n8n vs Power Automate: Executions vs Seats

This is the pair whose two pricing pages cannot be read side by side. Not because the numbers are hidden — both publish plainly — but because they are quoted in different currencies and meter different things. One charges for the work. The other charges for the people doing it. Until you convert both into a single number for a single workload, you are comparing a unit price to a headcount.

So that is what this article does, with both pages read on September 25, 2026, n8n's re-read on 28 October 2026, and the arithmetic shown.

Two pages, two units

n8n's pricing page states its meter in a line at the top: "Pricing is based on monthly workflow executions, regardless of complexity.", and alongside it, "All plans include unlimited users & workflows and every integration." n8n's own copy puts the contrast this way: "This makes your usage more predictable than other tools where you pay individually for every step or task."

Microsoft's page carries four entries, three of them priced, and the unit is in the label under each price: "user/month, paid yearly" for one, "bot/month, paid yearly" for the other two. None of the four entries we read on it is priced by execution.

That is the whole difference, and every other comparison between them is downstream of it. Two teams both running three thousand executions a month, one with two builders and one with twenty, are the same customer to n8n and a tenfold difference to Microsoft.

It also makes this the hardest pair in the matrix to shop for honestly. Two products metered the same way can be compared on their pages: you look at the credit price, or the task price, and you know which is cheaper per unit. Here there is no shared unit to divide by. The only way through is to fix a workload, price it on both meters, and see which number is smaller — which means the answer is specific to your shape and does not transfer to the company next door.

What n8n publishes, re-read 28 October 2026

Three plans carry a price, each shown as a figure above the words "billed annually". The page's switch reads "Monthly" / "Annually (Save 17%)". Both views are below, because the gap between them is the whole of that 17%.

The annual saving is the same on all three: 24 − 20 = 4 on Starter, 60 − 50 = 10 on Pro, 800 − 667 = 133 on Business, which is 16.7%, 16.7% and 16.6% — the "Save 17%" on the switch, rounded.

Two things in that table are worth stopping on. The executions are counted per workflow run "with unlimited steps", so a forty-step workflow and a two-step workflow cost the same — which is the opposite of per-step metering, and the reason the comparison in n8n vs Make lands where it does. And the Business plan is marked "Self-hosted only": the middle of n8n's own ladder is not hosted by n8n.

There is a third number on that table that the price comparison leaves out: concurrency. Starter allows "5 concurrent executions" and Pro "Up to 50 concurrent executions". That is not the same constraint as the monthly execution count, and it bites in a different way — the monthly total and the concurrency figure are two separate numbers, and the page states no relationship between them: what happens when a burst exceeds the concurrency limit is not on it. We found no concurrency figure among the four entries on the Power Automate pricing page; Microsoft publishes request limits elsewhere, worked through in Power Automate vs Zapier if you already pay for M365. Either way it is a constraint you can only compare by reading one vendor's page and then going looking on the other.

The prices above are in euros because that is the currency the page served when we read it. Converting them needs a rate and a date, so: the European Central Bank's euro reference rate for September 25, 2026 was "EUR 1 = USD 1.1403". At that rate, Starter is about $22.81, Pro about $57.02 and Business about $760.58. Those three dollar figures are our conversion, not n8n's published price, and they are only good for the day.

What Power Automate publishes, read the same day

Both vendors quote their headline prices on an annual commitment: n8n says "billed annually", Microsoft says "paid yearly". On that one point they are directly comparable.

What the table does not show, and what changes the answer for some buyers, is what a Microsoft 365 subscription may already entitle them to. What a Microsoft 365 subscription already entitles you to is not among the four entries we read, and it is not settled here; the standard-versus-premium connector split is worked through in Power Automate vs Zapier if you already pay for M365. If your flows live inside standard connectors, the honest comparison may be n8n against something you are already paying for.

Price one workload both ways

Pick a shape and run it through both meters. Say one workflow that fires three thousand times a month, built and maintained by a team where some number of people need their own licence.

On n8n, three thousand executions is past Starter's "2.5K" and inside Pro's "10K", so the bill is 50€ a month billed annually, about $57.02 at the day's rate. The number of people does not enter the calculation, because the page says "All plans include unlimited users & workflows and every integration".

On Power Automate Premium, the bill is $15.00 per user per month paid yearly, and no execution allowance is attached to the seat in what we read. So:

Before you count seats, be precise about what you are counting. The page prices per user and does not define who counts as one; the pricing page does not define it, and we did not read Microsoft's licensing terms for this article. The seat count you assume and the seat count you end up needing are different questions.

The crossover sits between three and four licensed users, and after it the gap only widens, because one column keeps climbing with headcount and the other does not move until you cross an execution tier. Change the workload and the crossover moves: at thirty thousand executions a month n8n needs the Business plan at 667€, about $760.58 — and that plan is marked "Self-hosted only", so at that volume you are comparing a self-hosted bill plus your own infrastructure against Microsoft seats. Fifty Microsoft seats come to $750.00 at the published $15.00 seat, fifty-one to $765.00. Set against our own conversion of Business — about $760.58 at the late-September rate, not a price n8n publishes — the fifty-first seat was where the Microsoft column passed it. That line moves with the exchange rate, and it has already moved. The crossover falls at fifty whenever a euro buys less than $1.1244, and the European Central Bank's euro reference rate for October 15, 2026 was "EUR 1 = USD 1.1208". By the same conversion as above, that puts Business at about $747.57 against $750.00 for fifty Microsoft seats. At the rate on the day this was last checked, the crossover is fifty, not fifty-one.

Both of those crossovers are arithmetic on one published dollar price and our own dollar conversion of a euro price, not a recommendation. The inputs that decide which side of the line you land on are your own: how many people genuinely need their own licence, and how many times your workflows actually fire.

The parts price cannot settle

We found no unattended-automation line item among the n8n features we read. Microsoft sells desktop RPA as named line items — "Desktop flows (RPA) in attended mode" inside the $15.00 seat, "Desktop flows (RPA) in unattended mode" as a $150.00 bot — and lists a hosted variant at $215.00 with a Microsoft-managed virtual machine. n8n's pricing page prices workflow executions and carries no desktop-RPA line item among the features we read on it. Whether n8n can do that job is not a question its pricing page answers, and if that is the job, this comparison is not the one to decide it.

The shape of n8n's ladder is unusual, and worth seeing before you plan a path up it. Starter and Pro are "Hosted by n8n". Business, at 667€, is marked "Self-hosted only". So the step from Pro to Business is not a bigger version of the same service: it is a move onto infrastructure you run. "SSO and LDAP" and "Version control using Git" are listed on Business, which is the cheapest priced plan we saw them on. What Enterprise includes is not published; its price reads "Contact Sales".

Where it runs is a real fork. n8n marks Starter and Pro "Hosted by n8n", Business "Self-hosted only", and Enterprise either "Hosted by n8n" or "Self-hosted"; none of the four Power Automate entries we read is offered self-hosted, and the hosted variant runs on a Microsoft-managed virtual machine on Azure. What self-hosting costs once you count your own hours is the subject of what self-hosting n8n really costs, and the answer is not zero.

And there is a currency question on one side only. A US company paying Microsoft has a dollar price on an annual commitment. The n8n page served us euros from where we read it, and what currency n8n bills a US company in is not something the page settled for us. If you are quoted in euros, the rate rides into next year's budget, and the figure above is the reference rate for a single day. Not a reason to pick either vendor, but it belongs in the spreadsheet rather than in a footnote.

What each page answers, and what it does not

One note on the figures. Every price here was read from each vendor's own pricing page on September 25, 2026, and the dollar equivalents of the euro prices are our conversion at that day's ECB reference rate, not a price either vendor quotes. Pricing pages change without announcement, and the currency you are served may not be the one we were served. Check both pages against your own account before you commit to a year of either.