n8n vs Trigger.dev
Both are automation tools. Here is what separates them.
| n8n | Trigger.dev | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Automation | Automation |
| Pricing model | open-source | freemium |
| Price from | Open source | Freemium |
| Upvotes | 14 | 8 |
| What it does | Workflow automation you can self-host and extend with real code. | Long-running background jobs in your own codebase, with retries that work. |
What n8n is
n8n is a workflow automation tool. You build a process as a chain of connected nodes that pass data between applications, and you can either run it on n8n's cloud or host it yourself under a fair-code licence. The node library covers more than 500 integrations, and an HTTP request node handles anything outside that list, including importing a curl command directly to build the request. Data transformation nodes provide merge, loop, filter, switch, if, deduplicate, aggregate and split operations. Where the visual editor runs out, the Code node runs JavaScript and Python, self-hosted instances can pull in npm packages, and expressions are written in JavaScript using the Tournament templating language. The AI nodes are built on LangChain and can call local LLMs as well as hosted models. More than 10,000 workflow templates are published as starting points. Debugging happens inside the editor rather than through logs after the fact. There are inline logs for each line of output, the ability to load a previous execution's data back into the editor, data pinning so a node returns the same result across repeated tests, and single step execution. Self-hosting is free through the Community Edition. Deployment is by Docker or Kubernetes, including inside air-gapped private networks, and queue mode lets a self-hosted deployment reach up to 220 workflow executions per second. Self-hosted instances ping the n8n licence server daily to report execution usage. Cloud plans are separated by execution volume rather than by seats, because every plan includes unlimited users and unlimited workflows. Billed annually, Starter costs 20 EUR per month and covers 2,500 executions with unlimited steps each, one shared project and five concurrent executions. Pro costs 50 EUR per month for 10,000 executions, three shared projects and twenty concurrent executions, and adds admin roles, global variables, workflow history and execution search. Business costs 667 EUR per month for 40,000 executions and six shared projects, and adds SSO through SAML and LDAP, 30 day insights, multiple environments and Git based version control. Enterprise is quoted individually. Paying annually rather than monthly saves 17 percent, and Starter and Pro instances are hosted in Frankfurt, Germany. The enterprise tier is aimed at teams with compliance obligations. It covers identity provider user provisioning, enforced two-factor authentication, custom project roles, external secrets read from HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager or Azure Key Vault, and workflow logs streamed to observability or SIEM stacks by direct integration or webhook. Source control follows a Git push and pull pattern between development and production environments. n8n is SOC 2 audited and undergoes regular external penetration testing.
What Trigger.dev is
Trigger.dev runs long-running background jobs written in your own codebase, without you managing the servers they run on. It is for the work that does not fit in a web request: sending an email campaign, processing video, running a compute-heavy job, or anything that takes longer than a serverless function will allow. The central claim is that tasks have no timeouts. A job can run indefinitely, and a Checkpoint-Resume system means a long task can be suspended and picked up again rather than restarted from the beginning. Every task can be retried on failure, which is the part most homegrown queue setups get wrong. Concurrency is controlled with custom rules, so one noisy job cannot starve the rest, and tasks can be triggered in batches. Because tasks are code in your repository, they are version-controlled like the rest of it. They can be run and tested locally before anything is deployed, then deployed to staging or production, across multiple regions including AWS US West in Oregon. Python scripts can be executed alongside the JavaScript. Human-in-the-loop workflows are supported for jobs that need somebody to approve a step partway through. Operationally it provides queues, logging, tracing and observability, so a failed run can be traced rather than guessed at, and there is a CLI command that reports on health. The dashboard can be customised, including the side menu, and several profiles can be kept for managing more than one account. Plans are drawn on concurrent runs rather than task counts. Free allows 20 concurrent runs, Hobby 50, and Pro 200 with the option to buy additional bundles; Enterprise is custom priced with a configurable ceiling. Pro adds dedicated Slack support. Every plan is limited to 1,500 API requests per minute. Trigger.dev can also be self-hosted, which matters for teams whose jobs touch data that cannot leave their own infrastructure.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.