[HN Gopher] N8n added native persistent storage with DataTables
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N8n added native persistent storage with DataTables
Author : XCSme
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-10-02 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (community.n8n.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.n8n.io)
| mritchie712 wrote:
| it'll be interesting to see what happens with n8n over the next
| few years.
|
| On one hand, a ton of people are using it to build AI workflows.
|
| On the other, it's never been easier to build a similar workflow
| in Python with Claude Code or other tools where you get infinite
| flexibility, version control, and more flexibility on hosting.
|
| We're betting on the later at https://www.definite.app/. Our
| agent writes pure Python with pre-built integrations into stuff
| like Hubspot, Salesforce, Attio, Stripe, Postgres, etc.
| op00to wrote:
| Might be easy to build, but impossible to maintain.
| sieep wrote:
| That pricing model is insane and confusing as hell. Your FAQ
| clears it up slightly but was hard pass from me almost
| instantly due to the conflicting information in the pricing
| section.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Yeah, we're working on it. I'd prefer to by compute hours,
| but it's hard for people to know how many hours they'll need.
| BobSonOfBob wrote:
| It's smart for N8N to add DataTables. Had to of been the biggest
| dev need.
| owenthejumper wrote:
| The n8n space has been crowded for a long time - Tray io, Zapier
| Enterprise, Workato, Make, UIPath, and many others
|
| N8n seems to be standing out thanks to their open source roots
| (and not deliberately hampering the OSS variant too much).
|
| DataTables will make a big difference again - being able to store
| some level of "state" has been a need in almost every workflow
| I've built.
| JimDabell wrote:
| n8n doesn't have open-source roots. It's never been open-source
| and doesn't have an OSS variant.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Didn't their change their licensing or something and now folks
| are leaving? I've seen a few ex-N8n'ers coming over to the Node-
| RED forum, hence the question.
| tarun_anand wrote:
| Keep to know how people are using it inspite of the licensing
| issues. Langflow seems good?
| nextworddev wrote:
| Langflow was more painful than a wisdom tooth extraction to
| use. This was back in early 2025 tho
| Towaway69 wrote:
| I would recommend Node-RED but that's a lot more work than
| a Zapier or N8n but you can do more with it - Node-RED
| abstraction level is closer to a programming language than
| a SaaS combinatorial tool.
|
| Depends on what you want to achieve and how much effort you
| want to apply.
| cyrnel wrote:
| +1 for Node-RED. If we've learned anything from
| elasticsearch/redis/bitnami/and dozens of others, it should be
| "don't build important things on code that isn't
| enshittification-resistant"
| echelon wrote:
| What did elasticsearch/redis do so wrong?
|
| AWS and Google stole their only revenue source.
|
| Those guys did all the work and AWS and Google get to collect
| a cool hundred million each quarter for doing next to
| nothing. And the original authors can't compete with that.
|
| Are we all gonna go sign up to "Enterprise Redis Cloud" to
| support them? I don't think so. They have nothing left. They
| got picked dry.
|
| If they're preserved a "no managed offerings" freedom for
| themselves, they could collect a few hundred million from
| each hyperscaler each quarter and put that directly into
| product. And their engineers would be extra nicely
| compensated.
|
| But that's not how this story plays out. Big tech just takes
| things and finds out how to monetize them in ways they don't
| have to give back.
|
| And we've been trained (by big tech?) to yell at the little
| guys that try to carve out a space for themselves.
| cyrnel wrote:
| Both are billion dollar companies, we as individuals have
| nothing in common with them. Enshittification happens due
| to market conditions that apply to small and large
| companies alike. Redis and elasticsearch aren't underdogs
| fighting for the little guy, they are just a smaller scale
| version of the same shit.
|
| I'd rather have a software commons and have tech be owned
| by the workers and not soul-sucking corporations, no matter
| the size.
| akudha wrote:
| ActivePieces is also an option
| rglover wrote:
| Hadn't heard of Node-RED but this is really cool. Thanks for
| mentioning it.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Yet more evidence that venture capital is basically
| incompatible with open source software. It's just a matter of
| time before any VC-backed open source company betrays its
| users.
| JimDabell wrote:
| n8n was never open source. They started out using Apache with
| a non-free clause added, but they called themselves open-
| source incorrectly. Then when this became more widely known,
| they stopped calling themselves open-source.
| echelon wrote:
| Why is it okay to just accept that the hyperscalers are
| 100% closed, but the minute a smaller player tries to play
| "open-ish" with "fair source" we crucify them?
|
| Fair source is amazing. You get the code. You can modify
| the code. You can redistribute the code. You just can't
| take their business from them and compete with them head-
| to-head with their product. You can reformulate it into
| something else, but you can't take their labor and cut
| their knees off with it. You have literally every other
| freedom.
|
| Why in the hell are so many people against that?
|
| Fair source is sustainable and equitable. You get
| everything except for that one little right with which you
| could compete with them.
|
| Everyone gushes over Obsidian - that's not even "source
| available" or "fair source". It's completely closed.
|
| I bet if Obsidian went "fair source", and you could
| download the code and compile it yourself, there would be
| hundreds of voices crawling out of the woodwork to call
| them the devil for not being pure OSI-approved open. How
| dare they keep one little freedom to themselves for all the
| hard work they've done?
|
| I'm half convinced the anti-"fair source" voices are deep
| industry folks who want big tech to own the OSI definition.
| Who can use it strategically as they sit atop hundreds of
| billions of dollars in cash flows. Open source to the
| FAANGMAGMA Gods is just a way of outsourcing labor and
| dangling trinkets in front of underpaid labor.
|
| n8n isn't doing a "VC rug pull." They're trying to be
| sustainable. The only thing that's been "pulled" is the
| wool over the eyes of every engineer satisfied with FAANG
| OSI-approved _serfdom_. Some of the pieces are "open" all
| right, but they own pretty much everything the sunlight
| touches.
|
| If n8n can't build a business then it just becomes some
| side project hobby. What exactly do we think every other
| company is doing?
|
| Please be more pragmatic and realize that "fair source" is
| sustainable. It rewards the innovators and you get almost
| everything for free. You just can't shoot them with their
| own gun.
|
| Do you not want the ability to download the source and
| potentially tweak the software? To have a copy you can hold
| onto forever? To be able to analyze it for telemetry. To be
| able to potentially submit patches (if you're feeling
| generous)?
|
| Don't you want them to make money? Rather than beg for
| Github donation scraps?
|
| Be especially mindful if you're typing a retort on a
| Macbook Pro or iPhone and deploying software to GKE or AWS.
|
| ---
|
| https://faircode.io/
|
| https://fair.io/
| JimDabell wrote:
| The person I was replying to seemed to be under the
| impression that n8n used to be open source and now is
| not. This is not the case, so I pointed that out.
|
| Did you have anything to say about my actual comment, or
| are you just attaching your rant to a random part of the
| thread?
| bityard wrote:
| I don't know/care about "fair source," but the "open
| source" label in particular has ALWAYS had a well-known
| and specific meaning in the software world. Attaching it
| to a proprietary product for the marketing and social
| media good feels is actively deceitful, no matter if the
| company is USA trillion-dollar Big Tech or a single
| developer from a marginalized demographic in a developing
| country.
|
| Software authors have the right to choose whatever
| license they wish for the project/product, just don't try
| to lie to users about what it really is.
| echelon wrote:
| "Open" AI, "Open" Router, and the like typically get a
| pass.
|
| n8n has never called themselves "open". Their first
| commit:
|
| https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/9cb9804eeec1576d935817
| ecd...
|
| There's so much misinformation and animosity about fair
| source licenses.
| wavemode wrote:
| > n8n has never called themselves "open"
|
| Trivially debunked by looking at their homepage in 2019:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20191009000026/https://n8n.io
| /
| sfRattan wrote:
| I care that software I depend upon survives long term. In
| consequence, I care to some extent that the principal
| company or organization building that software also
| survives... _But that finite concern is balanced against
| the simultaneous concern that the software itself can
| survive the organization 's potential dissolution_. I
| don't want to have to make a sudden, stressful, expensive
| migration because corporate buy-outs, bankruptcies, or
| mergers result in rug-pulls for software I use.
|
| "Fair" source does absolutely nothing to allievate those
| concerns. _The four software freedoms do_.
|
| It is true that for a quarter century software developers
| have naively licensed their projects under MIT and BSD
| style permissive licenses, and have then felt robbed when
| big companies come in and eat their lunch. Except it was
| never their lunch because they didn't actually use
| licenses that would have asserted their rights to that
| lunch.
|
| Thankfully, that naivete is finally, slowly dying but,
| rather than use robust solutions that have been around
| for decades (e.g. GPL-or-AGPL/proprietary dual license),
| some developers have invented a new, largely untested
| concept and named it by dressing up their own sour grapes
| and spite as "fairness".
|
| "Fair" source software is a non-solution in search of a
| problem.
|
| Free software and strong copyleft licenses already exist.
| Dual-licensing already exists. Viable, profitable,
| healthy, ethical companies built on these strategies
| already exist.
|
| I used to think Stallman was a crank and a
| fundamentalist, and he absolutely is, and thank goodness
| for that. I now think "open-source" is exactly as diluted
| as free software advocates initially pointed out, and the
| emergence of "fair" source is part of the damage it has
| done.
| j1elo wrote:
| Authors using Fair want to share their code while getting
| protections for _themselves_. Strong copyleft doesn 't
| care about authors and is all about protecting the end
| users.
|
| So Fair fullfills an actual need or desire not covered
| elsewhere, thus is not a non-solution.
|
| It might be not the _appropriate_ or the _best_ solution
| to solve the exact concerns of people using it, that 's
| debatable and a different topic, akin to using the wrong
| tool for the job. Strong copyleft is the wrong tool, too;
| obviously competitors can just deploy without
| modifications and offer it as a service.
| sfRattan wrote:
| > Authors using Fair want to share their code while
| getting protections for _themselves_. Strong copyleft
| doesn 't care about authors and is all about protecting
| the end users.
|
| This is a one-sided assertion of fairness, and therefore
| an abuse of the concept. _Free software offers the same
| rights to both authors and users_. That is fairness.
|
| If you want to reserve rights to yourself that are
| withheld from end-users, that's fine. _Arguably even
| still within a broader conceptual realm of fairness_. But
| naming your personally preferred arrangement of rights
| "fair" and in so doing implying most or all other
| arrangements are unfair is just plain arrogant.
|
| Strong copyleft cares equally about authors and end-
| users. It doesn't disregard authors. Some authors just
| want to co-opt the general notion of fairness to mean
| their own licensing preferences.
|
| Call it a non-compete license and be forthright.
| perdomon wrote:
| this is a solid argument against the open-source purists
| that I've never heard before and really appreciate. Many
| people would like to make money on the things they spend
| their time building. Some percentage of those people also
| love FOSS. Fair source is the middle ground where they
| can share their work, open it up for criticism, issues,
| and fixes, but ensure that their business is secure. It's
| a solid middle ground that shouldn't be demonized just
| because it isn't open source.
| robotswantdata wrote:
| Node red is better (imo) but harder for non technical users to
| use
| Onavo wrote:
| Try activepieces, they never did any bait and switch.
|
| https://www.activepieces.com/
| Lord_Zero wrote:
| Looks like they have tables too
| itayd wrote:
| You can also try https://github.com/autokitteh/autokitteh.
| Python based, completely open source. Got inter workflow
| storage as well
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| Node-RED is cool but I didn't realise it could do the AI
| workflows that n8n is aiming for?
| rubenfiszel wrote:
| For the AI workflows, we (windmill.dev) added AI Agent steps
| as first class primitives very recently.
| nemanja030 wrote:
| Node-Red is probably a more hands on approach, than n8n, as
| someone who have 6-7 years of experience in node-red i find
| n8n really complicated for some reason. A lot of windows and
| configurations. Started with node-red and quickly built great
| skills in backend development.
|
| Also utilized Cursor to quickly spinup a OpenRouter nodes for
| node-red, install node-red and check them out :D
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lizzard-solutions/node-red-
| co...
| dondraper36 wrote:
| Also, take a look at windmill.dev. It's a beast
| anilgulecha wrote:
| I think windmill got the entities right (script, flow, app).
| The last I tried it was a bit more complex to setup than n8n.
| zachwill wrote:
| We've similarly had a lot of success with self-hosting
| Windmill.
| diarrhea wrote:
| Great to see this land.
|
| When I set up n8n last year I was thoroughly confused at the lack
| of state management. I ended up storing as JSON in a remote blob
| "database", a horrible hack.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Node-RED has three state access levels: global one across all
| flows, a flow based state which is only applicable to one flow
| and node-based state/storage that is linked to single node.
|
| Any node can access global state, only nodes contained in the
| flow can access flow state and nodes that have their own state
| can solely access that storage.
| jtrn wrote:
| The other licensing shoe is going to drop. And when it does, it
| will be same as always. Important features will be cut of from
| "community" edition, like admin for minio, and pricing will be
| predatory for full product, like Taipy. Seriously, screw Taipy.
| Got quoted 200k for an open license if I wanted to self host it,
| with no limit on number users.
| jdoss wrote:
| I got hit by the Minio admin change in the console when I
| upgraded my installation recently, and I found
| https://github.com/huncrys/minio-console which adds it all back
| in. It works as expected so far.
|
| I find this kind of rug pull behavior so hostile I will be
| looking to replace Minio as soon as possible in my homelab. To
| be clear, I would pay for a license if the prices weren't
| impossible to afford as an invidual who uses Minio for non-
| business reasons.
| untrimmed wrote:
| It's awesome for quick projects, but that 50MB limit makes me
| think I'll just end up migrating to Supabase or Airtable down the
| line anyway.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| What is the point of this... platform? Also you can't scroll down
| to the footer because some wonderfully experienced designer (or
| PM or even engineer) decided the infinite scroll list was a good
| idea.
|
| Classic.
| CharlesW wrote:
| You're looking at the community forum, which uses Discourse
| (https://www.discourse.org/).
|
| Check out the n8n home page (https://n8n.io/), which is
| actually great at clearly communicating the point of the
| platform.
| tcdent wrote:
| What percent of agent devs are using tools like this versus
| writing code to define their systems?
|
| Seems like a lot, and I find it surprising that people would
| build real world workflows on platforms like this.
| Raed667 wrote:
| On the other hand LangGraph and LangChain are an absolute pain
| to use and you end up spending most of your effort in
| boilerplate hell if you want to stitch together anything useful
| melvinmelih wrote:
| I recently had to build a production-ready workflow in N8N - it
| ended up being a spaghetti flow of custom code nodes and custom
| http requests (because none of the provided connectors did
| exactly what we needed) that I was left wondering if this
| wouldn't be easier to code up in Cursor.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It looks to me like n8n has suddenly taken over to the point
| where Automation is now almost synonymous with n8n for most
| people.
|
| As someone who builds workflows using my own agent system which
| is based on checklists, subtasks and tool calling with new
| features or tools based on plugins in Python, it is harder and
| harder to find an "AI Automation" project where people haven't
| predetermined that I have to use n8n.
|
| It's ridiculous.
|
| I actually think that defaulting to creating workflows in raw
| code is not an ideal outcome though because it feels
| inaccessible to non-programmers.
|
| But I think within X months there will be a lot of people who
| find out how bad the licensing issues are with n8n and migrate
| to something similar to my system where workflows are run by
| agents that have a delegate_subtask command or commands to
| manage checklists etc. Because most of the workflows can be
| managed easily by strong models and just described in natural
| language if the agents have the right tool commands and the
| system has a scheduling/trigger system.
|
| But then give it another X months or a year or so later and
| many will start using general purpose computer use agents that
| they just treat quite similarly to human employees. Because one
| of the biggest gaps regardless of how you do it is with the
| inconvenience of setting up OAuth 2 and the operational and
| bottom line issue of running all of your API requests through
| some centralized service like n8n.
|
| So we will see people who have agent systems like myself
| (mindroot on GitHub) start building in computer and browser use
| capabilities and recipes for accessing websites and creating
| API keys etc. for their users.
|
| Also there inevitably is going to be something along the lines
| of OAuth or similar that will allow agents to sign up for
| services and create credentials on behalf of users to solve
| this type of problem.
|
| But one of the big advantages n8n has with users right now is
| that they have OAuth set up with literally everything.
| tcdent wrote:
| > Also there inevitably is going to be something along the
| lines of OAuth or similar that will allow agents to sign up
| for services and create credentials on behalf of users to
| solve this type of problem.
|
| I agree with you, but the real solution to this is an API.
| donperignon wrote:
| I don't get all the n8n hype
| the_alchemist wrote:
| Slightly off topic question , but do you pronounce it n eight n,
| or Nathan ? I got blank stares when saying Nathan from my
| colleagues :')
| nkg wrote:
| I already felt the need to persist data between different nodes
| and workflows, so I made a bespoke API with dedicated endpoints
| that perform CRUD tasks (Yes, it defeats the purpose of a no-code
| platform but I can code, so...). I have to say I love N8n so far,
| it is a great productivity tool.
| nthypes wrote:
| I love Node-RED instead of n8n. But it's biggest problem is that
| does not have the concept of an "execution". Which sucks.
| threecheese wrote:
| They fit different niches, IME; node-red is designed for IoT
| workloads, and so is a great fit for high volume messaging; n8n
| on the other hand is more workflow automation focused -like
| Zapier - and so has higher level abstractions and is less
| focused on performance efficiency.
|
| Can they both fit some of the same use cases? Definitely.
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