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Best Automation templates in 2026: Top 2 Picks, Ranked

n8n, Make and Zapier templates that automate research, writing, publishing and repurposing. Below are the 2 automation templates we recommend in 2026, ranked by our editor score, GitHub stars, reader upvotes and how often readers click through.

Last updated September 2026 · 2 listings reviewed

The ranking

1

n8n Self-hosted AI Starter Kit Open source

Official Docker kit running n8n with Ollama, Qdrant and Postgres for local AI

★ 15k · Apache-2.0 · updated 2026-07-23

7.6/10

What it is The Self-hosted AI Starter Kit is n8n's official Docker Compose template for running AI workflows entirely on your own machine. It starts n8n together with Ollama for local language models, Qdrant as a vector store and PostgreSQL, preconfigured so they talk to each other. It is a quick way to build private content workflows such as summarising… Read more →

Pros

  • Official and one command to start
  • Fully local and private
  • GPU and CPU profiles

Cons

  • Not production-hardened
  • Local models weaker than top cloud models
  • Needs Docker and disk space for models

Pricing: Open source  ·  n8n self-hosted ollama local-ai docker

2

Awesome n8n Templates Open source

280+ importable n8n workflow files for email, social, WordPress, AI agents and more

★ 26k · CC-BY-4.0 · updated 2026-09-12

7.2/10

What it is Awesome n8n Templates by Enes Cingoz is a curated collection of 280+ n8n workflow JSON files, grouped by platform and use case: Gmail and email, Telegram, Google Drive and Sheets, WordPress, PDF processing, Notion, Slack, OpenAI and LLM agents, WhatsApp, social media, forms, and AI research/RAG. For content creators the WordPress, social, OpenAI and research sections include… Read more →

Pros

  • Large, categorised and free
  • CC BY 4.0 allows reuse
  • Direct JSON downloads

Cons

  • Uneven quality; test before use
  • Some templates target older node versions
  • Affiliate links in README

Pricing: Open source  ·  n8n templates automation ai-agents

Automation templates compared at a glance

#NamePricingStarsScore
1n8n Self-hosted AI Starter KitOpen source★ 15k7.6
2Awesome n8n TemplatesOpen source★ 26k7.2

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How we rank automation templates

Every workflow gets an editor score from 0 to 10 based on usefulness, quality of the instructions or code, maintenance (recent commits, open issues) and adoption (GitHub stars), and we check which apps it really works with. Reader upvotes and click-throughs nudge the order over time, and we remove listings that shut down, go unmaintained or change pricing dramatically. Read our full methodology.

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