Gumloop vs n8n
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentGumloop compared with n8n
n8n is the choice when engineering wants ownership: it is source-available, self-hostable, has a far deeper trigger and node catalog, and its pricing is per execution rather than per credit, which is much easier to model. Gumloop is friendlier to non-engineers and further ahead on the agent surface, with Brain, Skills, and Slack-native chat that n8n does not match out of the box. If you have someone willing to run infrastructure, n8n is cheaper at volume; if you do not, Gumloop removes the operational burden.
Choose Gumloop if
Operations, revenue operations, and growth people who understand a process well enough to encode it but do not want to write and host code: Gumloop gives them agents with real tool access, a shared knowledge base, and per-run cost visibility, with no seat charge as the rest of the team starts using what they built.
Choose n8n if
Technical or semi-technical teams building long, multi-step automations, enrichment waterfalls, AI agents, and internal integrations, who want per-execution economics in the cloud or full data control self-hosted, and who are comfortable reading JSON when something breaks.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Gumloop | n8n |
|---|---|---|
| Category | GTM Engineering | GTM Engineering |
| Starting price | $37 per month (Pro, 20,000 credits included) (14 days trial) | About $24/mo (Cloud Starter, 2,500 executions; roughly $20 on annual billing) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Usage-based. Seats are unlimited on every plan and the meter is credits, where one credit is $0.005. Credits are consumed by model chat and reasoning tokens, tool calls (minimum one credit per successful call), compute time at roughly five credits per session-minute, and an 8 percent orchestration fee on top of those. Workflow runs bill the same way. Bring-your-own-key removes token charges but raises the orchestration fee on agent chats. | Two paths. Cloud: subscription tiers metered by workflow executions per month (a run is one execution regardless of step count), with unlimited workflows and steps on every tier. Self-hosted: the Community edition is free under the fair-code Sustainable Use License, with paid Business and Enterprise self-hosted tiers adding collaboration, SSO, environments, and support. Prices are quoted in euros; dollar figures shift slightly with exchange rates. |
| Free plan | No | Self-hosted Community edition is free and unmetered on your own infrastructure |
| Free trial | 14 days on Pro | Cloud trial, no card required |
| Best for | Operations, revenue operations, and growth people who understand a process well enough to encode it but do not want to write and host code: Gumloop gives them agents with real tool access, a shared knowledge base, and per-run cost visibility, with no seat charge as the rest of the team starts using what they built. | Technical or semi-technical teams building long, multi-step automations, enrichment waterfalls, AI agents, and internal integrations, who want per-execution economics in the cloud or full data control self-hosted, and who are comfortable reading JSON when something breaks. |
| Setup time | A first useful agent in an afternoon: connect two or three apps, write instructions, test in the canvas, then invite it into a Slack channel. A production process with triggers, error handling, and evaluations is more like a week of part-time work, most of which is spent discovering the edge cases in your own data. | Cloud: minutes to sign up, and a first webhook-to-Slack workflow the same hour. Self-hosted: a Docker one-liner for a test instance; a hardened production deployment with backups and HTTPS is a half-day for someone who has run containers before. |
| Learning curve | Low to start and moderate to do well. The canvas and the agent editor are approachable, but the skills that separate a demo from something dependable are prompt discipline, knowing when to force a step into a deterministic workflow instead of trusting the model, and reading the run log to find which node is consuming the credits. | Steeper than task-based tools: expect a few days to internalize items, expressions, and node data mapping, typically via imported templates. Engineers acclimate almost immediately; operators without API experience need the templates and patience. |
| Platforms | Web application, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Email (per-agent inbox), Hosted agent pages with custom domains, Chrome extension, CLI | Web app (cloud), Self-hosted (Docker, npm), Embedded (commercial license), REST API |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, Zero data retention options with model providers | SOC 2, GDPR |
| Founded | 2023 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California (founded in Vancouver, Canada) | Berlin, Germany |
| Ownership | Independent, venture-backed (legal entity AgentHub Inc.) | Venture-backed, founder-led |
Strengths and limitations
Gumloop
Strengths
- Unlimited seats on every plan, so adoption across a team costs nothing extra and the builder is not rationing access.
- Genuinely non-technical building surface that still reaches real systems, with roughly 300 connectors and first-class MCP support.
- Per-node credit and runtime reporting in the run log, which is better cost instrumentation than most automation platforms offer.
- Company Brain with permission-preserving indexing, which is what makes a shared Slack agent safe rather than a data leak waiting to happen.
Limitations
- The free plan was discontinued; evaluation is now a 14-day trial on a paid plan, which is a real barrier for a cautious small buyer.
- Credit consumption is hard to predict before you build. Users report a workflow going from one or two credits per run to dozens after a small change, and credits do not roll over on Pro.
- The 8 percent orchestration fee sits on top of model and tool costs, and rises on bring-your-own-key agent chats, so BYOK is less of a savings lever than it first appears.
- Pro concurrency is a wall, not a queue: 5 simultaneous workflow runs, then HTTP 429. Queuing is an Enterprise feature, which pushes any genuinely high-volume webhook use case upmarket.
n8n
Strengths
- Per-execution pricing inverts the category's cost model; long, complex workflows, exactly the kind GTM engineering produces, are where it is cheapest relative to rivals.
- Free self-hosted Community edition provides a permanent exit ramp and full data sovereignty, a structural negotiating position no closed rival offers.
- Code nodes and the HTTP Request node remove the capability ceiling; if an API exists, n8n can drive it without leaving the canvas.
- LangChain-based agent nodes made it one of the fastest paths from 'AI idea' to 'AI in production', with approvals, retries, and logging around the model.
Limitations
- The learning curve is real: items, expressions, and JSON structure confront you in week one, and non-technical users often stall where Zapier would have carried them.
- The integration catalog (400+) is an order of magnitude smaller than Zapier's; long-tail SaaS tools frequently mean building against the raw API via the HTTP node.
- Fair-code is not open source by OSI definition, which complicates some corporate policies and community expectations, and the license debate resurfaces periodically.
- Cloud Starter's 2,500 executions can pinch for high-frequency polling triggers; trigger design (webhooks over polling) becomes a cost skill.
Pricing compared
Gumloop
Usage-based. Seats are unlimited on every plan and the meter is credits, where one credit is $0.005. Credits are consumed by model chat and reasoning tokens, tool calls (minimum one credit per successful call), compute time at roughly five credits per session-minute, and an 8 percent orchestration fee on top of those. Workflow runs bill the same way. Bring-your-own-key removes token charges but raises the orchestration fee on agent chats.
- ProFrom $37
- EnterpriseCustom
The unlimited-seat model is the genuinely unusual part. A ten-person team pays the same $37 base as one person, which inverts the economics of nearly every competing tool and makes Gumloop cheap for the pattern it is designed around: one builder, many users. The offsetting risk is that the credit meter is opaque until you have run real work through it, and the removal of the free plan means you now discover your actual cost during a 14-day paid trial rather than over a leisurely month on a free tier. For a small business, the honest budgeting approach is to assume the $37 covers exploration and light production only, and to instrument the run log early so you know which agent is eating the month.
n8n
Two paths. Cloud: subscription tiers metered by workflow executions per month (a run is one execution regardless of step count), with unlimited workflows and steps on every tier. Self-hosted: the Community edition is free under the fair-code Sustainable Use License, with paid Business and Enterprise self-hosted tiers adding collaboration, SSO, environments, and support. Prices are quoted in euros; dollar figures shift slightly with exchange rates.
- Community (self-hosted)Free
- Starter (Cloud)~€20 to €24
- Pro (Cloud)~€50 to €60
- Business / EnterpriseCustom
For long workflows, nothing in the category touches n8n's economics: the per-execution meter makes a 40-step enrichment waterfall cost the same as a 2-step alert, and the same pipeline on task or operation pricing can cost ten to fifty times more at identical volume. Against that, the true cost is skill: n8n assumes you can read JSON, debug an HTTP call, and occasionally write a line of code. Teams with that skill get Zapier-class capability at a fraction of the spend, plus a free self-hosted exit ramp that caps vendor risk permanently. Teams without it will burn the savings in time.
Editorial verdict on each
Gumloop
Gumloop is the most credible no-code agent platform for a go-to-market team that has processes worth encoding and nobody free to write code. The unlimited-seat model is the standout commercial decision: one person builds, the whole company uses it, and the base subscription does not move. Company Brain with permission-aware indexing, skills that give the prompt layer a home, and evaluations that grade output are the parts competitors have not matched. The reasons for caution are commercial rather than technical. The free plan is gone, so evaluation now happens inside a 14-day paid trial; credits are hard to forecast, do not roll over, and carry an orchestration fee on top; and the governance features a compliance review will ask about live entirely on Enterprise. Buy it if the work you want automated genuinely needs judgment, budget for usage rather than a flat subscription, and instrument the run log from day one so you find out which agent is expensive before the invoice does.
Read the full Gumloop profilen8n
Momentumn8n is what the automation category looks like when it is priced and licensed in the buyer's favor: pay per run instead of per step, read the source, and leave for your own server whenever you like. For the GTM engineer building long enrichment waterfalls and AI-agent workflows, those three facts compound into the category's best deal, and the LangChain-native agent tooling has made it the default engine of the DIY stack. The honest cost is skill: it asks more of you in week one than Zapier ever will, and its integration catalog still leans on the HTTP node for the long tail. Teams with a technical operator should default here; teams without one should pay the Zapier tax knowingly.
Read the full n8n profileGumloop profile last reviewed 2026-08-23; n8n last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.