How I use n8n for saas.pet
Every morning at 8:10 Beijing time, n8n triggers a workflow: it hits the GitHub Trending API, Product Hunt API, and Hacker News Algolia API in parallel, merges the results, deduplicates, and writes a JSON file. Then it runs the site build, deploys via Vercel webhook, and sends me a summary on Lark. This replaced 200 lines of cron script + bash. I can see the entire pipeline in one visual canvas and debug individual nodes by clicking on them.
The AI nodes are the real differentiator
n8n added native AI nodes about 6 months ago and they are genuinely useful. I have a workflow that takes a new GitHub trending repo, sends the README to Claude API, gets back a 3-sentence summary and a rating, then posts it to our review pipeline. Another workflow monitors my inbox for certain subject lines and routes them to different Slack channels. The Claude node costs $0.003 per call, so my daily automation bill is under $0.10.
Self-hosting vs cloud: the real numbers
I self-host on a $5/month VPS (1 vCPU, 2GB RAM). n8n uses about 200MB RAM idle, 500MB under load. The cloud version starts at $20/month and limits you to 5 active workflows. Self-hosting removes all limits: I run 12 workflows, including some that fire every 5 minutes. The tradeoff is you own the uptime. My server has been down twice in 6 months, both times because I filled the disk with n8n execution logs. Set a log rotation policy from day one.
Where n8n beats Zapier and Make
Zapier charges per task (100 tasks = $20/month). My daily saas.pet workflow alone does 300 operations per run, which would cost $60/month on Zapier. n8n self-hosted: $0. Make (Integromat) is closer to n8n's model but has a clunkier UI and worse AI integration. The n8n community node marketplace has 200+ integrations that the core team has not built yet, including one for Lark and one for WeChat Work.
What still frustrates me
The webhook node is brittle: if the receiving endpoint is down, the workflow fails silently. There is no built-in retry with exponential backoff, you have to build it manually with error triggers. Version control is also weak: you can export workflows as JSON but there is no git integration. I backup manually by copying the ~/.n8n directory. The mobile app is read-only, so if something breaks while I am out I cannot fix it from my phone.
