Pick the platform by where your data has to live and where your people already work, not by which one has the shinier demo. Power Automate is the right call when you’re deep in Microsoft 365 and want governed, IT-sanctioned automation that runs on connectors already bundled with your license. n8n is the right call when you need to self-host for data control, want per-run pricing instead of per-seat, or need to drop custom code and LLM steps into a flow. Power Automate Premium runs $15 per user per month billed annually; n8n’s self-hosted Community Edition is free with unlimited executions, or 20€ a month on Cloud. Both are good. They just answer to different buyers.
We’ve deployed both for clients, and we have no dog in this fight. We’ve built Power Automate flows for firms that run their whole day inside Microsoft 365, and we’ve stood up self-hosted n8n for teams who couldn’t let a single row of customer data touch a third-party cloud. The wrong pick won’t sink you, but it costs a year of friction: the Microsoft shop that fought n8n’s DIY hosting, or the data-sensitive team that discovered Power Automate’s cloud engine was a non-starter three months in. This post is the honest fork, laid out the way we’d walk a client through it.
We’re gmware, a software development firm headquartered at 5900 Balcones Drive in Austin, TX, with engineering centers in Bangalore and Mohali, India. We run production data systems ourselves (our Shield Suite product covers retail intelligence across 60,000+ beverage-alcohol storefronts), so the operational realities below (what governance actually buys you, what self-hosting actually costs) aren’t theory. And because we build on both, we get paid the same either way, which is exactly why we’ll tell you when one obviously fits and the other doesn’t.
The comparison in three numbers
What each platform actually is
Power Automate is Microsoft’s workflow automation service, built into the Power Platform and wired tightly to Microsoft 365 and Azure. You build flows in a browser, trigger them off Outlook mail, a SharePoint list, a Teams message, or a schedule, and route data between apps. Its whole identity is fit: if your company runs on Microsoft, Power Automate is already there, governed by the same admin console and identity model as everything else you own.
n8n is a source-available workflow automation platform built for developers. You wire together nodes (a webhook, an API, a database, an AI model, a Slack channel) on a visual canvas, and drop into raw JavaScript or Python the moment the visual layer runs out of road. Its identity is flexibility and control: you can self-host it on your own hardware and keep every byte of data on your infrastructure, and it was built AI-first, so LLM steps aren’t bolted on.
The license models differ, and it matters. Power Automate is a paid Microsoft cloud service (with a free tier bundled into M365). n8n’s Community Edition is fair-code under the Sustainable Use License: free to self-host for your own operations, source you can read and modify, but not something you can resell as a hosted product without a separate license. For automating your own company, both let you start cheap. What you’re really choosing is hosting, governance, and how far you can push the tool.
Head to head: the comparison table
Here’s the fork as one table. Read down the column that matches how your organization actually operates.
Two lines carry most of the decision. Power Automate’s per-user pricing plus bundled standard connectors is a gift if you’re already paying for Microsoft 365, and a tax that scales with headcount the moment you need premium connectors across a big team. n8n’s per-run pricing (and free self-hosting) rewards high volume and small teams, at the cost of owning the hosting and governance yourself.
The pricing models pull in opposite directions
This is the part that surprises buyers, so read it slowly. Power Automate bills by the person or the bot, and gates real integrations behind paid tiers. Standard connectors (Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Excel, Forms) come free with a Microsoft 365 license. The instant a flow touches a premium connector (Salesforce, a SQL database, a raw HTTP call), you need Premium at $15 per user per month, or the Process plan at $150 per bot per month for unattended automation. For a five-person ops team, that’s manageable. For 200 people who all need premium connectors, per-user pricing turns into a real line item.
n8n prices the opposite way. Self-hosted is free with unlimited executions; you pay only for the server, which runs a few dollars a month. n8n Cloud, if you want them to host it, bills per workflow execution: 20€/mo for 2,500 runs (Starter), 50€/mo for 10,000 (Pro), 667€/mo for 40,000 (Business), all billed annually. And one execution is a single run of the whole workflow, no matter how many steps, so a 40-step flow and a 3-step flow both count as one. No per-user charge at all.
Two pricing shapes, pulling opposite ways
Total cost of ownership tells the fuller story, though, and it isn’t only the subscription. Power Automate’s cost is mostly predictable licensing plus the Microsoft governance you get for free. n8n’s Community Edition is free software, but self-hosting means you own the server, the upgrades, the backups, and the 2am fix when it breaks. That’s engineer time, and it’s the line item DIY budgets forget. We wrote a whole piece on that tradeoff in when to build n8n yourself versus have it run for you, because “free” is real for the license and misleading for the outcome.
Self-hosting and data control: n8n’s clearest edge
If your data can’t leave your infrastructure, this section ends the debate. n8n self-hosts on your own hardware, so every byte of workflow data stays on your servers. For teams under HIPAA, GDPR data-residency rules, or an internal policy that customer data never touches an outside cloud, that control isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the requirement. You run n8n in your own VPC, behind your own firewall, on your own compliance posture.
Power Automate is a Microsoft-hosted cloud service. Your flows run in Microsoft’s cloud, full stop. That’s fine for most companies (Microsoft’s compliance certifications are extensive) and it’s how Power Automate delivers its low-maintenance promise. But you can’t run the cloud flow engine on your own metal. Power Automate does offer on-premises data gateways to reach internal databases and file shares, and a hosted-process option, but the automation logic itself lives in Microsoft’s cloud. If “self-host or it’s a non-starter” is on your requirements list, n8n wins before you compare another feature.
The flip side is honest too: self-hosting is a responsibility, not a free lunch. Someone has to patch the server, handle the version upgrade that changes a node’s behavior, and restore from backup when a disk dies. Power Automate hands all of that to Microsoft. So the data-control edge is real, and it comes with an operations bill you should budget for.
Connectors and AI: polish versus flexibility
On connectors, Power Automate has scale and polish, especially inside its own ecosystem. Power Platform passed 1,000 certified connectors with over 12,000 actions, and nothing touches its coverage of Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Dynamics, and the rest of the Microsoft world. Those connectors are prebuilt, maintained, and clean. If your integration targets are mainstream enterprise SaaS, odds are Power Automate has a polished connector waiting.
n8n plays a different game. It advertises 500-plus integrations plus a generic HTTP node that can call almost any REST API, and you can write your own custom nodes. Fewer prebuilt connectors, but a much lower floor: if a system has an API, n8n can talk to it even when there’s no official integration, which is exactly the case Power Automate’s low-code surface struggles with. Developers reach for n8n precisely because it doesn’t stop at the connector list.
On AI, the split mirrors the connector story. n8n was built AI-first, with native AI agent nodes, 70-plus LangChain-based nodes for LLM calls, vector stores, and memory, and support for any model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or a local one). That model choice avoids lock-in and lets you build real agent logic on the canvas. Power Automate brings AI Builder and Copilot, which fit the Azure OpenAI and Microsoft 365 stack beautifully but keep you closer to Microsoft’s models and patterns. If you want to wire an LLM into automation and stay free to swap models, n8n has the edge. If your AI roadmap already lives in Azure, Power Automate is the shorter path. We go deeper on where agent logic pays off in RPA versus AI agents.
Governance versus flexibility: the cultural fork
Underneath the features is a question about how your organization wants to run automation. Power Automate is governance-first: IT controls it from the Power Platform admin center, sets data-loss-prevention policies so a flow can’t quietly ship data to an unsanctioned endpoint, and it inherits your Entra ID identity model. For a company that needs IT to sign off on every automation, that built-in control is worth as much as any connector.
n8n is flexibility-first. More power, more rope. There’s no built-in tenant admin console governing every workflow the way Power Platform gives you out of the box; you build that discipline yourself, or self-host in a way that fits your controls. A dev-capable team finds that freedom liberating. A compliance-heavy enterprise finds it more work to own.
Which platform your traits point to
Which one fits which buyer
Pick Power Automate if you already run on Microsoft 365, want IT to govern automation centrally, and your integration targets are mainstream enterprise apps Microsoft already has connectors for. The standard-connector tier bundled with your license means a lot of useful automation costs you nothing extra, and the governance is real out of the box. The cost risk to watch is premium connectors across a large team, where per-user pricing climbs.
Pick n8n if self-hosting for data control is a requirement, if you want per-run economics instead of per-seat, if you need to plug in any LLM or call APIs Microsoft doesn’t have connectors for, or if you have developers who want to drop into code. The tradeoff you’re accepting is that you own the hosting, the upgrades, and the governance you’d otherwise get from Microsoft for free.
And plenty of companies run both. Power Automate for the Microsoft-native, IT-governed flows that everyone in Outlook and Teams depends on; n8n for the data-sensitive, AI-heavy, or developer-built automations that need control Microsoft’s low-code surface doesn’t give. Running both isn’t fence-sitting. For an organization big enough to have both kinds of work, it’s usually the right answer.
How gmware helps you decide (and build)
We build on both, so our recommendation isn’t a product we’re stuck selling. We start with your constraints, not the tool: Where does your data have to live? Where do your people already work? Do you have developers who’ll own this, or do you need it to run itself? Those three answers usually pick the platform before we’ve opened either one. When the answer is Power Automate, we build inside your Microsoft governance through our intelligent process automation practice. When it’s n8n, we stand up the self-hosted instance, wire the AI steps, and keep it running.
Sometimes we tell you it’s a wash and you should just use whatever your team already knows. A stable two-system flow in Microsoft 365 doesn’t need us to rethink your platform, and neither does a small self-hosted n8n job your one engineer enjoys owning. The buyers worth having are the ones who trust us to say when the decision doesn’t matter much, and when it really does. This is the same platform-choice discipline that runs through our broader digital transformation work.
Tell us where your data has to live, what you’re trying to automate, and whether Microsoft 365 is already your home base, and we’ll come back within 48 hours with a straight call: Power Automate, n8n, both, or leave it alone, with scope and cost attached.