, keep that step in Power Automate, whatever runs the rest.

AI agents in n8n and Power Automate

n8n's AI Agent node is included on every plan and works with the model provider you choose: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, or a local model through Ollama. Power Automate gives 5,000 AI Builder credits a month with Premium, Process and Hosted Process, and bills Copilot Studio agents in Copilot Credits. Checked 23 October 2026.

n8n's docs describe the node like this: "Connect a chat model and one or more tools, and the agent decides which tools to call to complete a task." You add your own credentials for each model provider. n8n Cloud plans also include "Gateway credits" for running models without your own API key; the pricing page doesn't say how many.

On the Microsoft side, a Microsoft 365 licence includes no AI Builder credits. Agent flows and Copilot Studio agents use Copilot Credits, and "The number of Copilot Credits counted for each response or action depends on the complexity of the task the agent completes." Unused credits don't carry over, and neither the Power Automate pricing page nor the Copilot Studio licensing page gives a price per credit. Copilot inside cloud flows is on by default for US work accounts, with no separate price listed.

We haven't benchmarked the two. The practical difference is billing: with n8n you pay the model provider directly for what the agent uses, while with Microsoft you buy credits from Microsoft.

Self-hosting, data control and HIPAA

Only n8n can run on your own servers. n8n Cloud keeps data in the EU, in Frankfurt; self-hosted n8n keeps it wherever you run it. Power Automate runs in the Microsoft region of your environment, the US included, and its cloud service is in scope of Microsoft's standard HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA). Checked 23 October 2026.

n8n's pricing page: "For hosted plans, data is stored within the EU, on servers located in Frankfurt, Germany. For self-hosted plans, it's wherever you decide to host n8n." n8n Cloud runs on Microsoft Azure. n8n's security page mentions SOC 2 (the report goes to enterprise customers, others get SOC 3) and annual third-party penetration tests, but not HIPAA. If you self-host, "encrypting other data at rest is the responsibility of the user."

Microsoft lists "Power Automate cloud service either as a standalone service or as included in an Office 365 or Dynamics 365 branded plan or suite" as in scope for HIPAA, and its BAA is "available through the Microsoft Online Services Data Protection Addendum by default". Microsoft also says that "using Microsoft services doesn't on its own achieve HIPAA compliance." Desktop flows running on your own PC aren't named in that scope.

Power Automate cloud flows run only in Microsoft's cloud. Your own servers can host the on-premises data gateway (from Premium up) and desktop bots, but not the flow engine.

Which other tools sign a BAA, and what self-hosting n8n does and doesn't settle, is covered in which automation tools sign a BAA.

Can you use n8n with Microsoft 365 instead of choosing?

Yes. n8n has nodes for Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Excel, OneDrive, To Do and Dynamics CRM, and credentials for Dataverse, Microsoft SQL and Entra ID. They sign in with OAuth2. On n8n Cloud you connect your Microsoft account in the browser; on self-hosted n8n you first register an app with the Microsoft identity platform. Checked 23 October 2026.

Two details for admins: users can only connect on their own if Entra allows "User can consent to apps accessing company data on their behalf", and flows that shouldn't run under one person's login can use n8n's Entra Service Principal credential for app-only access. Source: https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/credentials/microsoft.

Ready-made templates for Microsoft are scarce. In our study of 13,491 public n8n templates, data pulled 16 October 2026, 231 templates (1.7%) use a Microsoft node: Outlook in 124, Teams in 50, Excel in 41, SharePoint in 29, OneDrive in 24, and Dynamics CRM in none. Templates with a Google node: 6,774, or half the library. A Microsoft 365 team should expect to build its own n8n flows rather than start from a template.

n8n has no node for Power Automate itself, so the two don't call each other directly. Where a team uses both, a common split is to keep approvals and desktop flows in Power Automate and run the heavier cross-system workflows in n8n.

Moving from Power Automate to n8n: what moves and what doesn't

Nothing moves automatically. Neither n8n nor Microsoft offers an importer between the two, so each flow is rebuilt by hand, from the trigger to the error handling. Some third-party tools claim partial conversion; we haven't tested them, so expect manual fixes if you try one. Checked 23 October 2026.

Connections are re-authorised in n8n, either per Microsoft account or through an app registered in Entra ID. Power Automate's approvals in Teams and Outlook have no matching n8n node, so in n8n you build that step yourself. Desktop flows stay in Power Automate, because n8n has nothing to run them.

Recount your volume in n8n's unit before you pick a plan. A Power Automate flow's daily request count tells you how many actions it runs. n8n bills each full run once, so count runs, not actions.

If the flows will run for your own customers, read n8n's licence first: internal business use is free, but making n8n "available to your customers for them to connect their accounts and build workflows" needs a commercial agreement with n8n.

Our notes on what breaks in a migration are about CRM data, but the first step is the same: list everything that runs today before you rebuild any of it.

n8n or Power Automate: which one to choose

Choose Power Automate if your team works in Microsoft 365 and the flows are approvals, notifications and document steps between Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, or if you need desktop automation. Choose n8n for complex logic, high volume, AI agents, self-hosting or a stack that isn't mostly Microsoft. Plenty of teams run both.

Is Power Automate still relevant? Microsoft still includes it with Microsoft 365 licences and updated its licensing pages in October 2026. If it feels difficult, look at the licensing before the builder: which connectors are premium, who needs a licence to trigger a flow, and how requests are counted. All three are covered above.

If you want help deciding which of your processes go where, that's our business process automation work.

• Your flows stay inside Microsoft 365: start with the Power Automate you already have. Standard connectors and 6,000 actions a user a day cost nothing extra.
• You need to click through a Windows app with no API: use Power Automate for desktop. n8n has no equivalent.
• One premium connector and a few builders: Power Automate Premium at $15 a user a month and n8n Cloud Pro at $50 a month cost about the same. Count who triggers the flows before you decide.
• Long flows at high volume: n8n bills each run once, however many steps. Power Automate counts every action, failed ones and retries included.
• AI agents on the model you choose: n8n's AI Agent node, on every plan.
• Data has to stay on your own servers: only n8n can be self-hosted.

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