Deploy n8n on Render

This guide walks through deploying n8n on Render using the official n8n Docker image.

Use n8n to intelligently automate sequences of tasks across a wide variety of applications: post Slack messages, trigger CI/CD pipelines, create support tickets, and much more.

First, choose a storage method

Your n8n instance can use one of two methods to store workflow data on Render. The method you choose determines how you configure your deployment:

After you choose a storage method, follow the corresponding setup instructions below.

Setup: Render Postgres

If you'll store workflow data in a Render Postgres database, your n8n deployment will consist of two Render resources:

• A web service that pulls and runs the n8n Docker image
• A Render Postgres database that stores your n8n workflow data

This setup uses free Render compute plans.

Free web services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity, and free Render Postgres databases expire after 30 days.

After you get up and running with n8n, you can upgrade your instances to remove these limitations and improve performance.

1. Sign up for Render

Signing up is fast and free:

Sign up for Render

2. Copy the example template

To simplify connecting your n8n instance to its database, we've created a template repo that enables you to deploy both resources together using a Render Blueprint.

1. Open the render-examples/n8n template on GitHub.
2. Click Use this template > Create a new repository in the top right.
3. In the form that appears, set configuration options for your new repo, then click Create repository.

3. Create a Render Blueprint

Your newly created repo contains a render.yaml file that defines both your n8n web service and its database:

The full file in your repo includes helpful comments describing the purpose of included fields.

By defining our two resources this way, we can configure and deploy them together using Blueprints, Render's infrastructure-as-code model:

1. In the Render Dashboard, click New > Blueprint:

   

2. If you haven't yet, connect your GitHub account to Render. This enables Render to fetch the render.yaml file from your new repo.

3. Under Connect a repository, click the Connect button for the repo you created earlier.

   This opens a Blueprint creation form that lists the resources Render will create from your render.yaml file:

   

4. Provide a Blueprint Name and confirm that you're pulling the Branch you expect from your repo.

5. Click Deploy Blueprint.

   Your Blueprint kicks off its first sync, which you can follow along with:

   

   As each resource is created, a green checkmark appears next to it.

   + Database creation failed?

   Your workspace might already have a free Render Postgres database (each workspace is limited to one). If so, do one of the following:

   • Delete your existing free database in the Render Dashboard, then retry syncing the Blueprint.
   • Update your render.yaml file to use a paid compute plan for the database, then push the update to your repo to trigger a new sync.

6. After both resources become available, navigate to your new web service's page in the Render Dashboard. Its onrender.com URL appears at the top:

   

   Visit this URL to access your n8n instance:

   

You're up and running with n8n on Render! Before you get started creating workflows, we recommend the following:

• Upgrade to paid instances before your free Render Postgres database expires.
• Review the additional configuration below.

4. Upgrade your instances

As specified by default in render.yaml, both your n8n web service and Render Postgres database use free compute plans, which have important limitations. Most critically, your free database will expire after 30 days.

After you're up and running with n8n, you can upgrade these services to use paid compute plans. Change the plan field for each service to the desired compute plan, then push your changes:

• For n8n, we recommend running your web service on the 1c-2g compute plan or larger.
  • Otherwise, n8n might encounter performance issues.
• The 0.1c-256mb is the smallest paid Render Postgres compute plan and is usually sufficient for your n8n database.

See all supported plan values for web services and databases.

Setup: Persistent disk

If you'll store workflow data directly with your n8n instance, you create a Render web service and attach a persistent disk to it.

Note that persistent disks require a paid service instance. To get started for free, you can use Render Postgres instead.

Why attach a persistent disk?

By default, Render services have an ephemeral filesystem, which means that all changes to local files are lost whenever the instance is redeployed. A persistent disk enables you to retain filesystem changes across deploys.

1. Sign up for Render

Signing up is fast and free:

Sign up for Render

2. Create your n8n web service

1. In the Render Dashboard, click New > Web Service:

   

2. Under Source Code, click Existing Image:

   

3. Provide the following Image URL and click Connect:

4. Provide a Name for your web service and specify which Region you'll deploy it to.

5. Select a Compute Plan for your web service. You can select any compute plan besides Free (which doesn't support persistent disks).

6. Under Environment Variables, add a PORT variable with a value of 5678. This is the default port that n8n listens on.

   • This step isn't strictly necessary (Render can detect your service's HTTP port automatically), but it speeds up your first deploy.

7. Expand the Advanced dropdown at the bottom of the form and find the Disk section.

8. Click Add disk. The following fields appear:

   

9. Set your disk's Mount path to /home/node. By default, n8n will store its data in a .n8n directory under this path.

   • Only data under the mount path is persisted across deploys! Changes to other parts of the filesystem are lost when the service is redeployed.
   • You can store n8n data in a different directory by setting the N8N_USER_FOLDER environment variable. If you do, modify your disk's mount path to match.

10. Set the disk's Size to 1 GB for now. You can increase this size later as needed.

11. Click Deploy Web Service.

12. After the deploy completes, navigate to your new web service's page in the Render Dashboard. Its onrender.com URL appears at the top:

    

    Visit this URL to access your n8n instance:

    

You're up and running with n8n on Render! Before you get started creating workflows, we recommend reviewing the additional configuration below.

Additional configuration

Complete the following steps as needed after you complete the initial setup of your n8n instance.

Set your webhook URL

If any of your n8n workflows will listen for incoming webhook notifications, you need to set the root URL for all webhook endpoints by adding an environment variable to your web service:

1. From your n8n web service's page in the Render Dashboard, click Environment in the left pane.

   • If you're using Render Postgres, here you'll see all of the existing environment variables that were added as part of the Blueprint deployment (DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE, DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD, and so on).

2. Under Environment Variables, click Edit, then Add > New variable.

3. Set the new variable's Key to WEBHOOK_URL.

4. Set the variable's Value to the service's onrender.com URL (e.g., https://n8n-service-q975.onrender.com/).

5. Click Save and deploy.

After the deploy completes, your onrender.com URL will be reflected in any webhook nodes you add to your workflows: