Dify vs n8n
Dify and n8n side by side: what each one is, what it costs to start, and whether you can try it free. Everything below comes from the vendors' own sites and other public sources, not from hands-on testing.
At a glance
| Dify | n8n | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Autonomous Agents | Autonomous Agents |
| Starting price | Free; paid plans from $49.17/mo (checked October 2026) | From €20/mo (checked October 2026) |
| Free tier | Yes | Not listed |
| Profile | Read profile | Read profile |
Prices are in US dollars unless shown otherwise. Confirm the current price on the vendor's site before you buy.
Key differences
Dify lists a free tier and n8n does not.
Pricing is not directly comparable from the numbers we hold (Dify: Free; paid plans from $49.17/mo; n8n: From €20/mo), so check each vendor's pricing page.
Both are in our Autonomous Agents category.
About each tool
Dify
Platform for LLM apps and agentic workflows with visual workflows and RAG, as hosted Cloud or self-hosted. Free Sandbox plan; Professional is $590 per workspace a year ($59 monthly).
Who it is for
The vendor describes it as a platform for production agentic workflows, for builders and enterprises moving from prototype to production. Enterprise is described as built for procurement, security and audit needs such as SSO, role-based access control and audit logs.
Strengths
- Self-hosting is offered. The free Community Edition runs with Docker Compose (the README lists at least 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of RAM), and Enterprise self-hosting is available through sales
- The README says it connects to hundreds of proprietary and open-source LLMs, including OpenAI API-compatible models
- The README lists a visual workflow canvas, a RAG pipeline with extraction from PDFs and slides, agents that can use Marketplace tools, MCP servers or custom APIs, and logs
- The README says every Dify offering comes with an API
- The free Sandbox plan has 1 workspace, 5 apps, 50 knowledge documents and 30 days of log history, and you can switch to your own API key when message credits run out
Limitations
- Sandbox allows 1 member, 200 message credits (the page does not say monthly), 5,000 API requests a month and 3,000 trigger events
- Message credits are used per AI response at a rate that varies by model. Some models cannot be used with credits and need your own API key
- The licence is not plain Apache 2.0. It adds conditions on multi-tenant use and on keeping the logo and copyright in the console, and commercial authorization is required in some cases
- Some features are tier-gated or not yet available: LangSmith and Langfuse analytics are listed for paid plans, app version control is listed as coming soon and pay by invoice is listed as being explored
n8n
Workflow automation and AI-agent platform. Self-host the Community Edition or use n8n Cloud from €20/mo billed annually; billing counts workflow executions.
Who it is for
Teams and individuals who want to automate tasks across apps and build AI-agent workflows, and who either want a hosted service or can run their own instance. Higher tiers add admin roles, SSO and Git version control for larger organisations.
Strengths
- Cloud billing counts whole workflow executions; n8n says the number of steps in a run does not change the count
- All plans list unlimited users and workflows, and every integration
- Cloud plans include agents, MCP and AI nodes
- A standard self-hosted version is available on GitHub, with documentation at docs.n8n.io
- A free cloud trial is offered (the pricing page says no credit card is needed)
Limitations
- Starter cloud is capped at 2.5K executions a month, 5 concurrent executions and 5 minutes per execution
- Pro cloud is capped at 10K executions a month; admin roles start at Pro
- The Sustainable Use License limits use to internal business or non-commercial purposes; it is not an OSI-approved open-source licence
- SSO/LDAP, multiple environments, queue mode and Git version control are listed under Business
