n8n Trigger Nodes

Trigger Types Overview

n8n has four categories of triggers:

Event-based triggers: Fire when something happens in a connected service — a new email, a new CRM contact, a webhook POST request. Real-time, reactive, and event-driven.

Schedule triggers: Fire at a defined time — every hour, every morning at 9 AM, the first of each month. Time-based, batch processing, and periodic reporting.

Manual triggers: Fire when you click "Run" in the n8n interface. Used for testing, one-time workflows, and on-demand processes.

Chat triggers: Fire when a message is received in n8n's built-in chat interface. Used for conversational AI interfaces.

Webhook Trigger

The most versatile trigger. Any system that can make an HTTP request can trigger an n8n workflow.

Use for: Real-time event processing from any service. Form submissions, payment events, CRM updates, app events, custom integrations.

Setup: n8n provides a unique webhook URL. Configure the sending service to POST to this URL when the event occurs. n8n receives the POST and starts the workflow.

Data access: The webhook body is available as $json in subsequent nodes. Headers are available as $request.headers.

Response modes:

• "Last Node": respond with the final workflow output (useful for synchronous webhooks that need a response)
• "When last node finishes": respond immediately with 200 OK, run workflow asynchronously (better for high-volume webhooks)

Schedule Trigger

Fires the workflow on a time-based schedule.

Use for: Batch data processing, daily reports, periodic enrichment runs, weekly digests, monthly billing processes.

Schedule options:

• Every X minutes/hours/days
• Specific time of day (e.g., 9:00 AM every weekday)
• Cron expression (full cron syntax for complex schedules)
• Every X period starting from a specific date

Important: Schedule triggers run in the timezone set in n8n's settings. Verify your timezone is configured correctly, especially for time-sensitive scheduled workflows.

App-Specific Triggers

Many n8n nodes have built-in trigger functionality for their respective services:

HubSpot Trigger:

• Contact Created / Updated / Deleted
• Deal Created / Stage Changed / Closed
• Company Created / Updated
• Form Submitted

Gmail Trigger:

• New Email (matching optional filters: sender, subject, label)
• New Email with Attachment

Shopify Trigger:

• Order Created / Updated / Fulfilled / Cancelled
• Customer Created / Updated
• Cart Abandoned
• Product Created / Updated

Slack Trigger:

• New Message (in channel or DM)
• App Mention
• Reaction Added

Typeform Trigger:

• Form Submitted (specific form)

These app triggers are easier to configure than generic webhooks — you authenticate the service and select the event type, and n8n handles the webhook setup automatically.

Manual Trigger

Fires the workflow when you click "Execute Workflow" in the n8n interface.

Use for:

• Testing and development (run the workflow with live data to verify it works)
• One-time operations (process a batch of historical data)
• On-demand workflows (a team member manually triggers a report)
• Demo purposes

With input data: You can configure the Manual Trigger to accept input data, which you provide in the test execution panel. This is useful for workflows that process specific input that varies per run.

Chat Trigger

n8n's Chat Trigger creates a built-in chat interface that end users can interact with.

Use for: AI chatbots, internal tools, customer-facing conversational interfaces.

How it works: The Chat Trigger provides a chat URL. Users visit the URL and type messages. Each message triggers the workflow, which typically connects to an AI agent that processes the message and responds.

The chat interface supports: multi-turn conversation (messages are stored in n8n's session), streaming responses (the AI's response appears as it's generated), and custom branding.

Trigger Selection Guide

Recommended Tools

• n8n — All trigger types described here
• HubSpot — CRM events via n8n HubSpot trigger
• Shopify — E-commerce events via n8n Shopify trigger
• Twilio — SMS events via webhook
• Claude API — AI processing triggered by any of the above