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Why & Concepts

indie.money vs n8n Cloud vs self-hosting

Where to run the workflow you built with n8n: what each option costs, where your keys live, and what you can earn.

Written By Philippe

Last updated 3 days ago

The short version

You build your workflow with n8n. Where you run it decides three things: what a month costs, where your app keys live while it runs, and whether the workflow can earn.

The full three-column comparison is below. The pricing page carries the five rows most people need; this article has the rest.

What indie.money changes

  • Keys stay in the vault, never in the workflow. The workflow holds a reference; the Secure Vault injects the key at the moment of the call. See Own and Trust Your Workflow.
  • Pay per run, with a ceiling. The maximum is held, the actual is charged, the difference comes back. See How Pay-Per-Run Works.
  • Sell it if you want. You set the price; the only cut is 10% when you cash out. See How Builders Earn.

The full comparison

AI inside your workflows

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
AI calls with no API key of your own10M token units a month, included — GLM 4.7 Flash, Gemma 4 26BNone. Gateway credits are purchased, need a paid plan, and expire 12 months after purchaseNone. Bring your own key for every call
Frontier modelsGLM 5.3, Kimi K2.7 Code, Kimi K2.6, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — 10× in the daily pot; $1.50 per 1M on a funded run. Failed calls never chargedYour own key, metered by the providerYour own key, metered by the provider
Your own model keyWelcome — skips the daily budget, no markup, any model your provider offersYesYes
Model swapped behind your backNever. A model outside the free tier is refused and named, never silently swapped for a pricier one——
How long the offer lastsA standing term, not a launch offer: no expiry, no promo clock, refilled every day. The size and the model list are published and stay revisable; a change to either is announcedYour own key, metered by the provider; the plan's credit pool moves with the planYour own key, metered by the provider

Today the included models cover workflows where the model is the workflow's only connection; add yourown key for workflows that also touch Slack, Sheets or a database.

Connecting your apps — the Secure Vault

The question that matters is custody: where the key lives while your workflow runs.

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
"Sign in with Google / Slack / GitHub / Notion…"Register the OAuth app once at publish; each buyer of that workflow then signs in through the provider's login. Many take a key instead and need no appManaged sign-in for a set of providers n8n manages; the rest you register yourselfYou register your own app with every provider — console project, redirect URL, client ID, client secret, per service, and again if your domain changes
Supported connections300+ apps — API key, OAuth sign-in, Basic auth400+400+
Where your secrets liveKeys stay in the vault, never in the workflow — it only ever holds a reference, and the key is injected at the moment of the call——
Who can read a buyer's credentialsNot the builder, and not the running workflow. The vault holds it encrypted and injects at the call——
Three ways to supply a keyYour key, the builder's key, or the platform's key — resolved per connection, automaticallyOne credential, one ownerOne credential, one owner

Running it

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
SetupUpload the workflow you already builtSign up, rebuild or importServer, domain, TLS, database, reverse proxy, updates, backups, monitoring — and a public URL before a single webhook fires
MaintenanceNoneNoneAll of it, forever
Parallel runsNo per-plan cap5 on Starter, 20 on Pro — extra runs queueBounded by your CPU; real parallelism needs a queue setup you build yourself
Broken workflow at 3 amStops itself after 20 failed paid runs in a row, tells you why, one click to restart——
Checked before it runsEvery workflow is validated at upload — anything unsupported is named, with a fix, before it costs you a run——
Per-run receiptExact maximum shown before the run; charged the actual; excess refunded within minutesNot per-runNot per-run
WebhooksPublic URL, auth, IP allowlist, bot filter, CORS — includedIncludedYou expose it, secure it, and keep it up

Earning from what you built

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
Sell a workflow by the runYes. You set the price, from $1 per 1,000 runs. Every run pays youNo product for thisNo — n8n's Sustainable Use License restricts offering it as a hosted service to third parties; read the licence
Cut per saleYou set the price; the only cut is 10% when you cash out earnings to USDC — never on top-ups, never per run——
Listing$2.99 once for a public marketplace listing; selling by direct link is free——
Buyers own what they buyYes — transferable, resellableSubscription access—
Free trials for your buyersBuilt in — you choose how many runs——
ReferralsYour link is your wallet; you and the person you refer both earn——
PayoutsPer run, cash out from $10——

Accounting you can audit — the ledger is public

Every hold, charge, refund and payout on indie.money is recorded on a public ledger (Base). Not a databasewe keep and you trust — a record anyone can open, including you, including your buyers.

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
Where the money record livesOn a public ledger. Every run's hold, actual charge and refund is a transaction you can open from the receiptIn n8n's billing system — you see an invoiceNowhere — there is no money
Hidden feesTwo, both published. 10% once at cash-out, fixed in the contract — changing it means a new contract at a new address. A flat $0.001 payment-processing fee on each pay-as-you-go run, a published constant shown on every receipt. Every other price is listed, never a line in a terms updatePlan price, plus whatever the next plan costs when you outgrow this oneYour cloud provider's invoice
When you are paidPer run, settled within minutes; cash out from $10. No month-end statement, no net-30n/an/a
When you are refundedAutomatically, within minutes of the run settling. The maximum is held, the actual is charged, the difference comes back without a ticketn/an/a
Can the platform touch your balanceNot to spend. Funds held for runs sit in a contract the operator cannot draw on, every dollar earmarked to a run or budget. A governance multisig can freeze or recover funds for legal compliance — and that move is a public transaction tooYour card on file, n8n's termsn/a
Who can verify a builder's earnings claimAnyone. A builder's "I made $X on this workflow" points at transactionsn/an/a
Chargebacks against a builderOnce a run settles on Base, the payout is final — nothing on the platform pulls a paid-out amount back. A card deposit still follows card rules until it is spent, so the finality starts at settlement, not at top-upn/an/a
Do you need to understand any of thisNo. Sign in with email, top up in dollars, see receipts in dollars. The ledger is there when you want to check, invisible when you don't. Network fees are on us——

Why we built it this way. A marketplace that pays strangers to run strangers' workflows lives or dieson one question: does the money do what the screen says? Every other marketplace answers "trust us" andbacks it with a billing team and a dispute form. We answer with a ledger both sides can read. The buildercan prove what they earned. The buyer can prove what they paid and what came back. We cannot round in ourown favour, delay a payout to earn float, or add a fee nobody noticed, because the rules that move themoney are the contract, and the contract is public.

The same design removes the two things builders hate most about getting paid through a platform: thewait and the opacity. Payouts are not batched into a monthly statement you reconcile against your ownnotes — each run settles to your balance in minutes, and your balance is yours to withdraw whenever youlike. And "what did this run actually cost me" is not a support question; it is a receipt with atransaction behind it.

Run it from your AI assistant

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
Connect Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT over MCPYes — one endpoint, sign in with your walletYes — instance-level MCP, builds and runs workflowsYes — same feature
Build workflows from the assistantNo — build with n8n, upload hereYesYes
Buy, fund, run, price and sell workflows from the assistantYes — browse the marketplace, top up, run, publish, set a price, withdraw earnings, all in plain EnglishNo — nothing to buy or sellNo
Connect your apps from the assistantYes — open a Secure Vault session and connect a credential without leaving the chatNo — credentials stay in the editorNo
Workflows that call and pay other workflowsBuilt inNoNo
Pay-per-call access for callers with no accountBuilt inNoNo

n8n's MCP builds a workflow. Ours runs it, pays for it, connects it, and sells it.

See what every run cost — OpenTelemetry

indie.moneyn8n CloudSelf-host VPS
Send traces to your own observability stack (Grafana, Datadog, Honeycomb, Jaeger…)Yes — paste your collector URL and token once, from the portal or from your assistantNot available. OTLP tracing is configured by environment variables, which a Cloud tenant cannot set. Corroborated by ecosystem tooling: Opik's n8n-observability package and SigNoz's guide both state their OTel integration does not work with n8n Cloud. A 2.27 changelog line claims otherwise; the packages that would break are the better evidenceIn Preview since 2.19.0 (n8n's own word; they advise against production use) — set environment variables or use Settings > OpenTelemetry, and run and secure the collector yourself. Traces only: OTLP metrics are planned and unshipped, OTLP logs are not in their docs at all. Custom span attributes need an Enterprise licence
What you see per runOne trace per run, one span per step, and the bill on the span: total cost, AI cost, refund, which step failed and why—Duration and status per step. No cost — there is no per-run cost to show
Setup checkSaving posts a test span and shows you the real collector answer — never a silent "connected"—Read the logs
SafetyYour buyers' data and keys never leave the platform — only timings, costs and your own step names go out—Whatever you configure

What to know before you switch

Three things, said plainly, because they decide whether indie.money fits today:

  1. You build with n8n. indie.money has no editor. Keep designing where you already do; run and sell here.
  2. Database nodes and email nodes do not run here. Postgres, MySQL, Redis, Mongo, Send Email and IMAP are not supported. Workflows that depend on them stay where they are.
  3. A run is five minutes long, tops. Long scrapes, multi-hour batches and waits longer than five minutes do not fit. Everything scheduled, webhook-driven, chat-driven or AI-driven that finishes in minutes does.

If your workflow clears those three, it runs free, its keys stay out of the run, and it can earn.

What stays the same

You keep designing in n8n. indie.money has no editor: import the workflow you already built, run it here, and sell it here.

indie.money is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by n8n GmbH. You build it with n8n; we run the workflow on our own engine.

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