Agent builders
Bonito vs n8n
Workflow automation with agents vs. an AI control plane
n8n is a fair-code workflow automation platform with 500+ integrations that has become a major AI agent builder through its AI Agent node and standalone Agent Builder, in the cloud or self-hosted. It is strongest when agents are one step in a larger automation. Bonito focuses on the model layer and governance under agents: a gateway with failover and cost routing, per-agent budgets and residency pinning.
n8n pricing
Cloud Starter €20/mo (2.5K executions), Pro €50/mo, Business €667/mo (self-hosted, SSO), Enterprise custom. Community edition free, self-hosted.
Model costs
Your own keys by default. Optional Gateway credits on Starter and Pro are billed at providers' list prices.
What n8n does well
- Deterministic workflows and agents on one canvas, with a free self-hosted Community edition
- 500+ integrations, and agents that publish to Slack, Telegram and Linear
- Simple pricing: one workflow run or agent turn is one execution
- Tool-level human approvals, schedules, a guardrails node and built-in evaluations
- MCP both ways: MCP client tool, MCP server trigger and an instance-level MCP server
Where Bonito goes further
- An OpenAI-compatible gateway your apps and agents share, with one set of keys, logs and costs
- Automatic failover to an equivalent model across providers, not a backup model wired into each node
- Dollar budgets per agent and cost per request, agent, team and provider
- Default-deny tool policies per agent
- Data residency pinning to CA, US or EU on the cloud product
- Agents, gateway and knowledge bases declared in one bonito.yaml
Where n8n is ahead of Bonito
- Connector breadth (500+ integrations)
- Free self-hosting
- General workflow automation beyond AI
- Large community and template library
Capability by capability
| Capability | Bonito | n8n |
|---|---|---|
| Agents | ||
| Build and run agents | Yes | Yes |
| Approval queue and scheduled runs | Yes | Yes |
| Dollar budgets per agent | Yes | Nonot found in their docs (Sep 2026) |
| MCP support | Yes | Yes |
| Routing | ||
| OpenAI-compatible gateway | Yes | Nonot found in their docs (Sep 2026); workflows exposed as webhooks and MCP |
| Automatic failover across providers | Yes | Partialfallback model you set per node |
| Cheaper models for simple work (cost routing) | Yes | PartialModel Selector routes on conditions you define |
| Bedrock, Vertex, Azure and direct providers in one place | Yes | Yes |
| Semantic caching | No | Nonot found in their docs (Sep 2026) |
| Governance | ||
| SSO, RBAC and audit log | Yes | PartialSSO and RBAC on paid plans; audit via log streaming |
| Data residency pinning | Yes | PartialCloud hosted in the EU; any region when self-hosted |
| Observability and knowledge | ||
| Agent traces with cost per request and agent | Yes | Partialper-execution logs and token usage; no agent span tree |
| Knowledge bases (RAG) | Yes | Partialvector store nodes you assemble |
| How you run it | ||
| Whole stack from one config file | Yes | PartialCLI import and export, Git environments; workflows are JSON |
| Self-hosted or open source | Partial | Yesfair-code Sustainable Use License, not OSI open source |
| No markup on inference | Yes | Yes |
Checked against n8n's own documentation on 2026-09-27. Products change quickly; if something here is out of date, tell us at hello@trybonito.com and we will fix it.
Sources
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