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N8n vs. node-red

daniel-payne-keldan-systems.medium.com

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Re: N8n vs. node-red

#61

Post by jedberg »

indiantinker wrote: post #13
_pdp_ wrote: post #10

It is worth pointing out that both of them are workflow tools first. The AI agent part is expressed though steps where a model is invoked. This opens the door to a number of issues including vulnerabilities. My personal, and my I say biased, opinion is that these tools do not deliver on the agentic promise. AI agents require a completely different approach.

Beginner here, I sort for agree. I think these tools are good to make a few good demos and quickly sketch something but you hit the ceiling soon where every other thing you do needs more work. There a lot of tutorials online plus the promise of AI automation as the next "get rich quick" thing. I am curious what is a good tool to build agents these days? I am checking out mastra, someone at the cafe told me about Inng…

Check out DBOS. There are a bunch of sample apps here:

https://github.com/dbos-inc/dbos-demo-apps/tree/main/python

DBOS is an open source library that doesn’t require an external server.

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#62

Post by rcarmo »

I have been using both for a number of years. n8n has had a resurgence recently because of its (quite clever) AI integrations (and it has higher level abstractions for doing workflows), but since I want more control I actually do my stuff (including an AÍ news summarizer and a few “agents”) in Node-RED because once you’ve sorted out your own library for things like API calls, memory, storage, etc. (which I did using just sub flows and custom JS inside them) it can be a lot simpler and more straightforward.

I see n8n as more of “citizen developer” tool (less flexibility, more built-in integrations) and Node-RED as an engineering scratchpad where you can literally build anything you want (for instance, it’s been part of my home automation setup for ages, way before Home Assistant became a thing).

I wouldn’t run _any_ of them as part of an enterprise solution, though. Security, IAM/RBAC, auditability and even general reliability would keep me up at night (even considering that Node-RED runs a surprising amount of small scale on-premises industrial automation, that’s typically in isolated networks, so I’m not factoring those in).

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#63

Post by rcarmo »

knolleary wrote: post #52

Node-RED project lead here :wave: As ever, I think each has its strengths and weaknesses, but I know which one I prefer... In terms of 'out of the box' experience, I do agree there is space for some improved Node-RED nodes to support some of these workflows. There certainly are nodes in the community to help, but there's space for more. And that's an area I think gives Node-RED an advantage; the open source nature th…

Hey Nick! (See my other comment someplace, which is very closely aligned to your point)

The bit I want to surface in this thread is that there is actually a lot that can be done with sub-flows and custom functions alone (even without added third-party modules) - I built my own library of AI/“agentic” subflows with raw HTTP request nodes and a simple convention for passing LLM context in payloads so I’m a bit biased here, but overall I find Node-RED superior in the amount of control I have over how data is handled.

(Also, I am running Node-RED in bun rather than NodeJS and it is way more efficient, although that means I can’t rely on some third-party nodes, but that is another story)

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#64

Post by rcarmo »

daniel-payne wrote: post #59
knolleary wrote: post #52

Node-RED project lead here :wave: As ever, I think each has its strengths and weaknesses, but I know which one I prefer... In terms of 'out of the box' experience, I do agree there is space for some improved Node-RED nodes to support some of these workflows. There certainly are nodes in the community to help, but there's space for more. And that's an area I think gives Node-RED an advantage; the open source nature th…

Here i was trying to show the strengths of both, unfortunately Agentic AI is graph based and node-red is flow based. Apples and Oranges. As a hack, I have got LangGraph working inside of a node-red flow. I will write it up as a medium article in the next few days, as it might be of help to others. It's very codey. I think production engineers will have to master the Langchain ecosystem, when we creating mission criti…

You can navigate a graph just fine if you set up flows to iterate through it, just like state machines (there are a few patterns to do that in Node-RED with branching and iteration). It’s perfectly possible.

However, there is something you mention that I think is important - dashboard 2 is still missing critical functionality—for instance, I cannot set it up as the “/“ (homepage) URL in an instance (there’s a lingering bug for that for around a year now) and it is still far from being as well integrated as the original.

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#65

Post by prettyblocks »

maxbaines wrote: post #28
JimDabell wrote: post #16

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.

Thankyou for the reminder, long term Node-RED user here, I recently looked again at n8n and wondered why I never took it to far, this is the reason. When you see a git icon and repo it's easy missed.

The license looks quite permissive though as long as you're not using n8n as the platform for your business. According to the license, if you just wrap/productize the flows you create and users don't bring their own n8n credentials or API keys, then you're good. It seems like there's a ton you can build off of it and still stay within the parameters of the license.

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#66

Post by monatron »

acka wrote: post #15
monatron wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I self-host n8n and get a ton of mileage out of it. Doesn't cost me a dime.

Do you use APIs with n8n? Just curious. If you do, then you might want to factor in the cost of using those as well, including privacy implications. In my limited testing, I found n8n to be heavily focused on cloud API use, from their onboarding quick tutorial to the collection of provided nodes, I found adapting them to strictly local use something of a chore.

There are a lot of nodes that are pre-built to interact with cloud APIs, but you effectively have an HTTP client available that can reach out to any endpoint. In my case, yes, I make use of cloud APIs and realize the trade-offs wrt privacy. You can hit any internal services you like assuming they're reachable from your n8n server

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#67

Post by j45 »

JimDabell wrote: post #58
j45 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licensing is always a critical consideration. The licenses may or may not be an issue depending if you are using it as is, locally, and to what extent. The clause is if you're substantially using n8n for your solution. As long as it's partial (which it almost always is)... it's another thing. Anyone who tries to use one workflow tool exclusively (n8n, node-red) almost always ends up needing to add other tools around…

> The clause is if you're substantially using n8n for your solution. As long as it's partial (which it almost always is)... it's another thing. That’s not true at all. This is the relevant part of the license: > You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge…

I took a bit of time to figure out how I arrived at the impression I have. Happy to arrive at more clarity collectively, even if it is me.

1. "OR" allows 3 use cases

- internal business purposes (which is commercial behind the scenes),

- non-commercial (this reads to me like if there's customer facing access to n8n, etc),

- personal use (home lab, learning, hobby projects, etc).

For me, the internal business purposes is the first and main reason I would look at it, where n8n is a tool among other tools in the stack all being used for some of their functionality.

From: "Limitations / You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. "

https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md

2. Substantial - This feels like skinning n8n to make a product is meant to prevent. If there's an existing business solving their issues and either it's not substantially n8n, and the n8n part isn't a product, service, or module being sold, it could be OK.

This reads like if the complex functionality of your solution is being executed in connected systems external to n8n that it helps route through, the weighing of substantial is clearly outside.

"Our license restricts use to "internal business purposes".

In practice this means all use is allowed unless you are selling a product, service, or module in which the value derives entirely or substantially from n8n functionality. "

---

Small workloads - You are correct in if it was an n8n process being packed and sold, even at small workloads, it could be a licensing issue. Conversely, if the small workload wasn't a process being sold to users.

Commercial quoting - Makes sense, again. If I want to write a workflow in n8n and just skin it, i'm substantially using their software. To me, n8n can't do everything I need so I can't imagine a scenario where that I'd hit that, but absolutely other use cases could. Additionally, the commercial license seems to be for enterprise customers - maybe an option for small business/startup (headcount, or revenue) could be available. Seems reasonable enough, and have seen it with other tools.

If substantial n8n use generated that kind of profit, I'd be happily paying for it to make sure it sticks around and is supported. It's like having an entire n8n dev team to keep n8n running for less than the cost of a developer. But I'm not there.

For me, it's rare that I would rely solely on one tool that heavily. Having base inputs (especially for AI) in text form and feeding it up so different layers could be refactored to other tools over time (such as n8n's orchestration), there can be scenarios where the work is already substantially outside of n8n. At the same time, I look at tools like n8n for what they can do, using them as is, out of the box only, and not modifying them at all, because it then can receive updates.

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Re: N8n vs. node-red

#68

Post by throwaway7783 »

aldousd666 wrote: post #34
throwaway7783 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't cost a dime to host n8n? Or is this only for personal use?

It doesn't cost a dime to host n8n. They even have a docker image prebuilt that you can just pull and play.

Oh, play. Yes, of course.

For production use, it will cost money one way or another.

Re: N8n vs. node-red

#69

Post by JimDabell »

j45 wrote: post #67
JimDabell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The clause is if you're substantially using n8n for your solution. As long as it's partial (which it almost always is)... it's another thing. That’s not true at all. This is the relevant part of the license: > You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge…

I took a bit of time to figure out how I arrived at the impression I have. Happy to arrive at more clarity collectively, even if it is me. 1. "OR" allows 3 use cases - internal business purposes (which is commercial behind the scenes), - non-commercial (this reads to me like if there's customer facing access to n8n, etc), - personal use (home lab, learning, hobby projects, etc). For me, the internal business purposes…

> Substantial - This feels like skinning n8n to make a product is meant to prevent. If there's an existing business solving their issues and either it's not substantially n8n, and the n8n part isn't a product, service, or module being sold, it could be OK.

It’s not. We wanted to incorporate n8n into our product. It would represent a small, non-essential part of our product. We weren't just skinning and reselling n8n as a product itself. But our users would be directly using an n8n instance hosted by us in a commercial context. I reached out to n8n and was told directly by them that the free license does not allow this and it required a $50k commercial license.

You seem to keep steering the discussion towards “they don’t really mean that”. Yes, they do. These are not unintentional restrictions. They wanted to make these restrictions so they could charge for commercial licenses, so that’s what they did. There is nothing hidden between the lines. There is nothing to figure out. Those are the restrictions.

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