Running full n8n on Vercel's free plan (with a free Postgres and your own domain)
I wanted a self-hosted n8n that costs nothing to run. n8n is built for a server that stays on, with a database and background processes. Vercel is built for short-lived functions. That looked like a bad match, so I tried it as an experiment. It works, with limits. This post covers how, what I tested, and what doesn't work. Repo: https://github.com/muhammad-zulqarnain-awan/n8n-on-vercel This is a…
The author wanted to run self-hosted n8n without incurring any costs. They experimented with deploying n8n on Vercel, a platform designed for short-lived functions, and found it to work with some limitations. The project is available on GitHub (https://github.com/muhammad-zulqarnain-awan/n8n-on-vercel) and is intended for personal, non-commercial use.
Vercel's Hobby plan requires that the deployed instance be for personal use only. The author set up a proxy handler that forwards requests to a local n8n instance, which is started and stopped based on usage. The proxy also manages a small database pool and handles connection timeouts.
Key configuration settings were adjusted for serverless environments, such as setting N8N_PUSH_BACKEND to "sse" for live editor updates, and N8N_DEFAULT_BINARY_DATA_MODE to "database" to avoid issues with shared disk space. The project uses a free Neon Postgres database, and the application is deployed under the author's own domain.
The author tested various aspects, including form triggers, credentials management, and parallel webhook calls. However, they identified limitations, such as the unreliability of schedule and polling triggers due to the idle shutdown policy. Additionally, request bodies larger than 4.5 MB are rejected by Vercel, and runs are capped at 300 seconds.
The project has some known limitations, including the inability to use certain community packages and the absence of the Python Code node. Both n8n and Vercel have free tiers with monthly usage caps, so users should monitor their usage to avoid exceeding limits. The license for the glue code is MIT, while n8n itself is licensed under the "fair-code" license, which allows for personal and internal business use but not for hosting the software for others.
The README provides detailed instructions for setting up the project, including generating an encryption key, importing the repository into Vercel, creating a Neon database, setting environment variables, adding a domain, and running a smoke test. The author invites feedback on cold start times, Vercel usage, and any issues encountered when deploying the project.
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