Slow Workflow Node Executions. Painfully slow for larger systems.

[EldrisOU]

Describe the problem/error/question

Subject: Severe Performance Degradation in Large Workflows - Per-Node Execution Delays

Priority: High

Description:

I'm experiencing significant performance issues with workflow execution on n8n Cloud that makes the platform nearly unusable for production workflows.

Problem Details:

Symptom: Individual nodes take approximately 1 second each to execute, even simple nodes (Set, Code, Merge)
Affected workflows: Multiple workflows, particularly as they grow in size
Current workflow size: 70+ nodes
When it occurs: Immediately from trigger execution, throughout entire workflow
Impact: A workflow that should complete in seconds takes minutes due to per-node overhead
What I've Already Tried:

Duplicated workflow to fresh instance (no improvement)
Cleared execution history (no improvement)
Removed pinned data from most nodes (no improvement)
Removed Wait nodes and unnecessary delays (no improvement)
Only 9 nodes with pinned data, mostly single-line outputs
Expected vs Actual Performance:

Simple nodes (Set, Merge, Code with basic operations) should execute in milliseconds
Currently experiencing ~1 second per node baseline
This appears to be infrastructure/database latency, not workflow design
Environment:

Platform: n8n Cloud (paid subscription)
Workflow: "Google Ads Creator Flow 5 E-Commerce PARENT" (ID: lYFw0sqY3QqttsEt)
Node count: 70+ nodes
This affects multiple large workflows, not just this one
Request:

Please investigate server-side performance issues affecting workflow execution speed. This level of per-node overhead makes complex automation workflows impractical on n8n Cloud.

Can you provide:

Root cause analysis of the execution delays
Timeline for performance improvements
Recommended workflow size limits for current infrastructure
Whether upgrading to a higher tier would resolve this issue

What is the error message (if any)?

Please share your workflow/screenshots/recording

(Select the nodes on your canvas and use the keyboard shortcuts CMD+C/CTRL+C and CMD+V/CTRL+V to copy and paste the workflow.)
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ If you have sensitive data in your workflow (like API keys), please remove it before sharing.

Share the output returned by the last node

Debug info

core

• n8nVersion: 1.115.2
• platform: docker (cloud)
• nodeJsVersion: 22.20.0
• nodeEnv: production
• database: sqlite
• executionMode: regular
• concurrency: 5
• license: community

storage

• success: all
• error: all
• progress: false
• manual: true
• binaryMode: filesystem

pruning

• enabled: true
• maxAge: 168 hours
• maxCount: 2500 executions

client

• userAgent: mozilla/5.0 (macintosh; intel mac os x 10_15_7) applewebkit/537.36 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/141.0.0.0 safari/537.36
• isTouchDevice: false

Generated at: 2025-10-18T00:56:25.225Z}

[Joffcom]

Hey @EldrisOU,

Thank you for reaching out! We’ve received your issue and are looking into it. To help us track this internally, we’ve created a Linear ticket with the reference: "GHC-5096".

We’ll keep you updated as we make progress, but if you have any additional details or context to share, feel free to add them here - it’s always helpful!

Thanks for your patience and for bringing this to our attention.

---

For INTERNAL use only: GHC-5096

[n8n-assistant]

Hi @EldrisOU 👋

Thanks so much for your patience while we’ve been improving n8n. We know it’s taken some time to review this issue, and we’re currently updating our triage process to better keep up with our growth.

There have been a lot of improvements in recent releases, so we’d really appreciate it if you could check whether this issue still occurs in the latest release.

When you have a moment, please copy and paste the checklist below as a comment so our system can update the status automatically:

[ ] I have updated to the latest stable version of n8n [please specify version number] and I am still experiencing this issue
[ ] Please close this issue – I am no longer experiencing it
[ ] Please close this issue – [please specify a reason]

If we don’t hear from you in the next 14 days this issue will be automatically closed, feel free to reopen - don’t forget to add the checklist above so that our automated systems notify us of the issue.

Thanks again for helping us keep n8n healthy and up-to-date 💚