Hetzner vs DigitalOcean vs AWS for n8n Docker

If you run n8n on Docker and pay for it yourself, Hetzner's CPX line wins on price-performance by a wide margin — the CPX21 (3 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB NVMe / 20 TB traffic) is €11.99/mo (about $12.95) in September 2026, versus $24 on DigitalOcean and $36.77+ on AWS for the same 4 GB RAM n8n recommends for production. AWS only makes sense when you are already locked into its ecosystem; its on-demand price is the tip of the iceberg — EBS storage and especially data egress are where a self-hosted n8n bill quietly triples. DigitalOcean is the safe middle ground with the best docs, but you pay roughly 1.8× Hetzner for the same RAM.

Why the host you pick decides your margin

n8n Cloud is the easy start, but it meters executions: Starter is $20/mo for 2,500 executions and Pro is $50/mo for 10,000 (list prices at publication; verify before you size). The moment you run real integrations, execution counts climb and the SaaS bill becomes a line item you cannot shrink. Self-hosting flips that: you pay a fixed VPS price and executions are unlimited.

The catch is that "a VPS" is not one number. The same 4 GB RAM n8n wants comes at three very different prices depending on the provider, and two of those prices hide costs that only show up on the second month's invoice. This article prices the three providers at 2026 rates for the exact specs n8n runs on, and shows where the hidden costs live.

If you are weighing self-host against serverless generally, our production TCO breakdown of serverless vs VPS covers the wider trade-off.

What n8n actually needs to run

n8n publishes no single hard minimum, but its own guidance and the Kubernetes sample manifest point at a clear production floor:

Two gotchas bite small boxes and look like n8n bugs:

• Binary data lives in memory by default. n8n keeps file payloads in RAM unless you set N8N_DEFAULT_BINARY_DATA_MODE=filesystem, which moves them to disk. A workflow that shuffles attachments on a 2 GB box will OOM-kill itself.
• The Node heap ignores your container limit. V8 sizes its heap from host RAM, not the cgroup cap, so in Docker it grows past the limit and gets killed. Cap it with NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=.

Queue mode (the setup most teams want for reliable webhook ingestion) adds a Postgres database and a Redis broker. That is three containers, not one — and it changes how you size the box. Our queue-mode Docker Compose guide walks the exact wiring.

The three contenders at a glance

The single biggest structural difference is bandwidth. Hetzner and DigitalOcean bundle terabytes; AWS charges per gigabyte beyond 100 GB. A n8n instance that returns webhook payloads or proxies API responses to clients can move a lot of bytes — and on AWS every one of them is metered.

2026 pricing, head to head

All figures are list prices at publication (September 2026). Hetzner prices reflect the 15 June 2026 adjustment; USD is converted from EUR at ~1.08. AWS compute is us-east-1 Linux on-demand at 730 h/mo; EBS gp3 at $0.08/GB-mo and egress at $0.09/GB are added where shown.

Hetzner's EU shared CPX line carries 20 TB traffic on every tier and is the price leader by a wide margin. AWS t3 numbers are compute-only until you add storage and egress; at the 8 GB tier the raw compute already costs 2.7× the Hetzner equivalent before a single gigabyte leaves the instance.

Price-performance: what you pay per GB of RAM

Divide the effective monthly price by RAM and the ranking is brutal:

• Hetzner CPX21: $12.95 / 4 GB = $3.24 / GB
• DigitalOcean 4 GB: $24 / 4 GB = $6.00 / GB
• AWS t3.medium (compute+EBS): $36.77 / 4 GB = $9.19 / GB — and that excludes egress

At the 8 GB tier the gap widens further because AWS charges per vCPU-heavy t3.large while Hetzner's CPX31 gives you 4 vCPU for less than AWS asks for 2. If your only lens is "$ per GB RAM," Hetzner wins every tier. The honest caveat: you trade Hetzner's cheaper price for a stricter signup verification and EU-default data residency, which is a feature for GDPR work and a friction point for some.

The hidden bill AWS buries

AWS on-demand looks competitive until you add the line items that are not in the instance-hour number:

If you already run on AWS, reserved instances or Savings Plans cut the compute rate 37–60%, but they do nothing for egress — the part that actually blows up a chatty n8n deployment.

Docker Compose for n8n on a single VPS

This is a queue-mode stack: Postgres for execution data, Redis as the Bull broker, one n8n main process and one worker. The shared env block is an x- extension (never a bare top-level key — that fails Compose validation). Set a real N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY before first run.

x-n8n-env: &n8n-env
  DB_TYPE: postgresdb
  DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST: postgres
  DB_POSTGRESDB_PORT: 5432
  DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE: n8n
  DB_POSTGRESDB_USER: n8n
  DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD: ${N8N_DB_PASSWORD}
  EXECUTIONS_MODE: queue
  QUEUE_BULL_REDIS_HOST: redis
  QUEUE_BULL_REDIS_PORT: 6379
  N8N_DEFAULT_BINARY_DATA_MODE: filesystem
  N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY: ${N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY}
  WEBHOOK_URL: ${N8N_WEBHOOK_URL}
  NODE_OPTIONS: --max-old-space-size=2048

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: n8n
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${N8N_DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: n8n
    volumes:
      - postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U n8n"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    command: ["redis-server", "--appendonly", "yes"]
    volumes:
      - redis-data:/data

  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n:latest
    <<: *n8n-env
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"
    volumes:
      - n8n-files:/home/node/.n8n
    depends_on:
      postgres:
        condition: service_healthy
      redis:
        condition: service_started

  n8n-worker:
    image: n8nio/n8n:latest
    <<: *n8n-env
    command: ["n8n", "worker"]
    volumes:
      - n8n-files:/home/node/.n8n
    depends_on:
      postgres:
        condition: service_healthy
      redis:
        condition: service_started

volumes:
  postgres-data:
  redis-data:
  n8n-files:

Validate it with docker compose config before deploying — a bare top-level environment: outside a service is the classic mistake that fails strict validation. Pin the image tag (here latest is shown for brevity; pin a specific version in production) and put secrets in a .env file, not the compose.

Running queue mode on one box

Queue mode splits work: the main process serves the UI and webhooks and enqueues jobs; workers pull jobs from Redis and execute them. Benefits for self-hosted n8n:

• Webhook spikes don't drop. Requests queue in Redis instead of overwhelming one process.
• Crash isolation. A worker that OOMs on a bad workflow does not take down the editor.
• Horizontal later. When one box is full, you add a worker container — or a second box pointing at the same Redis/Postgres.

The cost is three containers and the RAM to run them. On a 4 GB box, give Postgres ~512 MB, Redis ~256 MB, and the rest to n8n — tight but workable for moderate load. At 8 GB you have real headroom. Our Postgres vs SQLite queue-mode benchmark shows why Postgres wins once concurrency climbs, and n8n vs Temporal vs Windmill covers when a full orchestrator is worth it.

Interactive self-hosted n8n cost calculator

Plug in your real plan numbers (or the Hetzner/AWS presets) and see effective monthly cost, price per GB of RAM, and the execution volume where self-hosting beats n8n Cloud.

When to pick which provider

• Pick Hetzner if cost per GB of RAM is your priority and EU data residency is fine. CPX21 is the default n8n host for solo founders and most agencies. The only friction is a stricter signup check.
• Pick DigitalOcean if you want the smoothest onboarding, the best-written docs, and snapshots/backups one click away, and you will pay ~1.8× for the privilege. It is the lowest-risk choice for teams new to self-hosting.
• Pick AWS only if n8n is one small part of an existing AWS footprint (IAM, VPC, other services). If you are not already there, the egress and EBS math makes it the most expensive option for a chatty automation server — use t3 with Savings Plans and watch egress like a hawk.

Failure modes and pitfalls

FAQ

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