Zapier vs Make vs n8n: Which Automation Tool Fits Your Team?

Zapier vs Make vs n8n is mostly a question about how each one counts work. Zapier charges per successful action, Make per module run, and n8n per whole workflow run. For a team with a few hundred leads a month and no engineers, we would start with Make or n8n Cloud, and choose Zapier only when its app coverage or simplicity is worth a higher bill. Once a workflow loops over thousands of records or needs tests and version control, a small custom service becomes the better answer.

All three connect your apps, and all three now ship AI steps, so feature lists will not settle it. This post prices the same two workflows on each tool and then covers who can maintain them, where data runs, and when to stop. Prices checked October 2026, taken from each vendor's own pages.

The short version by team type

A non-technical operations team that wants the lowest friction should look at Make first, then Zapier. A team with one person comfortable reading JSON should look at n8n Cloud, because its pricing barely moves when a workflow loops over many items. A team with an engineer and strict rules about where data goes can self-host n8n, accepting that it then owns the upkeep. If none of those fit, the section on outgrowing all three is the useful one.

How each tool counts what you use

The unit of billing differs, and that difference matters more than the headline price.

Zapier bills in tasks: each successful action step is one task. Triggers, filters, paths, formatter steps, and failed actions are free. A Zap that uploads an attachment and then posts a message uses two tasks per run. Zapier's MCP connector uses two tasks per successful tool call, which is worth knowing if you plan to put an agent in front of it (we cover that in connecting an AI agent to your company's tools).

Make bills in credits. According to Make's pricing page, most module actions use one credit, and reading, searching, writing and iterating all count. Router and error-handler modules are free, and AI features can cost more than one credit.

n8n bills in executions. On n8n's pricing page, a run of an entire workflow counts as one execution however many steps it has or how much data it handles. Plans list unlimited active workflows.

Put plainly: a workflow that touches 40 records in a loop costs 40 times more on Zapier or Make than the same logic with one record, and costs the same on n8n.

Two workflows costed on all three tools

We picked two jobs any company has. The volumes are our planning assumptions, not measurements, so replace them with your own.

• Lead routing: 600 form submissions a month. Each one is enriched, added to the CRM, announced in Slack and logged in a sheet. That is four actions after the trigger.
• Invoice chasing: one run each working day (22 a month). It fetches overdue invoices, averages 40 of them, and for each sends a reminder email and marks it as chased.

We counted Make's trigger as one credit and its iterator as one credit per run; Zapier's trigger and looping steps cost nothing, so only the actions count.

Now the bills. At the first volume, Make's 10,000-credit tier covers the 4,800 credits, and its pricing page shows Core at $12 a month at that tier on monthly billing (Make's comparison page lists $9, which appears to be the annual rate). n8n Cloud Starter is 20 euros a month for 2,500 executions, which leaves a wide margin over 620. Zapier is the awkward one: 4,200 tasks sits above its 2,000-task tier, and the page publishes only "from $19.99" for Professional and "from $69" for Team, with per-tier prices behind a slider. A third-party tracker reads the 5,000-task tier at $89 a month on annual billing (Toolradar), which you should confirm on the slider before relying on it.

At ten times the volume, the picture changes. Zapier moves to roughly its 50,000-task tier and Make to its 80,000-credit tier. n8n at about 6,000 executions fits inside the Pro plan, listed at 50 euros a month for 10,000 executions. For a workflow that loops, n8n's per-run counting is the difference between a bill that grows with volume and one that mostly does not.

A fair reading of the table: at small volumes the three are close enough that price should not decide it, and Zapier's premium buys breadth and polish, and its runs cost more.

Who can build and maintain it?

Cost is only half of owning an automation. The other half is whether the person who built it is still around when it breaks.

Zapier is the easiest to hand to someone new. Each Zap is a short vertical list, and failures show up as a task that did not run. Make draws the flow as a canvas, which suits branching logic and data reshaping, but a scenario with a dozen routes is hard to read cold. n8n looks similar to Make, and its strength is that you can drop into code or call any HTTP endpoint when a connector is missing. That helps the one technical person and does nothing for everyone else.

Our default: pick the tool the least technical person who will maintain the workflow can still read. A cheaper platform that only one colleague understands is a risk, not a saving.

Self-hosting, data and security

Zapier and Make are cloud services. n8n can also run on your own server through its Community Edition, which the Sustainable Use License allows for your own internal business purposes while forbidding commercial redistribution. The Business and Enterprise self-hosted plans use a licence key that checks in with n8n's server daily and reports production execution counts, per its pricing page.

Self-hosting means your team patches the server, backs up the database and handles credentials. That is a real cost, usually a few hours a month of engineering time. It is worth it when a contract or policy requires data to stay on infrastructure you control, and not worth it merely to avoid a subscription.

Whatever you choose, give each workflow its own credentials with the narrowest permissions it needs, and keep an owner's name against every workflow. Automations that outlive the person who made them are a common source of silent failures. If you add AI steps, build checks around them first, as we describe in evals and guardrails for AI agents.

When a small custom service is the better answer

Outgrowing all three tools usually shows up as one of these signs:

• A single workflow handles tens of thousands of records per run, and you pay per record on Zapier or Make.
• You need automated tests, code review or a staging copy before a change goes live.
• The same logic is copied across many workflows, so one fix means editing twenty of them.
• You need guaranteed once-only processing, retries with back-off, or an audit trail that the platform's run history cannot give you.

Our starting point in that case is a small service: one repository, a scheduled job or queue worker, and logging you control. It typically takes a few weeks to build, which is an estimate and varies with the systems involved. It pays back when your platform bill, plus the time lost to debugging visual workflows, passes the cost of owning a few hundred lines of code. Our build-versus-buy guide for internal tools goes through that arithmetic.

If you are unsure where your workflows sit, book a free 30-minute workshop and we will look at them with you.

Sources: Zapier pricing; Zapier task counting; Make pricing; Make comparison page; n8n pricing; n8n Sustainable Use License; Toolradar Zapier pricing. Prices checked October 2026.