Activepieces and Windmill against n8n: which self-hosted automation to choose

n8n is not open source: its Sustainable Use License limits you to your own internal business purposes and forbids charging people to access a hosted instance. Activepieces publishes its core under MIT but keeps agents, projects and API access outside it. Windmill compiles to AGPLv3 from source, yet the distributed Community Edition is not open.

September 11, 2026 13 min 2

How to Install

How to install n8n self-hosted with Docker

n8n is the low-code automation project that has best adapted to self-hosting. A walk through the real install with Docker Compose, the database and queue decisions to make, and the points where most people trip up the first time.

October 27, 2025 8 min 304 4.6