n8n automates the workflows you draw; Agent Swarm hands goals to a persistent team of agents that sits on top of n8n. Compare triggers, memory, approvals, pricing, and license.
The real comparison is not which abstraction is nicer. It is whether you want to build an agent system or run a persistent agent team.
n8n is workflow automation: you design flows that connect apps through triggers, nodes, and actions, and each run follows the canvas you drew. Agent Swarm is multi-agent orchestration: a lead agent receives a goal, breaks it into tasks, and delegates them to persistent, specialized workers that write code, run research, and review each other's output in isolated containers. n8n's AI Agent node embeds real agent behaviour inside a flow, with dynamic tool selection, delegation to specialized agents, and persistent chat memory; Agent Swarm makes reasoning the whole system. The two are not substitutes: Agent Swarm sits on top of n8n, self-hosted or Cloud, taking the open-ended steps inside the flows n8n already runs. Keep n8n for the repeatable app-to-app work; add the swarm where the work needs decomposition, judgement, and memory across sessions.
n8n flows are built from triggers, nodes, and actions you arrange up front: when a deal closes in the CRM, enrich it, post to Slack, update the warehouse. A deterministic flow runs exactly as drawn every time, and you can inspect each run step by step, re-run single steps, and replay or mock data while you build. When the steps are known and must run the same way every time, that is exactly the right tool.
n8n ships over 500 integrations and more than 10,000 workflow templates on a drag-and-drop canvas (n8n's own figures, as of 2026-10-06), with JavaScript or Python only where you want it. Ops, sales, and support teams can build and maintain their own automations without writing orchestration code.
n8n Cloud prices by workflow executions with unlimited steps per run (as of 2026-10-06), so a daily sync and a 50-step pipeline cost the same single execution. When volume is high and the value is in the flow running exactly as drawn, per-execution pricing and a deterministic canvas win.
Agent Swarm starts from a goal, not a flow. A lead agent breaks it into tasks with dependencies, assigns them to specialized workers, and adapts as results come in: coding, research, review, and ops work that cannot be drawn on a canvas in advance because the steps depend on what the work finds.
Every agent keeps persistent memory and identity across sessions, shares a searchable filesystem with the swarm, and loads skills for reusable procedural knowledge. Workers such as Claude Code or Codex run in isolated containers, so each task gets its own environment, credentials, and blast radius.
Scheduled tasks, DAG workflows with webhook (HMAC-verified), schedule, and manual triggers, and human-in-the-loop approval nodes are built in. Agent Swarm self-hosts free under MIT with Docker Compose or Helm, on your hardware and your model keys, air-gapped if you need it.
A useful comparison says where each tool actually wins. agent-swarm.dev is for a persistent, owned operating team; the alternative wins when its shape fits your job better.
Over 500 pre-built integrations and more than 10,000 templates (as of 2026-10-06) against Agent Swarm's 13 built-ins. If the job is plumbing between SaaS apps, n8n already has the node; with Agent Swarm you would be building that plumbing yourself.
The drag-and-drop canvas, per-step previews, and template library let ops and business teams ship and maintain automations without engineering help. Agent Swarm assumes a team that wants agents doing knowledge work and is comfortable owning the infrastructure those agents run on.
n8n trades flexibility for predictability: the run follows the flow you drew, with AI reasoning only where you placed it. Agent Swarm trades predictability for judgement: it finds a path to the goal you described, and you approve the steps that matter. In practice the two tradeoffs stack: n8n keeps the predictable plumbing, and the swarm handles the steps where predictability was never available.
Agent Swarm is not an n8n replacement; it is the layer on top, and connects to self-hosted instances and n8n Cloud alike. n8n keeps the triggers, the connector catalogue, and the app plumbing. The swarm takes the open-ended step: the judgement call, the research, the code. The connection is plain webhooks, REST, and MCP; no custom node is required.
An app trigger feeds an HTTP Request node that POSTs to the swarm workflow's HMAC-verified webhook, along with the Wait node's resume URL. The swarm acknowledges at once, the agents do the open-ended work, and a script calls the resume URL, so the same n8n execution wakes and routes the result through its own nodes.
Mark existing n8n workflows as available in MCP and register the instance MCP server on the swarm agents that need it; the bearer token is stored as a swarm config reference, never in agent context. Agents search and run those workflows as tools, and n8n keeps every app credential. This works against n8n Cloud and self-hosted instances alike.
Over REST, the agent's flow POSTs a task to the swarm (POST /api/tasks), a Wait node polls it (GET /api/tasks/{id}), and the flow continues with the output. An MCP path is available by spec: point the AI Agent node's MCP Client Tool at the swarm's MCP server and it hands the job to the swarm lead directly.
Agent Swarm is open source under MIT and self-hosts with Docker Compose, next to a self-hosted n8n or against n8n Cloud. The bunx @desplega.ai/agent-swarm onboard wizard collects credentials, generates the compose files, starts the stack, and verifies health. Point one n8n flow at the swarm's webhook and hand it the step you could never draw: the research, the code, the judgement call.
No, and it does not need to be: Agent Swarm sits on top of n8n rather than replacing it. n8n's AI Agent node embeds a reasoning agent, connected to a chat model, choosing its own tools, holding chat memory, and delegating work to specialized agents, inside a workflow you design; Agent Swarm is a standing team of agents that plans the work itself, with persistent memory, specialized workers, and review gates. Most teams keep n8n for the integrations and let the swarm take the open-ended steps; the two connect over webhooks, REST, and MCP. If you had to pick only one, pick n8n for app-to-app automation and Agent Swarm for agents that own open-ended goals across sessions.
n8n starts from a workflow you design: a trigger fires, and the run follows the nodes and actions on your canvas. AI Agent nodes can reason inside that design, selecting tools at run time, delegating work to specialized agents, and keeping chat memory, but the workflow itself is defined up front. Multi-agent orchestration starts from a goal: a lead agent decomposes it into tasks, delegates them to specialized workers, and adapts the plan as results arrive, with memory that persists across sessions. The first automates a process you design, with reasoning where you place it; the second makes and executes decisions within boundaries you set.
Yes, in both directions, on self-hosted n8n and n8n Cloud alike: an n8n flow can start swarm work through the swarm's HMAC-verified webhook endpoint, and the swarm can call back into the same n8n execution or drive n8n flows over MCP. The section above walks through the three patterns.
Choose n8n alone when the work is deterministic app-to-app automation, when non-developers need the connector catalogue and visual builder, or when you run high volumes of repeatable flows and per-execution pricing with unlimited steps matters more than judgement. Add Agent Swarm on top when part of the work is open-ended: coding, research, review, and recurring operations that need decomposition, persistent memory, and approval gates on infrastructure you control. The common setup is both: n8n keeps the flows, the swarm takes the steps a flow cannot draw.
Not under the OSI definition (as of 2026-10-06). n8n's code is available under the Sustainable Use License, a fair-code license that permits use and modification for your own internal business purposes and for non-commercial or personal use; running it as a commercial service for others, or using .ee enterprise files, requires a paid n8n license. Agent Swarm is MIT with no such conditions.
This page compares product categories and operating models from public product documentation and repositories. We do not claim the tools are interchangeable.
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