n8n Trial Expired: What You See and What Resuming Costs

n8n Cloud’s free trial lasts 14 days and asks for no credit card. We used ours in August 2026 to build one RSS-to-email workflow, then left it. On October 12, 45 days after the trial ended, we logged back in and looked at what was left. This page is that screen, what resuming would cost, and where it differs from what n8n’s documentation says. We applied to n8n’s affiliate program and were declined, so this page has no affiliate link and we earn nothing from it.

Short answer

• The trial is not extendable from the dashboard. The expired dashboard offered only paid plans, 20 EUR a month billed annually or 24 EUR billed monthly. It did not offer a second trial.
• Our workflow was still there, paused. The dashboard said “Workflow paused when your trial ended 45 days ago” and “We’ll keep your data for 55 more days.”
• n8n’s docs describe it differently. They say an expired trial’s instance is deleted and that you have 90 days to download your workflows. We saw a paused workflow with a one-click resume button, not a deleted instance.
• Download your workflows before the countdown runs out. The export contains workflows only, never credentials.

What we saw

On the left, a line says “All your automations are saved and ready to resume,” with our one workflow listed as Paused and a “Download my workflows” link. Under it: “We’ll keep your data for 55 more days.” On the right the box is titled “Your trial has expired” and says “Resume all your paused workflows in one click.” It lists Annual (marked “Save 17%”) at 20 EUR a month and Monthly at 24 EUR a month, with an “Upgrade and resume” button. We did not press it.

A small mismatch we noticed: 45 days since the trial ended plus 55 days remaining is 100 days, while n8n’s documentation says 90. We don’t know which number is right, or whether the dashboard counts from a different date than the end of the trial. If the deadline matters to you, trust the dashboard’s own countdown over our arithmetic, and download early.

What the docs say, and where we differ

n8n’s trial page says that if you don’t upgrade, “the trial automatically expires and n8n deletes your instance,” that you have 90 days to download your workflows after the trial ends, and that no charges occur if you do nothing. Its pricing page lists “Trial limits: 1,000 executions, 5 concurrent executions, a 180-second execution timeout, and 1 team project” and “No credit card is required for the n8n Cloud trial.” We read these on October 24, 2026. The docs we read do not say whether a second trial is possible.

What we saw does not contradict the 90 days, but it is a different picture from “deleted”: the workflow was paused and resumable in one click. Our guess is that the instance is suspended first and removed later, but that is a guess; we have not seen n8n say so.

What resuming costs

The 24 EUR monthly figure is the one we saw only on the dashboard. Prices and plan limits change, so check n8n’s pricing page before you decide. We did not pay, so we can’t tell you what resuming does to the paused workflow’s schedule or how the first bill looks.

We also did not try to start a second trial with a new account. n8n’s signup page says “Free 14-day trial, no credit card required,” and our experience is that the trial is once per account. Making another account to get around that would sidestep a limit the vendor has set, so we left it.

Download your workflows

According to n8n’s docs, open the Cloud console, select Export in the sidebar, choose a backup under Workflow backups and click Download workflows. The dashboard above also shows a “Download my workflows” link. Two things to know from the docs: backups contain workflows only, never credentials, so you will have to re-enter your Google, Gmail or other logins wherever you import the workflow; and instances running on PostgreSQL can’t use the export yet, in which case the Export page points to a support ticket. We downloaded ours before writing this and did not test the import.

If you only want a free tool

n8n Cloud has no ongoing free plan, only this one trial. If you want free and unlimited-in-time, look at Make’s free plan, which keeps working after the first month: see what Make’s free plan actually gets you and how Make and n8n count an empty poll. The other route is n8n’s self-hosted Community Edition, which its signup page says is for people with basic automation needs who are ready to self-host. We haven’t tested it. For the full hands-on test of the trial, see our n8n review and the Make vs n8n comparison.

What we didn’t test

Paying for a plan, resuming the paused workflow, importing an exported workflow into a new account, what happens once the data window closes, and the self-hosted edition. Everything about the expired dashboard comes from one login on October 12, 2026.

Tools mentioned in this guide