Lindy vs n8n: goal-driven AI agents or explicit workflow graphs?

Should you choose Lindy or n8n for AI automation?#

Choose Lindy if you want an AI assistant that works inside your email, calendar, Slack and meetings and figures out the steps on its own. Choose n8n if you want to build explicit workflows step by step, with AI agents as one part of the graph, and especially if you need to self-host. The two tools overlap less than their marketing suggests. Some builders run both.

Key differences at a glance#

• What you build. With Lindy you don’t build a flow. You connect tools, then give it routines, each with a trigger, a plain-English prompt and a destination. With n8n you build a workflow graph from nodes, or a standalone agent that you can call from a workflow.
• Who decides the steps. Lindy decides at run time. In n8n workflows you define the steps, and inside an n8n agent node the model picks among the tools you allowed.
• Deployment. Lindy is hosted only. n8n offers n8n Cloud and self-hosting via Docker.
• Billing unit. Lindy uses credits, pooled across seats. n8n Cloud uses workflow executions.
• Code. n8n supports JavaScript and Python in Code nodes anywhere in a workflow. Lindy is configured in plain English. For a tool without an integration, its docs say it can drive a browser or write its own integration against the tool’s API.

How each product works#

Lindy: an AI teammate configured in plain English#

Lindy describes itself as an AI teammate that plugs into your tools, learns how you work and takes on recurring tasks. Its documentation is organized around ready-made capabilities: email drafting, labeling and alerting, follow-up bumps, meeting recording and prep, smart scheduling, a daily brief, iMessage and SMS, and a Chrome extension.

The building blocks are:

• Routines. A trigger, a prompt and a destination. Triggers can be schedules (daily, weekly, monthly) or events such as an email being received or sent, a Slack message, a calendar event about to start or a meeting ending. Event triggers accept plain-English filters, such as “only emails that promise a follow-up”. Before you turn a routine on, you can dry-run it on real data to see what it would have done.
• Skills. Reusable playbooks that Lindy picks up on its own. The homepage lists 40+ built-in skills, and teams can add custom ones.
• Memory. A versioned file system that you can browse and edit, holding the context Lindy has learned.
• Integrations and guardrails. Lindy says it connects to 1,000+ tools and supports MCP servers. For each write action you can choose “Always allow”, “Require approval” (Approve/Deny buttons in Slack) or “Don’t offer”. Read actions are never gated.

Browser automation (“computer use”) is listed on the higher tiers only.

n8n: a workflow runtime with agents as a building block#

n8n’s homepage describes a visual builder with 500+ integrations, code anywhere in the workflow, and AI agents built for visibility (“Inspect every decision”). There are two main patterns:

• Workflows. A trigger such as a schedule, an app event or a Webhook node is followed by nodes you wire together: integrations, the HTTP Request node, Code nodes, branching and AI steps.
• Agents. According to n8n’s agent docs, you pick a model provider, write instructions and give the agent tools: workflows, custom code, built-in integrations and MCP servers. Agents can search an uploaded knowledge base, keep session memory (episodic memory is optional), hand work off to sub-agents, run on schedules, reach users through Slack, Telegram and Linear, and pause for human approval before sensitive tools run. The “Message an Agent” node lets a workflow call an agent, and each message counts as one execution.

n8n gives you more control and also more to build yourself. Lindy gives you less to build and less visibility into the individual steps.

Who should pick which#

Pick Lindy if:

• Most of the work happens in your inbox, calendar, meetings and Slack: triage, drafting replies, follow-ups, meeting prep, daily summaries.
• You’d rather describe work in plain English than build a flow.
• You want approvals for write actions handled in Slack without configuring them node by node.
• A hosted service is acceptable for your data. Lindy lists SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA with a BAA, GDPR and PIPEDA compliance and says customer data isn’t used for model training.

Pick n8n if:

• The workflow is deterministic, and you want the same steps to run the same way every time.
• You need to trigger automation from your own product or third-party services via webhooks.
• You need self-hosting for data residency, internal-only data or compliance review.
• You expect high run volume and want to control cost per run.
• You want to write JavaScript or Python inside the flow, or build custom agents with a model you choose.

Pricing structure#

Numbers change often, so this section covers structure only. For current figures, see the live pricing card on this page.

Lindy: per-seat plans with a pooled credit balance#

Lindy’s pricing page lists four plans: Plus, Pro, Max and Enterprise. Here’s how it works:

• Each paid seat comes with a monthly credit allowance, and all seats feed one shared workspace pool.
• Credits refresh each billing cycle and don’t roll over.
• Different work costs different amounts. The pricing page groups usage into everyday asks, deep work and big builds, and the usage docs note that more advanced models cost more.
• When the pool runs out, Lindy pauses credit-using actions until the next cycle. You can also buy top-ups, upgrade, or turn on overages, which the docs say bill at a higher rate than plan credits.
• Computer use (browser automation) starts at Pro. Enterprise adds HIPAA, SSO, audit logs and dedicated support.
• New workspaces get free trial credits without a credit card, plus a 7-day trial.

In practice, the bill depends on how much work you hand Lindy and how heavy that work is, not on a fixed run count. Admins can check per-member credit use under Settings → Members.

n8n: per execution on Cloud, or self-hosted#

n8n’s pricing page charges by monthly workflow executions, regardless of complexity. One execution is one full run of a workflow, however many steps it has. The tiers are Starter, Pro, Business and Enterprise. Higher tiers raise the execution allowance and concurrency, add shared projects and longer execution history, and unlock admin roles, SSO/SAML/LDAP, Git version control, queue mode and external secret stores. Cloud plans have a free trial without a credit card. The pricing page also mentions a startup discount on Business for small companies.

The self-hosted Community Edition has no license fee, but it is not AGPL. It ships under n8n’s Sustainable Use License, which allows internal business use and personal non-commercial use but restricts commercial redistribution. Enterprise features in .ee files need a separate enterprise license. If you plan to resell or embed n8n inside a product you charge for, read the license first.

Because n8n counts whole workflow runs rather than individual steps, it is predictable for high-volume flows, and self-hosting removes per-execution billing entirely. You pay for the server and your own time instead.

Observability and debugging#

• n8n lets you view and filter every execution and debug a past execution in the editor. That copies the failed run’s data into the workflow so you can test a fix against real input. This is available on all Cloud plans and on self-hosted Registered Community, Business and Enterprise editions. How long execution history is kept depends on the plan.
• Lindy has dry runs for routines before they go live, Slack approvals for gated writes, and an editable memory you can inspect. Its documentation doesn’t describe a step-by-step run log comparable to n8n’s execution view. Its routines guide suggests asking Lindy in chat about a routine’s status.

If you need to answer “exactly what data passed through step 4 on Tuesday’s run?”, n8n is built for that question.

Limitations of each#

Lindy

• Hosted only, with no self-hosted option.
• Its public docs don’t cover webhook triggers or an API for starting work from external systems.
• Credits don’t roll over, and actions pause when the pool is empty. Heavy months need monitoring or top-ups.
• Computer use is not on the entry plan.
• Plain-English configuration is fast to set up, but it is harder to guarantee identical behavior on every run than with a fixed graph.

n8n

• More to build. You choose models, write prompts, wire tools and handle errors yourself.
• Self-hosting means you own updates, backups, scaling and security.
• The Community Edition license is source-available, not open source, and has commercial-use restrictions.
• Advanced governance features (SSO, Git version control, long execution history) sit on higher Cloud tiers or require an enterprise license.
• It has no built-in “AI assistant” experience for email and meetings out of the box. You build the equivalent from nodes.

Using both together#

Because Lindy routines can trigger on email and Slack messages, and n8n can send email and post to Slack through its integrations, you can connect the two through a shared channel. For example, an n8n workflow handles the deterministic part (sync data, compute a report, post it to a Slack channel), and a Lindy routine watching that channel handles the judgment part (summarize, draft follow-ups, flag what needs attention). Lindy doesn’t document a direct API between them, so test this handoff with a Lindy dry run before relying on it.

Verdict#

For a solo founder whose bottleneck is communication work (inbox, follow-ups, meetings, scheduling), Lindy is the faster path. There is nothing to build, approvals live in Slack, and the credit model scales with how much you delegate.

For a builder who needs deterministic automation, webhooks, code or self-hosting, n8n is the more durable foundation. Its execution-based billing and self-hosted option suit high volume, and its agent features now cover a lot of agentic work, as long as you’re willing to assemble the agent yourself.

The two aren’t direct substitutes. Pick based on whether you want to delegate work or build automation. Current pricing for both is in the live pricing card on this page.