n8n
From €20/monthcloud, billed yearly; the self-hosted community edition is free
- Strength：You can self-host it, which saves money once you run many flows often.
- Trade-off：Self-hosting means you look after the server and upgrades.
Job guide
Automation & integrations
What buyers wantSmall businesses want repetitive work to run on its own — form entries into spreadsheets, leads into the CRM, auto-replies — or several systems connected.
Four numbersLast 7 days · updated hourly · last update 10-03 21:04 (Beijing time)
- Job posts, last 7 days
- 40posts
- Overseas 36 · China 4
- Median budget
- $250
- USD fixed-price · 7 posts, last 4 weeks
- Median bids
- 60bids
- Per post · 26 posts with bid counts
- How much AI can do
- AI does most, a person checks
- First take, rechecked Oct 15
Where AI fits: AI can do most of the build — flows, scripts, prompts. Deciding who gets access, what happens when a step fails and how to recover is on you.
Market
Market for this job
3 sub-categories combined; a post that fits several counts once
Trend
Job posts per week (weeks start Monday, Beijing time), both markets
| Week | Total | Overseas | China | Days with data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| week of 2026-09-21 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| week of 2026-09-28 | 39 | 35 | 4 | 6 |
- This week so far
- 39posts · 6 days with data
- Week over week
- —after one full week of data
Job posts per week, Monday to Sunday (Beijing time), both markets. Lighter bars are partial weeks (this week so far, or weeks with days missing). Hover a bar for the split by market.
Sub-categories
By job posts in the last 7 days. Category pages are in Chinese for now.
Budgets
median $250
- Hourly (USD)
- $25/hourmedian · 5 posts
- Other currencies (not converted)
- 14 postsINR 9 · CAD 2 · SGD 1 · EUR 1
- Listing prices (Etsy / eBay services)
- $149median · 23 listings, last 30 days
Budgets are what the posts state: USD uses the upper end of fixed-price budgets (Freelancer uses brackets, so percentiles often land on $30, $250 or $750); CNY uses the stated budget. Neither is the final deal price. Last 4 weeks of posts; fewer than 3 posts means no percentiles; other currencies are counted, not converted.
China vs overseas
| Metric | Overseas90% of last 7 days | China10% of last 7 days |
|---|---|---|
| Job posts, last 7 days | 36 posts | 4 posts |
| Job posts, since 09-27 | 36 posts | 4 posts |
| Median budget | $250USD · 7 posts | n/afewer than 3 posts with a budget in 4 weeks |
| Median bids per post | 6026 posts with bid counts | n/aonly Freelancer shows bid counts |
| New listings, last 7 days | 9 postsSince 09-27: 9 | 0 postsSince 09-27: 0 |
| Median listing price | $14923 Etsy / eBay service listings | n/anone in 30 days |
| Posts that mention AI | positive 32% · negative 0%38 posts, last 4 weeks | —4 posts in 4 weeks; we need 10 for a share |
Positive = the buyer wants AI output, names an AI tool or accepts AI; negative = says no AI (posts that say both count as negative). Job posts only. Listings = service listings first seen that day (Etsy / eBay service listings only); freelancers who sell privately don't show up here.
Tools
Tools you need
Three levels: get the essentials first, add the next level as work grows, use the optional ones when a client asks
Essentials
Enough to start taking work
Make
From $9/monthyearly price; monthly not verified; free plan 1,000 credits a month
- Strength：Visual builder — you can see the whole flow at a glance.
- Trade-off：Free plan: at most 2 active scenarios, running every 15 minutes at most.
Zapier
From $19.99/monthbilled yearly; $29.99 monthly; free plan available
- Strength：The easiest to start with — pick the apps and connect them in a few clicks.
- Trade-off：Billed by task; the free plan only allows two-step flows.
Level up
Add when you have more work
Claude API
From $1 per million tokensHaiku 4.5 input; output $5
- Strength：Lets your flows read emails, draft replies and extract fields.
- Trade-off：Billed per token, so estimate usage before you go live.
OpenAI API
From $0.05 per million tokensgpt-5-nano input; output $0.40
- Strength：Many model sizes; small, cheap models suit high-volume jobs.
- Trade-off：Billed per token, and output costs more than input.
Vultr
From $2.50/monthIPv6 only; most locations start at $5/month
- Strength：Small machines billed by the hour — enough to run n8n and scheduled scripts.
- Trade-off：The cheapest plan is IPv6-only; most locations start at $5/month.
Optional
Use when a client asks
Airtable
From $20/monthTeam, billed yearly; $24 monthly; free plan available
- Strength：Keeps the data your flows touch in a spreadsheet-style database clients understand.
- Trade-off：Team collaboration needs the Team plan — $20/month billed yearly, $24 monthly.
n8n templates
Free to browse12,795 templates when we checked
- Strength：Over ten thousand public templates — start from one that already works.
- Trade-off：You still need to swap in the client's data and test again.
UptimeRobot
Free50 monitors checked every 5 minutes; Solo $9/month billed yearly
- Strength：Alerts you as soon as a flow endpoint or site goes down.
- Trade-off：The free plan only checks every 5 minutes.
Prices and partner terms come from each vendor's official pages (check dates on each card) and change over time; the official page is always the final word. “Price not verified” means we haven't checked the pricing page yet. Links go through our redirect page: “Affiliate” means we may earn a commission; “Has an affiliate program” means we don't have a link yet.
Where to find work
Where to find this work
Posts for this job we collected in the last 28 days: Freelancer 26, Reddit 11, X 5, 知乎 4, We Work Remotely 1, freelancermap 1. We only count platforms we collect from; a missing platform doesn't mean there is no demand there.
| Name | What it is | Fees | Best for | Go |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upwork | One of the largest general freelance marketplaces — send proposals for fixed-price or hourly work. | 0%–15%varies by contract, shown when you send a proposal | Good English · longer projects | Go → |
| Freelancer | Bid on projects with public budget ranges; many of the job posts we track come from here.; 26 of these posts here in the last 28 days | 10% or $5, whichever is higherhourly projects 10% per payment | Good for first jobs | Go → |
| Fiverr | Package your service as fixed-price gigs; buyers order directly. | 20%sellers keep 80%; withdraw 14 days after completion | Can package a service | Go → |
| Contra | Portfolio and freelance work in one place; it markets itself as commission-free for freelancers. | No commissionPro $29/month or $199/year | Has a portfolio | Go → |
Platform fees, payouts and getting your first order: see 接单平台 (中文)
Get started
Get started
Four general steps: pick tools → make samples → list a service or bid → let AI draft, check by hand
Pick your tools
Start with Zapier or Make. When clients have many flows that run often, learn to self-host n8n on a small server.
Build 2–3 demo flows
Build a few working demos (form to spreadsheet, email triage, new-lead alerts) and record a short screen video showing what manual work each one removes.
List a service or bid
Price by number and complexity of flows. State whose accounts are used, who pays the subscriptions and how to reach you when something breaks; after delivery you can offer monthly maintenance.
Let AI draft, check by hand
AI writes the nodes and scripts. You test every branch with the client's sample data, set up failure alerts, then hand over the documentation.
Updated 2026-10-03 21:04 (Beijing time) · data up to 20:49 · demand numbers aggregate public job posts, not completed deals; tool prices and partner terms follow the official pages.