Article on Node-RED alternative?

General
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https://www.xda-developers.com/switching-node-red-to-n8n-automation/

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n8n has been mentioned earlier (not so long ago there was a post about it) - it is mainly used for AI and engagement farming. Now one comment i agree with is: OAuth(2) integration, if node-red would have this available as 'native' option inside the http request node, it could alleviate some problems authenticating with platforms, where this is almost standard nowadays.

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Worth remembering that Node-RED and n8n are not equivalent.

For me, one of the important differences is that n8n is NOT FREE. Node-RED is completely free as are all of its contributed nodes (though some vendor nodes are part of their environments and so not really free but all of the nodes and flows on the flows site are totally free).

Also, not sure why the author of that article thinks node-red is more "technical" than n8n. Especially since there is a docker install for node-red. I find that a rather bizarre statement to be honest.

The community (e.g. free) version is missing:

  • Custom Variables
  • Environments
  • External secrets
  • External storage for binary data
  • Log streaming (Logging is included)
  • Multi-main mode (Queue mode is included)
  • Projects
  • SSO (SAML, LDAP)
  • Sharing (workflows), credentials (Only the instance owner and the user who creates them can access workflows and credentials)
  • Version control using Git
  • Workflow history (You can get one day of workflow history with the community edition by registering)

There is some very important stuff there that is only available in paid versions - which are EXPENSIVE. With the cheapest cloud version coming in at Ā£20 per month which doesn't even include all the things above. To get everything you need an enterprise version (either cloud or self-hosted).

There is no way I'd want to replace Node-RED, but as backman2 say's, if there is a missing category of nodes for node-red, it would be ones to more easily interconnect with cloud services. One of my needs as I retire is to be able to cross-post when posting a video to YouTube or a new article to my blog to social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, BlueSky, Discourse, etc. So I might give n8n a new try to see how good it is at that. But it will be an adjunct to node-red even if it works, not a replacement.

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