AI Potluck
Product / UX / Orchestration & agents

n8n

n8n

Workflow automation platform with native AI and agent capabilities. It pairs a visual node-based canvas with drop-in JavaScript and Python, several hundred integrations, and LangChain-based nodes for building agents and AI workflows. It is a general automation platform first, with AI as a native layer, and runs self-hosted or on the vendor's cloud.

The license is a fair-code variant that GitHub declines to classify, which the openness axis resolves. Verified 2026-08-13 via the n8n-io/n8n repository and the vendor's license documentation.

Openness

2 high confidence
2.0
license
Sustainable-Use-License(fair-code,non-OSI: internal-use-only,no-resale/SaaS)+n8n-Enterprise-License
source
public
commercial
n8n-Cloud/Enterprise

Source-available fair-code, not OSI open source: the license restricts commercial/hosted use.

  • https://docs.n8n.io/sustainable-use-license/ recorded 2026-08-13

    n8n uses the Sustainable Use License and the n8n Enterprise License, both based on the fair-code model; proprietary licenses available for enterprise customers

  • https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n recorded 2026-08-13

    README - "n8n is fair-code distributed under the Sustainable Use License and n8n Enterprise License", with "Source Available - always visible source code" and self-hosting; LICENSE.md and LICENSE_EE.md both at the repo root; 200.5k stars, 60.1k forks

Adoption

4 high confidence
4.0

About 3,265,167 downloads a month across the product's real distribution channels. Docker Hub reports 246,014,721 cumulative pulls of n8nio/n8n since 2019-06-22, which over 86 months averages roughly 2,871,429 a month, and 393,738 come from npm in the trailing 30 days. Bands at level 4 (1M-10M). n8n is deployed overwhelmingly as a self-hosted Docker container and the npm package is a minority install path, so banding on the registry package alone would have measured the wrong channel and given a materially lower level. The Docker component is a lifetime average rather than a trailing-30-day figure, so for a growing product it understates the current rate and this level is a floor.

Capability

4 medium confidence
4.0

Broad automation/iPaaS scope with AI as one native layer; wider but shallower on pure agent depth than the dedicated frameworks. At dify and langflow, the other visual builders on this map.

  • https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n recorded 2026-08-13

    'The Platform for AI Agents and Workflow Automation' - visual canvas with custom code, integration library, native AI and agent nodes, self-host or cloud; no benchmark figure

Verified 2026-08-12