Developer cuts automation costs 92% by self-hosting n8n instead of Zapier

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A developer running the content platform saas.pet has shared a six-month review of using n8n, an open-source workflow automation tool, to manage 12 production workflows. The same setup on Zapier's Professional plan would cost $73.50 per month, compared to just $6 per month for a self-hosted VPS running n8n at no software cost. The 12 workflows cover tasks ranging from daily GitHub Trending API fetches and JSON transforms to uptime monitoring, DNS checks, and monthly S3 backups. Initial server setup using Docker, Nginx, and Certbot took roughly two hours, but the author notes ongoing self-hosting overhead such as updates and SSL management is a real trade-off. The author concludes that n8n is cost-effective for users running five or more high-volume workflows, while those with only a few simple automations may be better served by Zapier's free tier.

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