n8n's licence permits internal use, not reselling the tool

What the licence actually permits

n8n describes itself, in its documentation, as 'a fair-code licensed workflow automation tool that combines AI features with business process automation'. 'Fair-code' is not a synonym for open source; the project's own licence file, the Sustainable Use License, version 1.0, states the grant plainly and then limits it: '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.' Running n8n inside a company to automate that company's own work is within the licence. Taking the source and offering it, or a service built on it, to other people for money is not — a distinction worth stating precisely rather than waving at with the word 'open'. Enterprise features, kept in files marked '.ee.' in the repository, sit under a separate licence again.

What self-hosting involves

The product site and documentation describe deployment as a real choice rather than a formality: a managed cloud plan, or self-hosting with 'one-line setup', Docker Compose, or a cloud provider of the operator's own choosing, with 'access to the entire source code' either way. Workflows are built from connected nodes, each representing a step or a connected service, described across the documentation's guides rather than as a single fixed feature list. This suits a team that wants automations to run on infrastructure it controls, or that has a reason not to send workflow data through someone else's cloud, more than it suits someone who wants the shortest path to a working automation today.

What the documentation does not spell out

Neither the licence nor the getting-started documentation quantifies what self-hosting costs in ongoing operational terms: who applies security updates, how credentials stored inside workflows are rotated, or what happens when a version upgrade changes a node's behaviour mid-project. Those are standard self-hosting obligations, not specific to n8n, but the primary sources describe how to install the software, not how to run it safely for years. A team reading only the deployment instructions could reasonably underestimate the maintenance commitment it is taking on alongside the workflow itself.

• Does the intended use stay inside 'internal business purposes', or does it involve offering the tool or its output to other people for money?
• Who inside the organisation owns applying updates and security patches once self-hosting begins?
• Where are credentials for connected services stored, and who can see or export them?

A source-available licence and a self-hosting option both shift control toward the operator. They also shift the ordinary costs of running software — patching, credential hygiene, upgrade testing — onto the same operator, and the documentation is clearer about the first shift than the second.