n8n hosting on your own VPS in Europe

n8n hosting on a VPS from RS Computers

RS Computers offers n8n hosting as plain KVM servers that you control: a VPS or VDS in Amsterdam, Dublin or Prishtina, where you run the self-hosted n8n community edition. The six plans above cost the same in all three cities, with full root access, a panel to reboot, reinstall and open a console, and a 99% monthly uptime SLA.

n8n is not preinstalled. You install it with our n8n setup guide (Docker, Postgres and Caddy), or we set it up for you: installation and help are quoted on request, based on what you need, by Telegram or email. In return nobody counts your executions, and the server, the database and the encryption key for your credentials are yours.

n8n Cloud, your own hardware or a VPS?

n8n Cloud is run by the company behind n8n. The self-hosted version is the same core product, and n8n's hosting documentation says that without a licence key it runs as the free community edition. Where you run it is a separate decision.

The Cloud figures come from n8n's pricing page in October 2026, which counts one run of a whole workflow as one execution, however many steps it has, and warns that overage charges may apply past the quota. A workflow that polls an API once a minute runs 43,200 times in a 30-day month, more than the Pro allowance. On a VPS it only uses CPU time.

The price of self-hosting is work: updates, backups and locked-down logins are your job. The community edition also leaves out team features such as single sign-on, projects, environments, external secrets, Git version control and sharing workflows or credentials beyond the instance owner (n8n, Compare editions). Those need n8n's paid Business or Enterprise licence.

What the Sustainable Use License allows

Self-hosted n8n is published under the Sustainable Use License. Its licence text allows use "only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use". n8n's licence FAQ reads that broadly: you can run your company on it, build automations for clients on your own instance as long as they cannot create or edit them, and charge for that work. It rules out hosting n8n as a service where clients build their own workflows, or white-labelling it.

How much server does n8n need?

n8n's documentation gives one firm number. The official Docker Compose install asks for at least 4 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, because its sandbox for AI-generated code runs Docker inside Docker. A plain n8n container without that sandbox is lighter. Past that, memory depends on your workflows: n8n's page on fixing memory issues names the amount of JSON data, binary file sizes, node count, Code nodes, manual test runs and executions running at once. Batching big jobs through sub-workflows keeps the peak down.

CPU is rarely the first wall. In n8n's benchmarks, a single instance with 4 GB of RAM and Postgres handled up to 220 executions per second of a simple webhook workflow. Concurrency control is off by default, so a burst of webhooks runs all at once and memory runs out first. vCPUs on our plans are shared, so leave headroom.

n8n uses SQLite unless you configure something else, and its docs advise Postgres once more than a handful of users or round-the-clock workflows are involved; supported versions are PostgreSQL 17 and 18, plus 16. By default n8n prunes finished executions older than 14 days or beyond the newest 10,000 (Manage execution data), so that history needs disk too.

Queue mode comes after one instance: a main process takes the editor and webhooks, Redis holds the queue, and workers run executions, 10 at a time each by default. n8n's queue mode docs advise against SQLite there, and workflows that keep binary files need S3 external storage, which the community edition does not include.

The plan cards above list each plan's exact vCPU, memory and disk.

Where your n8n data lives: EU or Kosovo

An automation server sees customer records, invoices and the API keys for every service it touches. n8n Cloud stores data in Frankfurt, inside the EU, according to its pricing FAQ, so the Cloud is not a GDPR problem in itself. Self-hosting changes who holds the data: on an RS Computers VPS, workflows, credentials and execution history sit on a disk in the city you chose, and a hosting provider is normally your processor under Article 28 of the GDPR.

• A server in Amsterdam or Dublin keeps the data in an EU member state, where the GDPR applies directly.
• A server in Prishtina keeps it in Kosovo under Law No. 06/L-082 on Protection of Personal Data. Kosovo is outside the EU, so an EU business sending personal data there has to cover it under the GDPR's rules on international transfers.

Two details often missed. Self-hosted n8n sends anonymous telemetry, update notices and template requests to n8n's servers by default, and the Isolate n8n page lists the settings that switch each one off. And data leaves your server whenever a workflow sends it on: an AI node calling OpenAI hands that text to another company, which belongs in your records too.

Before your first workflow

• Choose Ubuntu or Debian at the configure step; AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux and others are available too. Deployment is automatic after payment, usually within minutes.
• Put n8n on a subdomain behind HTTPS, since services such as Stripe only send webhooks to a public HTTPS address. Our guides to Docker on a VPS and Caddy, Nginx and Traefik cover both parts.
• Give the dedicated IPv4 address to any bank or partner API that asks which address to allow-list.
• For email nodes, log in to a mail provider on an SMTP submission port such as 587, which works from day one. Outbound port 25 is blocked on new servers and opened on request.
• Keep a copy of the n8n encryption key off the server: the free weekly backups cover the whole server, but saved credentials are useless elsewhere without that key.
• Planning AI agents? Read our guide to AI apps and LLMs on a VPS first.

Support answers on Telegram and at support@rscomputers-ks.com, Monday to Friday from 09:00 to 17:00, and the NOC watches the platform 24/7. There is no phone line. To compare everything in one place, see all VPS and VDS plans.