Node RED VS n8n

HomeAssistant is probably doing too much for what you need. Imo it's not a good piece of software. https://nodered.org/ is maybe a better fit. Or just some plain old scripts.

Also very important for a lot of use-cases: Node-RED is open source, but n8n is not.

https://github.com/node-red/node-red/blob/master/LICENSE

https://docs.n8n.io/sustainable-use-license/

We previously looked into integrating n8n but they wanted $50k for a commercial license, which didn’t make sense for us.

GitHub: github.com/node-red/node-red

Ahh, you didn't create Node-RED editor. That's an external project.

https://nodered.org/

Node Red is a unique application that provides a graphical programming environment. With this, you can define input to output transformation with any level of complexity, including reading, parsing, formatting, and output with optional conditionals. For example, here is a flow definition that parses MQTT JSON messages that communicate if a node is alive, and then store this information in InfluxDB:

For a simple test, I created this Node Red flow that listens to homeassistant/status messages. HA itself will send messages that communicate when its started or when it is about to shutdown. These messages, and a custom message I send from within HA, could be seen:

Also check out https://nodered.org/ and https://github.com/huginn/huginn if you're interested in free and open-source software you can run yourself.

Node-RED (e-RT3) Flow-based, low code development tool

GitHub https://github.com/node-red/node-red GitHub Stars 19.1k Most Recent Update on GitHub 2 weeks ago Open Source License Apache 2.0 Number of Active Contributors This Year 13 Acceptance of External PRs Yes Official Website https://nodered.org/ Documentation https://nodered.org/docs/

Want a low code application for event-driven applications? Then Node-RED is your go to. The new update brings a breaking change, with Node-RED now requiring Node 18.x or later. The team have added new features and updated dependencies to the editor, and there are lots of fixes within the editor. Check out the release notes for all the details.

n8n and similar visual workflow tools were on the list for one specific reason: leadership likes seeing the boxes-and-arrows. But the LLM nodes aren't first-class — you'd be wrapping every model call in HTTP, and the graph is in a database, not in code that's reviewable in a PR. Auditability and reproducibility are both worse than the LangGraph + bus path. (n8n is a great fit for non-LLM SOAR-style automations, just not for this.)

Sign up at n8n.io (free cloud version is perfect to learn)

n8n is a workflow automation tool, similar in concept to Zapier or Make, but one you can self-host. It lets you connect applications and services together through a visual node-based interface and build fairly complex automations without writing code. It's one of the services I've been getting the most out of lately.

I am keen on trying Hermes though, maybe, it looks promising and much more secure. For now though, Claude Cowork is doing most of what I want, and my custom self-hosted n8n setup locally is doing the rest.

In a deterministic workflow, every step is defined before the workflow runs. Step 1 reads an email. Step 2 asks the AI to classify it. Step 3 routes based on the classification. Step 4 drafts a reply. Step 5 pauses for human approval. Step 6 sends. Each step is a discrete operation with defined inputs and outputs. The workflow engine controls what happens next, not the language model. This is the core design philosophy behind tools like n8n and Rills, using structured execution paths rather than open-ended agent autonomy. If you want to see what this looks like in practice, our guide to building your first workflow walks through the exact structure step by step.

The maintainers closed the PR (n8n-io/n8n#30714) for policy reasons, not technical failure:

{ "node_name": "slack", "display_name": "Slack", "categories": ["Communication"], "group": ["transform"], "version": "2.3", "description": "Send and read messages, manage channels", "credentials_required": ["slackApi"], "operations_supported": ["message", "channel", "user", "reaction"], "properties_schema": "[{\"name\":\"resource\",\"type\":\"options\"},{\"name\":\"operation\",\"type\":\"options\"}]", "source_package": "nodes-base", "github_permalink": "https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/stable/packages/nodes-base/nodes/Slack/Slack.node.ts" }

One of the biggest advantages of using Apify is that it also provides an API endpoint for every Actor. Using these endpoints, developers can easily integrate Actors with automation tools such as n8n, Make, and Zapier. Developers can also integrate one Actor with another Actor. For example, the AI Video to Voiceover Generator can be integrated with the AI Video Ads Generator to generate voiceovers for video Ads.

n8n is an alternative to Heym

For senior engineers, the biggest trap with Zapier and other SaaS no-code platforms is assuming their marketing benchmarks reflect real-world performance. In our 2024 benchmark of 12 engineering teams, 83% of teams that adopted Zapier without benchmarking saw unexpected rate limits within 3 months of launch, with 41% experiencing customer-facing outages. SaaS no-code tools optimize their public benchmarks for low-concurrency, ideal scenarios, but hide bottlenecks under real production loads. For example, Zapier’s marketing claims 10k events/min throughput, but our benchmark in Code Example 1 shows that actual throughput caps at 2.5k events/min with 18% dropped events when you exceed 1k events/min for more than 5 minutes. Self-hosted tools like n8n (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n) let you scale horizontally, so you can benchmark exactly the throughput you need for your workload. Always run a 24-hour benchmark with 2x your expected peak load, measure p99 latency, drop rates, and rate limit behavior. We recommend using the Python benchmark script from Code Example 1, which detects Zapier’s masked rate limits (returned as 200 OK) that 92% of teams miss. If your team handles more than 5k events/min, self-hosted will almost always be cheaper and more reliable than SaaS. One team we audited saved $14.8k/month by switching to n8n after benchmarking showed Zapier’s enterprise plan couldn’t handle their 12k events/min peak load without dropping 22% of events.