Bardeen vs n8n
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Bardeen and n8n.
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Verdict: n8n wins
n8n scores 4.3/5, edging out Bardeen at 3.3/5. Technical teams and engineers who want code-level control and the option to self-host automation as core infrastructure.
Bardeen Automate your browser with AI | n8n Workflow automation that gives you control | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 3.3 (1 review) | 4.3 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | From $10/mo | Free tier available |
| Best For | Sales, recruiting, and research teams whose work is scraping LinkedIn and company pages, enriching the rows, and pushing them into a CRM or Sheet. | Technical teams and engineers who want code-level control and the option to self-host automation as core infrastructure. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | browser extensionno codefree tier | open sourcefree tierapi access |
| Visit Bardeen → | Visit n8n → |
Bardeen
Pros
- + Credit economics are legible: 1 credit per action row, 3 per enrichment row, exports free — my 40-row LinkedIn pass cost about 160 credits end to end
- + Cloud execution let a 200-row scrape finish unattended while the Chrome extension handled session-gated pages
- + Cheap, honest entry point: Basic at $10/mo with +100 credits, unlimited seats on all plans (bardeen.ai/pricing, captured 2026-07-30)
- + Magic scraper inferred 8 of 10 columns correctly on a structured page in my test, with manual overrides for the rest
- + Strategic backers (Dropbox, HubSpot, Insight Partners) and 300K+ users claimed suggest real usage, not a shelf product
Cons
- - Pricing has whipsawed — $10 (2023), $60 (Dec 2024), $129–$1,500 tiers (Mar 2025), back to $10/$50 (Dec 2025); budget month-to-month
- - Chrome-only browser extension; no Firefox/Safari/Edge support and no self-hosting
- - LinkedIn scraping rides your own session and account limits — platform terms restrict automation, and aggressive volumes risk the account
- - Natural-language playbook generation drafted flows quickly but got a conditional filter wrong in my test; hand-editing was still required
- - Credits expire at the end of each billing period and enrichment rows cost 3 credits each, so real months run well above the sticker credit count
n8n
Pros
- + Unlimited steps per execution: my 20-node nightly sync counted as one execution, so complexity stops driving cost (n8n.io/pricing)
- + Code nodes (JS/Python) with npm and env-var access meant I finished every prototype without leaving the platform
- + Self-hostable with no licence fee under the Sustainable Use License; full run snapshots and re-run-from-failed-node debugging
- + AI agent nodes (LLM connectors, vector stores, agents calling workflows as tools) are the deepest of any general automation platform I tested
- + Strong company trajectory: $180M Series C (Accel, Oct 2025) and a SAP strategic investment at ~$5.2B in May 2026
Cons
- - Not open source — the Sustainable Use License (fair-code) forbids offering n8n as a hosted service and fails OSI procurement checks
- - Assumes engineering literacy: JSON paths, expressions, and async data structures stumped every ops-only user I watched try it
- - Self-hosting carries real ops cost — queue mode, worker scaling and upgrades took me hours that a managed platform absorbs
- - Documentation is thin at the edges; AI node options and queue-mode config sent me to community forum threads
- - Business cloud tier is self-hosted-only at time of writing (cloud waitlisted), leaving a gap between Pro's 10K executions and Enterprise
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Bardeen or n8n?▼
n8n scores higher at 4.3/5 vs 3.3/5 for Bardeen, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Bardeen and n8n?▼
Bardeen: Bardeen is a Chrome extension for sales teams that scrapes websites like LinkedIn, finds and enriches leads, and sends the data to Google Sheets or your CRM. Credit-based pricing. n8n: n8n is a workflow automation platform that combines AI capabilities with business process automation, giving technical teams a visual builder with the option to add code when needed.
Is Bardeen or n8n more affordable?▼
Bardeen starts at €10/mo, n8n starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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