What is n8n?

The short answer

n8n is a workflow automation tool — like Zapier or Make.com, but open-source and self-hostable. It connects your apps (Gmail, Notion, Slack, Claude, anything with an API) and runs sequences of steps automatically. AI workflows that span multiple systems almost always need n8n or something like it.

Why AI work needs glue

A common AI-recipe shape: take input from one place, do something intelligent with it using Claude, write the output somewhere else.

For example: read articles from RSS feeds, score them against your ICP using Claude, write the high-scoring ones into a Notion database. That’s three tools — RSS reader, Claude, Notion — and they don’t talk to each other natively. Something has to move data between them.

That something is n8n.

You could write code to do this. n8n is for everyone who’d rather not.

How it works

n8n has a visual editor. You drag nodes onto a canvas. Each node is a step:

• “Read these RSS feeds every 4 hours” (trigger node)
• “For each article, send the title and content to Claude with this prompt” (HTTP request node)
• “Take Claude’s response, parse the score” (code node)
• “Write a row to this Notion database with the article and score” (Notion node)

You connect the nodes with arrows. You hit “execute.” The workflow runs.

Once it works, you set it to run on a schedule, and it keeps running.

n8n vs Zapier vs Make.com

All three do similar things. The differences that matter:

Zapier. Easiest to start with. Most integrations. Most expensive at scale — pricing is per-task and gets painful past a few thousand executions per month. Cloud-only.

Make.com. Cheaper than Zapier. More technical, less polished. Still cloud-only.

n8n. Open-source. You can self-host on your own server (₹500/month on a basic VPS) and run unlimited workflows. There’s also n8n Cloud (paid, hosted by them) for people who don’t want to manage a server.

Inside POD we use n8n self-hosted. For an Indian SMB context, the math heavily favours self-hosting — a hundred workflows on a ₹500/month server is not even close to what Zapier would charge.

What you’ll find on this site

Recipes on this site that use n8n will tell you so up front. Most Beginner recipes don’t need n8n — they’re single-shot Claude tasks. Intermediate recipes sometimes use n8n. Most Expert recipes do.

When a recipe uses n8n, we ship the actual workflow file (a .json) you can import directly. You don’t build from scratch.

Self-hosted vs n8n Cloud

For most Indian businesses, self-hosted is the right answer:

• ₹500/month for unlimited workflows on a basic Hetzner or DigitalOcean server
• Your data stays on your infrastructure
• No execution caps

Use n8n Cloud if:
– You don’t have anyone who can manage a Linux server
– You want SOC 2 compliance and audit trails out of the box
– Your workflows are low-volume enough that cloud pricing is fine

The recipes on this site work either way. If you’re using self-hosted n8n, you’ll have a few extra steps for things like SSL certificates and backups; we cover those in the foundations content.

A note for non-technical readers

n8n looks scary at first. It’s not. You don’t need to know JavaScript to use 90% of nodes. You drag boxes, fill in fields, hit run.

The 10% that requires writing a small bit of code (usually JavaScript inside a “Code” node) is where the recipes on this site help most — we ship the code, you paste it in.

If you’re serious about getting AI into your work and you don’t have someone technical to help you, learning the basics of n8n is the single highest-leverage thing you can do. It’s the difference between “Claude is cool” and “Claude does things for me while I sleep.”

Last reviewed: 7 May 2026