What the n8n Sustainable Use License allows

What the n8n Sustainable Use License allows

The n8n Sustainable Use License lets you run n8n on your own server at no cost, for your own company, including work that earns you money. It blocks one thing above all: selling other people access to n8n itself. Every quote below comes from Sustainable Use License Version 1.0, the text in LICENSE.md in the n8n repository, read on 25 September 2026.

Read it yourself before you trust anyone's summary, including this one. It is about one page long.

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/n8n-io/n8n/master/LICENSE.md

If the tool is new to you, n8n is a self-hostable workflow automation tool, and this licence is the reason it is free to run and still has a company paying people to build it.

The exact words of the licence

The grant comes first, under the heading Copyright License:

The licensor grants you a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, non-sublicensable, non-transferable license to use, copy, distribute, make available, and prepare derivative works of the software, in each case subject to the limitations below.

That is wide. You may copy the code. You may change it. You may run it. The important word is the last one: limitations. The Limitations section holds four, one sentence each.

You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use.

You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.

You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices of the licensor in the software.

Any use of the licensor's trademarks is subject to applicable law.

The Notices section adds one duty: "You must ensure that anyone who gets a copy of any part of the software from you also gets a copy of these terms."

Everything people argue about lives in the first of those four sentences, in the phrase "internal business purposes". The licence never defines it. n8n defines it in its own documentation, which is not the licence text but is the publisher's stated reading:

the use of n8n within your organization or product where people outside of your business can receive or see what your workflows produce

Read that definition twice, because it is the opposite of what "internal" sounds like. It is not about where the output goes. Your workflow may invoice customers, post to a public website, or answer a stranger's email. It is about who operates the instance and who builds on it.

Can I run n8n for my own company?

Yes, and this is the easy case. A company that installs n8n on a server it controls and automates its own work is using the software "for your own internal business purposes", which is the exact wording of the first limitation. There is no revenue cap, no user cap, and nothing to sign.

Commercial activity by your company does not break this. The restricted thing is commercialising n8n, not using n8n commercially. n8n's community licence FAQ, read on 25 September 2026, says you may "Use n8n community version to help run your business", may "Charge your customers for workflow creation, setup, and maintenance services", and may "Run several instances of n8n community version".

So the ordinary setup is fine. Run n8n on a VPS behind Docker and HTTPS, point your team at it, and you are inside the licence.

Can I build n8n workflows for consulting clients?

Yes, and the line to watch is not the invoice. It is who owns the instance and who can edit workflows on it.

n8n's support article gives both halves. Where "your role is limited to assisting your clients with setting up their own internal instances of n8n, no commercial license would be required on your part." The client owns the server, the client holds the licence position, and you are paid for your time. This is the safest shape for an agency.

The other half is the one people miss. Where "you intend to host and manage your clients' workflows and credentials within your own internal n8n instance, an Enterprise license would be required." That is n8n's published position as of 25 September 2026, and it is stricter than many agencies assume. Consolidating twelve clients onto one instance you run is the case it names.

Between those sits a middle the FAQ does allow: "Build automations for clients on your instance, as long as clients cannot create or edit them". The deciding question is whether someone outside your business builds on your instance, not whether they pay you.

Can I host n8n for customers who pay me?

No, not under this licence. This is the case the licence exists to prevent.

n8n's FAQ puts it on the cannot list twice over: "Host n8n as a service and allow your clients to build workflows", and "Allow external end users to build or configure their own workflows through your product". The same list forbids "Fork n8n's code to launch your own automation product".

The second limitation closes the softer version of the same idea. You may pass the software to others "only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes", so selling a preconfigured n8n image or a managed n8n subscription is outside the grant even if you never touch the branding.

One paid product shape stays allowed, and the FAQ names it: "Use n8n behind the scenes in your own product, where users can use and trigger automations you built." Your customers fire workflows you wrote. They never open the editor. Trigger versus build is the whole distinction.

White labelling, and where the Embed licence starts

Two of the four limitations touch branding. You may not "alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices of the licensor in the software", and trademark use is left to "applicable law", which is a polite way of saying the licence grants you no trademark rights at all. A copyright licence is not a trademark licence.

n8n's FAQ states the plain rule: you cannot "White-label n8n by removing our branding and offering n8n as is."

If you want the n8n editor inside your product under your own name, n8n sells a separate agreement for exactly that. From their support article: "Should you plan to embed n8n into your product...a white-labeled Embed license would be necessary." This is a negotiated contract with fees, not a public licence you can read and comply with on your own. n8n's docs describe the technical side under OEM integration, but the permission comes from the signature, not from the documentation.

Source available is not open source

n8n describes itself as fair-code, a marketing term for this family of licences, and as "Source Available: Always visible source code". It does not claim to be open source, and that restraint is correct. The Open Source Definition forbids discrimination against a field of endeavour. The Sustainable Use License discriminates against exactly one field, commercial hosting, so it is not an OSI approved open source licence and never will be while that sentence stands.

Four things this changes for a self-hoster.

• Your own use is untouched. Reading the source, patching it, building it, and running it in production for your company all sit inside the grant. If you only ever run n8n for yourself, source available and open source feel identical.
• Redistribution is nearly closed. You may pass the software on only "free of charge for non-commercial purposes", so shipping a modified build to a paying partner is a question for a lawyer rather than a settled yes.
• Distribution packaging will not arrive. Debian and Fedora archives require an open source licence, so n8n comes as a Docker image or an npm package, and apt install n8n will never be the answer.
• Future versions can move. The copy you already received keeps the terms it shipped with, because a licence grant already made cannot be withdrawn retroactively. Nothing stops the next release carrying different terms, so keep the LICENSE.md that came with the version you run.

This pattern is now normal rather than unusual. Docker keeps its engine free and charges for Desktop at company size, and Nextcloud splits a free Hub from a paid enterprise subscription. The details differ. The shape is the same: the runtime is free, the commercial edge is not.

What the Enterprise licence adds beyond permission

The repository carries a second licence file, LICENSE_EE.md, the n8n Enterprise License. It covers the enterprise portions of the code and requires that "you (and any entity that you represent) hold a valid n8n Enterprise license corresponding to your usage" in production. It does allow you to "copy and modify the Software for development and testing purposes, without requiring a subscription", so reading and testing that code is fine. Running it to serve real work is not.

So paying n8n buys two different things at once, and it helps to keep them apart. It buys permission, the Enterprise licence that covers hosting clients' workflows on your instance. It also buys features that the community edition genuinely does not contain. As of 25 September 2026, n8n's community edition features page lists these among the ones community lacks.

• SSO through SAML and LDAP. Single sign-on is the classic paid gate, and the SSO tax is charged by almost every self-hosted vendor, not only this one.
• Log streaming and external secrets. Sending audit events to your own collector, and reading credentials from a secrets manager instead of the internal store.
• Environments and version control using Git. Promoting workflows from staging to production as reviewed commits.
• Projects and workflow sharing. Splitting one instance into team owned spaces with their own members.
• Multi-main mode. Running more than one main process for high availability.

There is also a free middle step that has nothing to do with money. The registered community edition unlocks folders, debug in editor, and custom execution data in exchange for an email address and a free licence key, activated under Settings, then Usage and plan. If you want the full split of what sits where, the community and enterprise comparison covers each tier in detail.

If the licence rules out your plan

Three honest paths exist, and none of them is ignoring the text. You can buy the licence that fits, Enterprise for hosting client workflows or Embed for white labelling. You can restructure so each client owns their instance and you are paid for setup and maintenance, which n8n states plainly requires no licence from you. Or you can build on software whose licence permits what you want, and several n8n alternatives carry different licences, some of them OSI approved such as Apache 2.0 or AGPL 3.0. Note that AGPL is not a free pass either: it requires you to offer source code to users who reach the software over a network.

What does not work is guessing. The Sustainable Use License has no penalty clause you can price in, but its Termination section ends the grant if you are in violation, and a product built on a revoked licence is a product with no legal basis.

This article is one reading of a published licence, written by someone who is not a lawyer, and it is not legal advice. If money is about to change hands over an n8n instance, write to license@n8n.io and get the answer from the people who wrote the terms.

FAQ

Is n8n free for commercial use?

Yes, for your own company. The Sustainable Use License Version 1.0 permits use "for your own internal business purposes", and n8n's own FAQ confirms you may use the community edition to help run your business and may charge customers for workflow creation, setup, maintenance, training, and consultancy. What is restricted is commercialising n8n itself, meaning selling access to the software, rather than using it in a business that makes money.

Can I charge clients for n8n workflows I build for them?

Yes. n8n's support article says that if "your role is limited to assisting your clients with setting up their own internal instances of n8n, no commercial license would be required on your part." Building on your own instance is also allowed "as long as clients cannot create or edit them". The moment you host and manage clients' workflows and credentials on your instance, n8n states that an Enterprise license would be required.

Is the Sustainable Use License open source?

No. n8n calls it fair-code and source available, and avoids the phrase open source, which is the accurate description. The Open Source Definition forbids restricting particular fields of use, and this licence restricts one: you may not offer the software as a paid hosted service. In practice, running and modifying it for yourself feels identical to open source, while redistribution and distribution packaging are closed off.

Do I need an Enterprise licence to host n8n for a customer?

Yes, if the customer builds or edits workflows on the instance you run. n8n's FAQ lists "Host n8n as a service and allow your clients to build workflows" under what you cannot do, and the licence itself only permits distributing the software to others "free of charge for non-commercial purposes". A product where your customers trigger automations you built, without touching the editor, is allowed. Ask license@n8n.io before you sell either one.

What happens if I remove the n8n branding?

You leave the licence. The third limitation forbids altering, removing, or obscuring "any licensing, copyright, or other notices of the licensor in the software", and the fourth leaves trademark use to applicable law, which means the licence grants you no right to n8n's name or marks. n8n's FAQ names white labelling as prohibited directly. Doing it inside a product you sell needs a signed Embed agreement.