Quick Answer
n8n Cloud starts at $20/month on the Starter plan with a 2,500-execution cap, and scales up from there. Requex.me runs webhook-triggered workflows for free with no per-execution billing — if n8n is too expensive for what you actually need, Requex is the drop-in replacement for the webhook half of your automation stack.
A Free Alternative to n8n Cloud
If you only wired up n8n to move webhooks between Slack, Google Sheets, and HTTP endpoints, you are paying for a lot of features you do not use. Here is the honest pricing breakdown — and when Requex.me makes sense as a replacement.
n8n Cloud Pricing, Deconstructed
n8n Cloud has three paid tiers. Every tier caps executions and active workflows. If you cross the cap mid-month, extra executions are billed as overages or your workflows stop running until the next cycle.
| Plan | Price | Executions | Active workflows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $20/mo | 2,500 | 5 |
| Pro | $50/mo | 10,000 | 15 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited |
An "execution" is one run of a workflow, regardless of how many steps it has. A webhook that fires every minute uses 43,200 executions per month — that is already past the Pro plan on a single workflow.
Self-Hosting n8n Is Not Free Either
The Community Edition is free-as-in-beer, but you still pay:
- A VPS — $5–$20/month for a small Hetzner or DigitalOcean box that will choke above ~10k executions/day
- A Postgres instance — another $15+/month if you do not want SQLite
- Redis — required for queue mode once you scale past one worker
- SSL cert management, Docker updates, backup automation — hours per month
- Debugging "why did my workflow fail at 3am" — hours per incident
A single afternoon of devops work at $75/hour already exceeds a year of n8n Cloud. Self-hosting only wins when you are running hundreds of workflows and can amortise the operational cost.
Requex.me Pricing: Actually Free
Requex.me does not charge per execution. A Requex webhook workflow includes:
- Unlimited webhook triggers and scheduled cron triggers
- HTTP, Slack, Discord, Email, Google Sheets, and Shopify nodes
- Branching, filtering, and transformation (JavaScript or jq)
- Retries with exponential backoff on the HTTP Resilient node
- HMAC verification, dedup, and replay for incoming webhooks
- Run trace drawer — inspect payload at every step, not just the failing one
No execution caps. No "active workflow" limit. No Docker. The catch: Requex focuses on webhook- and schedule-triggered automation, not the 400+ integrations of n8n. If your workflow is webhook-in, action-out, Requex is the better economic fit.
When n8n Is Still the Right Call
This is not a "ditch n8n" article. Stay on n8n if you need:
- OAuth-based integrations with 50+ niche SaaS apps (Notion, HubSpot, Airtable as data source, etc.)
- Heavy data pipelines where n8n replaces a Python cron job
- Scheduled scraping or polling workflows that poll APIs without a webhook
- Visual debugging of long chains with 15+ nodes
When Requex.me Wins on Price
- You only use n8n for webhook → Slack / Discord / Sheets routing
- You are near or over the 2,500 / 10,000 execution cap on a single noisy source
- You paid for n8n Cloud to avoid self-hosting but do not need 400 integrations
- You are a solo dev or small team who needs reliable webhook automation without a monthly SaaS bill
- You want HMAC verification, dedup, and retries without writing your own worker
FAQ
Is Requex.me really free forever?
Yes. The core webhook capture, workflow builder, and node library are free with no execution cap. Paid tiers will exist for enterprise features like SSO and dedicated IPs, but webhook automation stays free.
Does Requex support the same integrations as n8n?
Not all of them — n8n has 400+ integrations focused on data pipelines. Requex focuses on webhook automation nodes: HTTP Resilient, Email, Slack, Discord, Google Sheets, Shopify, AI classification, and transform/branch/filter logic. You can hit any other API through the HTTP node.
Can I export my n8n workflow and import it?
Not directly — workflow formats are different. See our migration guide for a node-by-node mapping that walks through rebuilding an n8n webhook workflow in Requex in about 15 minutes.
What about n8n Pro at $50/month — is it a good deal?
At 10,000 executions/month it comes out to $0.005 per execution, which is competitive for data-pipeline work. For webhook-only automation, it is overpriced — a single Stripe or Shopify integration can consume the whole quota in a busy week.