Zapier vs Make vs n8n in 2026: Pricing, Features and Which to Choose

Short answer: pick Zapier if you are non-technical and want the widest choice of apps with the simplest setup; pick Make if you want a visual builder that handles branching, multi-step scenarios at the lowest cost per action; pick n8n if you are technical, want to pay per full workflow run instead of per step — or want to self-host and pay no per-run fee at all. The headline prices are close. What separates the three is the billing unit: Zapier charges per task, Make per credit, and n8n per execution, and that single difference decides what each tool really costs once your workflows grow.

People search for this comparison in every order — n8n vs Make vs Zapier, n8n vs Zapier vs Make — because the three tools genuinely do the same job in different ways. All three connect your apps, move data between them and run workflows while you sleep.

This guide compares them on the things that actually change your bill and your day-to-day experience: how each one charges, what the free tiers allow, how their AI and agent features are billed, and which type of user each one suits. Every price below was read on the vendor’s own pricing page on 30 October 2026, and the exact page is named wherever a figure appears. Prices change, so confirm the current figure on the vendor’s page before you commit — especially Make’s, whose paid tiers are sold by credit allowance and vary by tier and billing period.

Zapier vs Make vs n8n at a glance

	Zapier	Make	n8n
Best for	Non-technical users, widest app choice	Visual, branching workflows on a budget	Technical users, developers, self-hosting
Billing unit	Task — each successfully completed action step	Credit — most module actions use 1 credit	Execution — one full workflow run, any number of steps
Free tier	Free plan: 100 tasks/month, two-step Zaps	Free plan: 1,000 credits/month	Self-hosted Community Edition; cloud plans start with a free trial (no credit card)
Entry paid plan	Professional, from $19.99/month (750 tasks/month included)	Core, from $12/month billed annually (10,000 credits/month included)	Starter, €20/month billed annually (2,500 executions/month included)
Apps / integrations	9,000+ apps (Zapier’s figure)	1,000+ third-party apps as “standard apps” (Make’s pricing-page figure)	No headline count on the pricing page; built-in nodes plus an HTTP request node pattern for other APIs*
Self-hosting	No	No	Yes — Community Edition on your own server
AI / agents	Copilot, AI fields, MCP and SDK, all billed in tasks	Make AI Agents on all plans with Make’s AI Provider (Make’s announcement)	Dedicated Agents feature set in the plan comparison; strong code-level control

* The HTTP node point is a general description of how n8n connects to services without a dedicated node; n8n’s pricing page does not headline an integration count, so none is claimed here.

Two rows matter more than the rest. First, the billing unit: a ten-step workflow that runs 500 times a month consumes roughly 5,000 Zapier tasks or Make credits, but only 500 n8n executions. Second, self-hosting: n8n is the only one of the three you can run on your own infrastructure, which removes per-run fees entirely and keeps your data on your own servers.

Zapier: the easiest start, priced per task

Zapier is the best-known automation platform, and its pricing page leads with breadth: Zapier states that it connects to 9,000+ apps, more than either rival claims on its own pricing page. A workflow is called a Zap — a trigger (an event in one app, such as a new form submission) followed by one or more action steps.

How Zapier pricing works

Zapier’s unit is the task. As its pricing FAQ puts it, a task is used when a Zap successfully completes an action for you, and each successful action in a Zap counts as a separate task. Three details soften that model:

• Triggers never count, and neither does checking (polling) an app for new data — you only pay when an action succeeds.
• Failed actions do not consume tasks.
• Zapier’s built-in tools are free of task charges — Filter, Formatter, Paths (branching), Delay, Looping and several others do not count as tasks.

From the official pricing page (zapier.com/pricing, read 30 October 2026):

• Free — $0: 100 tasks per month, two-step Zaps, Zapier Copilot included.
• Professional — from $19.99/month (yearly billing): 750 tasks per month included at the entry tier, multi-step Zaps, unlimited premium apps, webhooks and AI fields. Free and Professional are single-user plans.
• Team — from $69/month (yearly billing): 2,000 tasks per month, 25 users, shared Zaps, folders and app connections, SAML SSO, priority support.
• Enterprise — custom pricing: unlimited users, annual task limits, advanced admin controls.

Zapier offers a lower monthly fee if you commit to annual payment, and if you hit your task limit on a paid plan you can switch on pay-per-task billing so workflows keep running instead of pausing. There is a 14-day free trial of Professional.

One recent change matters for AI users: Zapier’s pricing page announces that AI steps, code and the SDK now follow the same task-based pricing as everything else, and that tasks form one shared pool across Zaps, AI steps, code, MCP and SDK usage — there are no separate AI budgets to track, but AI-heavy workflows draw down the same allowance as ordinary Zaps. One MCP tool call uses two tasks.

Zapier: strengths and limits

Strengths

• The largest app library of the three, as Zapier itself states (9,000+ apps) — the niche tool you need is most likely to have a ready-made Zapier integration.
• The gentlest learning curve: two-step Zaps on the free plan are genuinely quick to build, and Copilot helps you draft workflows.
• Predictable rules: successful actions only, free built-in logic tools, and a clear overage path (pay-per-task) instead of a hard stop.

Limits

• Per-task billing punishes long workflows: every extra action step in every run costs another task, so complex, high-volume automation gets expensive faster than on Make or n8n.
• Branching and logic exist (Paths), but Zapier’s model stays essentially linear compared with Make’s canvas or n8n’s node graph.
• No self-hosting, and paid plans start higher than Make’s entry tier.

Best for: non-technical founders, marketers and small teams who value setup speed and app coverage over cost-per-run, and whose workflows are mostly short (two to five steps).

Make: visual scenarios, priced per credit

Make (formerly Integromat) builds workflows as scenarios on a visual canvas. Where Zapier walks you down a list, Make lets you draw the flow — modules branching through routers, iterating over lists, aggregating results — which is why it is the usual recommendation for people who have outgrown simple trigger-action pairs but do not write code.

How Make pricing works

Make’s unit is the credit. Its pricing page FAQ states that, as of 27 August, credits are the billing unit in Make: each action your scenario performs consumes credits, most actions consume 1 credit, and some advanced features that use Make’s AI Provider may consume more. Two kinds of modules are free: the Router module and error-handler modules consume no credits — a thoughtful detail, because routing is exactly what Make’s canvas encourages.

Verified from make.com/en/pricing (read 30 October 2026):

• Free plan: 1,000 credits per month — ten times Zapier’s free task allowance in raw unit count, though the units are not directly comparable.
• Paid plans (Core, Pro, Teams, Enterprise) are priced by the size of your monthly credit allowance rather than by a single flat bundle; extra credits can be bought in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000, and scenarios stop running when your credits run out until you add more or upgrade.
• Plan prices at 10,000 credits/month included (USD, verified on the rendered pricing page, 30 October 2026): Core $12/month billed annually, or $16/month on monthly billing; Pro $21/month annual ($28 monthly); Teams $38/month annual ($51 monthly). Per 1,000 credits on annual billing that is $1.20 on Core, $2.10 on Pro and $3.80 on Teams; larger allowances are priced on the same plan cards.
• Annual payment is cheaper than paying monthly.
• Make’s pricing FAQ describes its standard apps as integrations with more than 1,000 third-party apps, each with multiple actions. (Make cites larger totals elsewhere in its marketing; the pricing-page figure is the conservative, source-checked one.)

What matters for reading those prices is the structure behind them: you choose a credit allowance, and branching, iterating scenarios draw from it one credit per module action. At the verified entry point — 10,000 credits a month on Core for $12/month billed annually — that allowance covers a substantial amount of multi-step automation before you need to think about a bigger tier.

Make: strengths and limits

Strengths

• The visual canvas handles branching, iteration and data transformation more naturally than Zapier’s list, without requiring code.
• Generous free tier (1,000 credits/month) and, credit for credit, the cheapest way of the three to run multi-step workflows in the cloud.
• Routing and error handling do not consume credits, so well-structured scenarios are not taxed for being well-structured.

Limits

• The canvas has a learning curve: a scenario that branches and iterates needs more thought to build and debug than a Zap.
• Credit costs are no longer perfectly flat — features using Make’s AI Provider can consume more than one credit per action, so AI-heavy scenarios need monitoring.
• No self-hosting; when credits run out, scenarios stop (with webhooks queued) rather than billing overage automatically on every plan.

Best for: budget-conscious power users, agencies and operations teams whose workflows branch, loop or transform data — and who are happy to trade a steeper learning curve for a lower cost per action.

n8n: pay per workflow run — or host it yourself

n8n takes the opposite approach to metering. It is a node-based workflow tool aimed at technical users: you can write JavaScript or Python inside nodes, work directly with APIs, and — uniquely here — run the whole platform on your own server. Its cloud pricing is built around the execution: as n8n’s pricing page puts it, unlike tools that charge per step or user, n8n lets you build freely and only charges when a workflow runs from start to finish. A twenty-step workflow costs exactly one execution per run.

How n8n pricing works

From n8n.io/pricing (read 30 October 2026; the page displayed prices in euros):

• Starter — €20/month billed annually (the page shows a 17% saving for annual billing), including 2,500 workflow executions per month, hosted by n8n, aimed at getting automations into production. Cloud plans start with a free trial, no credit card required.
• Pro — €50/month billed annually, including 10,000 workflow executions per month, for solo builders and small teams running automations in production.
• Business — €667/month billed annually, with 40,000 workflow executions per month, and notably self-hosted only.
• Enterprise — on request, hosted by n8n or self-hosted.

And the option neither rival offers:

• Community Edition — self-hosted, no licence fee to n8n. The pricing page describes it as “a standard, self-hosted version of n8n” available on GitHub, with self-hosting documentation on docs.n8n.io. You pay for your own hosting and you are responsible for running, updating and securing the instance — but there is no per-execution charge, which is why high-volume and privacy-sensitive users gravitate to it.

Because an execution covers a whole run, n8n’s cloud pricing rewards exactly the workflows that Zapier and Make metering punishes: long, branching, AI-heavy flows. The trade-offs are responsibility and skill — the builder assumes you are comfortable with APIs, credentials and, for self-hosting, basic server operations.

n8n: strengths and limits

Strengths

• Per-execution billing makes long workflows cheap relative to per-task/per-credit rivals, and self-hosting removes per-run fees altogether.
• Code when you need it: JavaScript/Python inside nodes and direct API access give it the highest technical ceiling of the three.
• Data control: self-hosting keeps workflow data and credentials on your own infrastructure — sometimes a compliance requirement, not a preference.
• Unlimited users is a theme of its plan comparison, and its pricing page carries a dedicated Agents comparison, reflecting where the product is aimed.

Limits

• The steepest learning curve: node-based building, expressions and credentials management expect technical confidence.
• Self-hosting is real work — installation, updates, backups and security are yours, and n8n’s Business tier being self-hosted-only underlines that enterprise n8n often means running it yourself.
• Cloud pricing is displayed in euros or US dollars depending on your region (this guide quotes the euro figures), and if you need a hand-held, no-code experience for a non-technical team, this is the wrong tool.

Best for: developers, technical founders and teams with high-volume or AI-heavy workflows, anyone who needs self-hosting for cost or data reasons, and builders who want code-level control.

Head-to-head: what the same usage costs

Plan prices side by side (official pricing pages, read 30 October 2026; currencies as displayed by each vendor):

	Zapier	Make	n8n
Free tier	$0 — 100 tasks/month, two-step Zaps	$0 — 1,000 credits/month	Community Edition self-hosted (no licence fee); cloud free trial
Entry paid plan	Professional from $19.99/month (yearly billing; 750 tasks/month included)	Core from $12/month billed annually (10,000 credits/month included; $16/month on monthly billing)	Starter €20/month, billed annually (2,500 executions/month included)
Next tier	Team from $69/month (2,000 tasks/month, 25 users)	Pro from $21/month billed annually (at 10,000 credits/month; larger allowances available)	Pro €50/month, billed annually (10,000 executions/month included)
Unit maths for a 10-step workflow running 500×/month	≈5,000 tasks (successful actions only; built-in tools free)	≈5,000 credits (most actions 1 credit; routers/error handlers free)	500 executions (steps do not multiply the unit)
Overage behaviour	Optional pay-per-task billing, or Zaps pause at the limit	Buy extra credit bundles or upgrade; scenarios stop when credits run out	Cloud plans scale by execution allowance; self-hosted has no per-run fee

Read the unit-maths row carefully, because it is the whole comparison in one line. Zapier and Make meter the steps inside each run; n8n meters the run. Short workflows narrow the gap — a two-step Zap running 500 times uses about 1,000 tasks, comparable to 500 n8n executions in cost terms once plan prices are weighed. Long workflows blow the gap open. This is also why “which is cheapest?” has no honest answer without knowing your workflow shapes: count your steps per run, multiply by runs per month, and price that number in each unit before you look at plan names.

Against the entry tiers verified above, that same 5,000-unit month looks like this: it fits inside Make Core’s included 10,000 credits a month (from $12/month billed annually) with half the allowance to spare; the 500 runs consume 500 of n8n Starter’s 2,500 included monthly executions (€20/month billed annually); and on Zapier it means choosing a Professional task tier above the 750 tasks included at the $19.99/month entry price (yearly billing). Same workflows, three very different relationships with the entry plan.

A second, quieter factor: failed work. Zapier does not charge for actions that fail. Make’s routers and error handlers are free, but module actions in a scenario consume credits as they perform actions. On n8n cloud, the pricing page’s own framing — “if it doesn’t run, you don’t pay” — describes charging for completed workflow runs. If your workflows are error-prone while you build them, test on free tiers first on all three.

AI features and agents: n8n vs Make vs Zapier for AI agents in 2026

The fastest-moving part of this comparison — and the reason the long-tail search “n8n vs make.com vs zapier for ai agents 2026” exists — is how each platform handles AI steps and autonomous agents, because AI is where the billing models collide hardest.

• Zapier has folded AI into its existing unit. Its pricing page states that AI steps, code and SDK usage all draw from the same task pool as regular Zaps, with AI model tier affecting how many tasks an action uses. Zapier Copilot helps you build, AI fields process data inside Zaps, and Zapier MCP lets external AI assistants trigger actions across its app library — at two tasks per MCP tool call. The SDK (free while in beta) is aimed at developers connecting agents to Zapier’s ecosystem. The advantage is simplicity: one budget, one meter. The risk is that an enthusiastic agent loop burns the same tasks your business-critical Zaps need.
• Make offers Make AI Agents, which its own credits announcement says are available on all plans when using Make’s AI Provider, with Pro or higher required to bring your own AI connection. Inside scenarios, most ordinary actions still cost 1 credit, but features using Make’s AI Provider can consume more than one credit per action — so agent behaviour inside Make is powerful but its cost per run is less predictable than its classic automations.
• n8n is built for agent-style workflows: multi-step chains, branching logic and code nodes are its native territory, its pricing page carries a dedicated Agents feature comparison across plans (with some AI features also available in the self-hosted edition), and its per-execution billing means an agent that takes twenty internal steps in one run still counts as one execution on cloud plans — or nothing per run at all self-hosted. For agent builders, that combination of control plus unit economics is why n8n is so often the recommendation.

The honest summary: if your “AI” need is a summarise-this-email field inside a normal workflow, any of the three will do, and Zapier’s unified task pool is the easiest to reason about. If you are building agents that loop, branch and call tools repeatedly, the meter matters more than the feature list — and n8n’s execution model is structurally kinder to that usage. While you are weighing AI spend, it is also worth sanity-checking the wider stack — our breakdown of whether your AI tool subscriptions are worth it goes through that maths subscription by subscription.

Which should you choose?

Choose Zapier if you are a beginner or non-technical. Your time is worth more than the per-task premium, your workflows are short, and the app you need is almost certainly in its 9,000+ library. Start on the free plan (100 tasks/month), and move to Professional when you need multi-step Zaps. Revisit the decision when a single workflow’s task usage starts dominating your bill — that is the signal you have outgrown it.

Choose Make if you are a budget-conscious power user. Your workflows branch, loop over lists or shuffle data between several apps, and you want cloud convenience without Zapier’s per-task cost curve or n8n’s technical overhead. The 1,000-credit free plan is enough to learn the canvas properly. Watch your credit usage on AI Provider features, and size your paid tier by monthly module actions, not by number of scenarios.

Choose n8n if you are a developer, or you need self-hosting. You want code inside your workflows, direct API control, data on your own infrastructure, or execution volumes where per-step billing stops making sense. Start with the cloud trial if you want zero operations burden; move to the self-hosted Community Edition when per-run economics or data control justify running it yourself — and budget honestly for the maintenance that comes with it.

One more consideration — lock-in. Workflows do not port between these platforms; a Zap, a scenario and an n8n workflow all have to be rebuilt if you switch. That is not a reason to agonise — all three are established, and rebuilding a handful of workflows is a weekend, not a quarter — but it is a reason to run your most important workflow as a free-tier prototype on your shortlisted tool before you commit the whole stack.

A fourth name sometimes appears in this search — the “zapier vs make vs n8n vs microsoft power automate 2026” query — and Power Automate deserves a look if your business already lives inside Microsoft 365; it is outside this comparison’s scope, but the same unit-maths applies when you evaluate it.

Frequently asked questions

Is n8n really free?

The self-hosted Community Edition is a standard version of n8n available on GitHub with no licence fee to n8n — that is how n8n’s own pricing page describes it. “Free” still has a cost: you provide and maintain the server it runs on. n8n Cloud, the hosted version, is a paid product after its free trial (Starter is €20/month billed annually, as read on the pricing page on 30 October 2026).

Which is cheaper, Make or Zapier?

For multi-step workflows, usually Make — its credits are priced for volume, its free tier is 1,000 credits a month, and routers do not consume credits. But compare in units, not plan names: a two-step automation running 1,000 times a month uses roughly 2,000 units on either platform, while a ten-step one uses roughly 10,000. Zapier can be the better buy when your workflows are short and your time is expensive, because what you are paying for is setup speed and app coverage.

What exactly counts as a Zapier task, a Make credit and an n8n execution?

A Zapier task is one successfully completed action step in a Zap (triggers, polling and built-in tools like Filter and Formatter do not count). A Make credit is consumed by most module actions in a scenario — typically one per action, with Make AI Provider features sometimes costing more, and routers and error handlers costing none. An n8n execution is one complete run of a workflow, however many steps it contains. These definitions are from each vendor’s pricing page or pricing FAQ, read on 30 October 2026.

Which tool is best for AI agents?

For agent-style workflows that loop, branch and call tools many times per run, n8n has the structural advantage: code-level control plus per-execution billing (one execution per run on cloud plans, no per-run fee self-hosted). Zapier is the easier on-ramp — its agents, MCP and AI steps all draw from one task pool across 9,000+ apps — and Make’s AI Agents are available on all plans with Make’s AI Provider. Match the tool to how autonomous your agents really are; a single AI field inside a normal workflow does not need an agent platform.

Can I migrate my workflows from Zapier to Make or n8n (or the other way)?

Not automatically, in any direction: the three builders store workflows in incompatible formats, so moving means rebuilding each workflow in the new tool and reconnecting your app accounts. The logic usually transfers cleanly — triggers, steps and branching are concepts all three share — but budget the rebuild time, and use the move as a chance to delete workflows you no longer need. Test the rebuilt versions on free tiers before cancelling the old plan.

Do I get charged when a workflow step fails?

On Zapier, no — its pricing FAQ states a task is only used when an action completes successfully. On n8n’s cloud plans, the pricing page’s framing is that you pay when a workflow runs from start to finish. On Make, module actions consume credits as they perform actions, while error-handler modules themselves are free — so a failing scenario can still have consumed credits for the actions it completed before the error. Whichever tool you pick, build and debug on the free tier.

Conclusion

Zapier vs Make vs n8n is not really a contest with one winner — it is three different answers to the question “what should a unit of automation cost?” Zapier charges for each successful action and gives you the biggest app library and the easiest start. Make charges per module action too, but prices credits for volume and gives you a proper visual canvas for branching work. n8n charges per finished run — or nothing per run if you host its Community Edition yourself — in exchange for expecting more technical skill from you.

So decide in this order: first, how technical are you (or your team)? Second, what do your workflows look like — how many steps, how many runs, how much AI? Third, do the unit maths with those real numbers against each pricing page. The tool that wins that calculation for your workflows is the right choice, and the free tiers are generous enough to prove it before you pay: 100 tasks on Zapier, 1,000 credits on Make, and a cloud trial or a self-hosted install on n8n.

If you are comparing the wider automation and AI stack for a small business, our roundup of AI cloud business management tools is a useful next read — and if you are automating a brand-new product, validate the idea behind it before you build the workflows around it.

Sources: Zapier pricing, Make pricing and n8n pricing, each read 30 October 2026.