· 6 min read

Hosting your own N8N Instance for FREE!

Sharing the step-by-step tutorial of how you can host a free n8n server on Google Cloud

AutomationTech

I’ve always had this itch to find hacks that let me do things others pay for — for free. There’s a strange thrill in that. From hosting this website forever free on GitHub Pages, to spinning up a no-cost backend on Supabase, to now running my own N8N automation stack for ₹0 (who pays $30 a month! :P) — it’s a bit of a sport at this point.

Thanks to AI, I’m tinkering with new tech almost daily, and I’ve come to love the small wins and the feeling of owning my setup end-to-end. This is one of those journeys.

In this article, I’ll walk you through how I self-host n8n —a fantastic workflow automation tool on Google Cloud, using Docker Compose and Traefik for automatic HTTPS. If you stay within Google’s free-tier limits, it runs at ₹0/month!, and you end up with a clean, reproducible setup you can scale or shut down anytime.

Questions I had while starting this project:

Before diving headfirst into the Google Cloud console, I had to answer a few “Whys” to make sure this was a rabbit hole worth going down.

Why self-host n8n in the first place?

This one was easy to answer, and it came down to a few key things:

  • Control & Privacy: My automations and credentials stay in my own virtual box. I wanted to give it access to my Gmail, WhatsApp, Contacts, and more, and I just wasn’t comfortable doing that on a public hosted site where I didn’t have full control.

  • Predictable Costs: It’s free if you stick to the e2-micro free tier. Even if you scale up slightly, the costs are incredibly low (maybe ₹100-200 a month at most!). This beats a $30/month subscription any day.

  • Flexibility: Using Docker makes it trivial to back up, move, or upgrade the entire stack. No vendor lock-in, just pure, unadulterated control.

Why is this better than the paid options?

For me, it boiled down to these reasons:

  • No Limits on Workflows: Most paid plans have tiers based on the number of workflows or execution steps. With a self-hosted instance, the only limit is your VM’s capacity.

  • Learning Opportunity: Setting this up forces you to learn about Docker, reverse proxies, and cloud infrastructure—skills that are incredibly valuable.

  • It’s Just More Fun! There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from building and owning your own tools.

If any of these resonate, read on.

What we’ll build

A minimal yet production‑grade stack:

  • Compute: 1× e2‑micro VM on Google Cloud (Always Free, select US regions)
  • Reverse proxy: Traefik with Let’s Encrypt (automatic TLS)
  • App: n8n (Docker image)
  • Storage: Docker volume for n8n data + optional “local files” folder for file nodes
  • Domain: n8n.yourdomain.com pointing to the VM

Prerequisites

Before we spin up our free automation empire, make sure you’ve got a few basics in place:

  • A domain or subdomain you can tweak — for me, it’s n8n.princejain.me (yep, this one works!).
  • A Google Cloud account with billing enabled — yes, even for the “free” tier, Google still needs a billing added for the project.
  • A bit of terminal comfort (SSH, copy/paste commands, etc.) — or, worst case, surrender yourself to the GPT gods.

Here’s how I actually did it…

Step 1 — Create a Free VM on Google Cloud

  1. Create or select an existing Project in the Google Cloud Console.
  2. Enable Compute Engine.
  3. Create a VM with these exact specs:
    • Machine type: e2‑micro (Always Free where eligible)
    • Region: Any eligible free‑tier region (choose one of us‑west1, us‑central1, us‑east1)
    • OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (or latest LTS)
    • Disk: 30 GB Standard Persistent Disk
    • Firewall: Allow HTTP and HTTPS
  4. Once it’s create, note down the external IP — this is where we’ll point our domain.

Tip: The free tier is time‑based for all e2‑micro instances across supported regions in a month. Stick to the eligible regions to avoid surprise charges.

Step 2 — Pointing the Domain (DNS)

With the server up, I needed a public URL to access the instance. For that I created an A record for my subdomain, n8n.princejain.me pointing to the VM IP address we noted in previous step.

  • Host/Name: n8n (or your choice)
  • Type: A
  • Value: YOUR.VM.IP.ADDRESS
  • TTL: 5 min (or default)

Propagation is usually fast but can take longer depending on your registrar. You can check if the change has propagated using a tool like DNS Checker.and you will get back the external IP of your VM.

Step 3 — Installing the Building Blocks: Docker + Docker Compose

Next, SSH’d into the VM and install Docker, which lets us run n8n in a container.

# System updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

# Install prerequisites
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl nano

# Add Docker's official GPG key
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Set up the repository
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo "${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-$VERSION_CODENAME}") stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

# Install Docker Engine
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

# Quick sanity checks
docker --version
docker compose version

Step 4 — Project layout & environment

Create a working directory and a shared files folder (very handy for n8n’s file nodes):

mkdir -p ~/n8n-compose
cd ~/n8n-compose
mkdir -p local-files

Create a .env file:

sudo nano .env

Paste and edit details based on your config:

# Where your n8n will be available:
DOMAIN_NAME=yourdomain.com
SUBDOMAIN=n8n
# => https://n8n.yourdomain.com

# Timezone used by cron/schedules inside n8n
GENERIC_TIMEZONE=Asia/Kolkata

# Email for Let's Encrypt (Traefik) — certificate issuance
[email protected]

Save and exit (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X).

Finally, create a docker-compose.yml file:

sudo nano docker-compose.yml

Paste:

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik
    restart: always
    command:
      - "--api=true"
      # NOTE: for production, secure/remove the dashboard; '--api.insecure=true' exposes it
      - "--api.insecure=true"
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
      - "--entrypoints.web.address=:80"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entryPoint.to=websecure"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.scheme=https"
      - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.mytlschallenge.acme.tlschallenge=true"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.mytlschallenge.acme.email=${SSL_EMAIL}"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.mytlschallenge.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - traefik_data:/letsencrypt
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro

  n8n:
    image: docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n
    restart: always
    # Bind n8n only to localhost; Traefik terminates TLS
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:5678:5678"
    labels:
      - traefik.enable=true
      - traefik.http.routers.n8n.rule=Host(`${SUBDOMAIN}.${DOMAIN_NAME}`)
      - traefik.http.routers.n8n.tls=true
      - traefik.http.routers.n8n.entrypoints=web,websecure
      - traefik.http.routers.n8n.tls.certresolver=mytlschallenge
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.SSLRedirect=true
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.STSSeconds=315360000
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.browserXSSFilter=true
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.forceSTSHeader=true
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAIN_NAME}
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true
      - traefik.http.middlewares.n8n.headers.STSPreload=true
      - traefik.http.routers.n8n.middlewares=n8n@docker
    environment:
      - N8N_HOST=${SUBDOMAIN}.${DOMAIN_NAME}
      - N8N_PORT=5678
      - N8N_PROTOCOL=https
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - WEBHOOK_URL=https://${SUBDOMAIN}.${DOMAIN_NAME}/
      - GENERIC_TIMEZONE=${GENERIC_TIMEZONE}
    volumes:
      - n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n
      - ./local-files:/files

volumes:
  n8n_data:
  traefik_data:

Almost done!

With everything in place, it was time to launch.

cd ~/n8n-compose
sudo docker compose up -d

Give it a minute for certificates to issue. Then open:

https://n8n.yourdomain.com

You should see n8n’s owner account screen. Create your account and you’re in. Your very own, free, and private automation server is live.

Its Done!

Some Tips and Tricks

  • Troubleshooting SSL: If you get a certificate error, the quickest fix is to stop the containers, remove the old certificate, and restart.
sudo docker compose down
# If you mapped a host folder for certs, clear any stale file. With volumes (as above), a restart is usually enough.
sudo rm -rf ./letsencrypt/acme.json || true
sudo docker compose up -d
  • Upgrading n8n safely

Periodically run these commands to keep your docker instance up-to-date:

cd ~/n8n-compose
sudo docker compose pull
sudo docker compose down
sudo docker compose up -d

What next?

  • Start wiring up workflows. The mounted /files path is super handy for import/export nodes.
  • Add your OAuth credentials in n8n (they live securely in the volume).
  • If you ever outgrow the e2-micro VM, you can just resize it or move the stack—Docker Compose makes it painless.

TL;DR

  • One free e2‑micro VM in an eligible region + Traefik + n8n
  • Automatic HTTPS, persistent volumes, clean upgrade path
  • Cheap, private, and fast to replicate for multiple environments

If you run into a snag or want to adapt this for another cloud, ping me—I’m happy to share what’s worked (and what hasn’t).