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Compare Your n8n Version with Latest Release using n8n API

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Created by: Robert Breen || rbreen

Robert Breen

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Last update 2 months ago

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🧑‍💻 Description

This workflow automatically compares the version of your n8n instance with the latest release available.

Keeping your n8n instance up-to-date is essential for security patches, bug fixes, performance improvements, and access to new automation features. By running this workflow, you’ll know right away if your instance is behind and whether it’s time to upgrade.

After the comparison, the workflow clearly shows whether your instance is up-to-date or outdated, along with the version numbers for both. This makes it easy to plan updates and keep your automation environment secure and reliable.

⚙️ Setup Instructions

1️⃣ Set Up n8n API Credentials

  1. In your n8n instance → go to Admin Panel → API
  2. Copy your API Key
  3. In n8n → Credentials → New → n8n API
    • Paste the API Key
    • Save it
  4. Attach this credential to the n8n node (Set up your n8n credentials)

✅ How It Works

  • Get Most Recent n8n Version → Fetches the latest release info from docs.n8n.io.
  • Extract Version + Clean Value → Parses the version string for accuracy.
  • Get your n8n version → Connects to your own n8n instance via API and retrieves the current version.
  • Compare → Evaluates the difference and tells you if your instance is current or needs an update.

🎛️ Customization Guidance

  • Notifications: Add an Email or Slack node to automatically notify your team when a new n8n update is available.
  • Scheduling: Use a Schedule Trigger to run this workflow daily or weekly for ongoing monitoring.
  • Conditional Actions: Extend the workflow to log version mismatches into Google Sheets, or even trigger upgrade playbooks.
  • Multi-Instance Tracking: Duplicate the version-check step for multiple n8n environments (e.g., dev, staging, production).

💬 Example Output

  • “Your instance (v1.25.0) is up-to-date with the latest release (v1.25.0).”
  • “Your instance (v1.21.0) is behind the latest release (v1.25.0). Please update to get the latest bug fixes and features.”

📬 Contact

Need help setting up API credentials or automating version checks across environments?