Zapier vs Make vs n8n: the same workflow, three bills

Prices and features checked: 2026-11-09. Prices in the currency the vendor shows, checked on the date shown; we do not convert.

Verdict by user type

Three automation platforms, three billing units, and the unit decides the bill more than the feature list does. Zapier charges per task, which means per successful action step. Make charges per operation, which it now calls credits, one per module run. n8n charges per workflow execution regardless of how many steps it contains, and its self-hosted edition costs nothing but the server.

Our criteria, stated first: cost of the same reference workflow at 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 runs a month, computed from the vendor's published tiers on 2026-11-09; how each counts a run; AI and agent features and how they are billed; error handling and limits as documented; where your data is hosted and what the licence lets you do. All three have affiliate programmes (Zapier a one-time bounty, Make and n8n recurring). We have not joined any of them, and the order below would not depend on which pays more.

You are…	Pick	Why
A solo operator or small team with a few light automations	Zapier	The widest connector library and the gentlest learning curve; cheap below about 2,000 tasks a month
A team running tens of thousands of runs a month without an engineer	n8n Cloud Pro	Pays per run, not per step; EUR 50 for 10,000 executions
Anyone with a technical person and a budget under EUR 50 a month	n8n self-hosted	Server cost only, EU or anywhere you choose, under the Sustainable Use License
A visual builder who wants branching scenarios in the EU	Make	Mature scenario editor; we could not read its prices today, so check the page before you commit
An enterprise that needs governance and SSO over everything else	Zapier Enterprise or n8n Enterprise	Both sell it; both are custom-priced

Pricing models explained: tasks, operations, executions

Zapier: tasks. A task is counted when Zapier successfully completes an action step. Triggers do not count, polling does not count, and the built-in tools (Formatter, Paths, Filter, Delay, Looping, Sub-Zap, Digest, Tables, Forms and others) do not count. Failed actions are not counted. Some steps cost more: AI by Zapier steps are billed by model tier from the task pool, and an MCP tool call costs two tasks in the page's example ^[1]. So a Zap with one trigger, one filter and three actions costs three tasks per run.

Make: operations, now credits. Make's pricing page FAQ states that credits are the billing unit as of 27 August, that the Free plan has 1,000 credits a month, and that paid plans (Core, Pro, Teams) can buy extra credits in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000 at a fixed price set by the subscription ^[2]. Historically one operation is one module run, including the trigger, which would make our reference workflow about four credits per run. The price grid itself did not render in the text we could read, and the site blocked our direct request, so this page carries no Make prices. We would rather print "see pricing" than a figure we did not see.

n8n: executions. "An execution is a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn't matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes." Cloud plans: Starter at EUR 20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions, Pro at EUR 50 for 10,000, Business at EUR 667 for 40,000 (self-hosted only), Enterprise custom. Only annual prices were shown; the toggle says annual saves 17 percent. All plans include unlimited users and workflows ^[3]. So the reference workflow costs one execution per run however many steps you add.

Cost at 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 runs a month

The reference workflow: a form submission triggers the run; a filter drops test entries; three actions follow (create a CRM record, post to Slack, append a spreadsheet row). It is deliberately ordinary. Prices are the lowest published tier that covers the volume, on annual billing, as read on 2026-11-09.

Runs per month	Zapier (3 tasks per run)	Zapier (1-step Zap, for comparison)	n8n Cloud	n8n self-hosted	Make
1,000	3,000 tasks → 5,000-task Professional tier, USD 89 → USD 89 per 1,000 runs	1,500-task tier, USD 39 → USD 39	Starter EUR 20 (2,500 included) → EUR 20 per 1,000 runs	server from EUR 6.49 → under EUR 7	see pricing
10,000	30,000 tasks → 50,000 tier, USD 289 → USD 28.90 per 1,000 runs	10,000 tier, USD 129 → USD 12.90	Pro EUR 50 (10,000 included) → EUR 5 per 1,000 runs	server from EUR 6.49 → about EUR 0.65	see pricing
100,000	300,000 tasks → 300,000 tier, USD 1,069 → USD 10.69 per 1,000 runs	100,000 tier, USD 489 → USD 4.89	exceeds Pro; Business (40,000) is self-hosted only; Enterprise is contact sales	a larger server, roughly EUR 43 for dedicated vCPUs → well under EUR 1	see pricing

Sources: Zapier's annual tier table ^[1], n8n's plan cards ^[3], Hetzner's cloud price cards (shared from EUR 5.99 to 6.49, dedicated vCPU from EUR 43.49, all per month excluding VAT, with locations in Germany and Finland) ^[4]. Zapier's monthly billing is about 50 percent higher: the 100,000-task Professional tier is USD 733.50 monthly against USD 489 annual ^[1]. USD and EUR are not converted; the gap between Zapier and n8n at 10,000 runs is wide enough that the exchange rate does not change the conclusion.

Three cautions. First, the table punishes Zapier for the step count; a one-step Zap at 100,000 runs is USD 4.89 per thousand, which is competitive with n8n Cloud and far below the three-step case. Keep Zaps short and use the free built-in tools. Second, n8n's Starter tier is a floor: you pay EUR 20 whether you use 100 executions or 2,500, so at 1,000 runs the effective price is EUR 20 per thousand, not EUR 8. Third, the self-hosted column prices only the server. It omits the hours of whoever installs, updates and backs it up, and those hours are the real cost; a reasonable rule is that self-hosting pays once you would otherwise spend more than about EUR 50 a month on Cloud.

The same workflow built three times: what differs

We describe the build from the vendors' documentation rather than from a timed log, so treat this as a structural comparison, not a benchmark.

• Zapier builds linearly: trigger, optional filter and paths, actions. The connector library is the largest, at more than 9,000 apps, and Zapier states it is used by more than 3 million businesses A^[5]. Polling runs every 15 minutes on Free, 2 minutes on Professional and 1 minute on Team and Enterprise ^[1]. Most of the work is picking fields from dropdowns.
• Make builds on a canvas: modules connected by routes, with routers for branching, iterators and aggregators for arrays, and filters on each route. It is the most visual of the three and the most forgiving for someone who thinks in diagrams. Its per-module billing means every branch you add costs credits whether or not it does useful work.
• n8n builds on a canvas too, node by node, with code nodes where the dropdown runs out. The pricing page makes the point its billing model is built around: "Unlike other tools that charge per step or user, n8n lets you build freely and only pay when a workflow runs from start to finish" ^[3]. A twelve-node workflow costs the same as a two-node one. Our n8n workflow templates show what the canvas looks like for common jobs.

For the wider field, including Microsoft Power Automate and IFTTT, see our overview of workflow automation tools.

AI and agent features

Zapier lists Zapier Agents, Chatbots, Canvas and MCP as included on all plans with basic access, and sells premium tiers separately. Agents are billed in "activities", not tasks: 400 a month on Free, 1,500 on the paid Agents tier, which the page says starts at about USD 33.33 a month on annual billing. AI by Zapier steps (model calls without your own API key) draw from the task pool and are not on Free. Enterprise adds bring-your-own-model through the customer's AWS Bedrock account ^[1].

n8n has built its recent growth on AI agent nodes that chain model calls, tools and memory inside a workflow. It raised USD 180 million in a Series C at a USD 2.5 billion valuation in October 2025, after a EUR 55 million Series B in March; the company said revenue grew ten-fold in a year without disclosing the figure B^[6]. Because billing is per execution, an agent that calls a model fifteen times in one run still counts once; the model provider bills you for the fifteen calls.

Make lists AI features; we could not read them on the page we fetched, and we will not describe them from memory.

A word on agents in general. The human-factors literature on automation has shown for decades that people over-trust automated aids: in a controlled study, participants with an automated aid made more errors when the aid was wrong than people without one, and reviews across aviation, medicine and process control document the same complacency pattern B^[7]A^[8]. An agent that acts in your CRM is an automated aid. Build in a human check on anything irreversible, and log every action it takes.

Error handling and reliability

• Zapier: failed actions are not billed. With pay-per-task enabled, overage is 1.25 times the base rate on annual plans and 2.5 times on monthly, and usage pauses at three times the subscription, which protects you from a runaway loop and also from your own success in a good month ^[1].
• n8n Cloud: Starter allows 5 concurrent executions and keeps a maximum of 2,500 saved executions; Pro allows up to 50 concurrent ^[3]. Saved-execution limits matter when you debug: on Starter, old runs are gone sooner.
• Make: the pricing FAQ documents per-10,000-credit allowances of 5 GB data transfer, 10 MB data storage, 10 MB for incomplete executions (2 GB maximum) and a webhook queue of 667 (10,000 maximum) ^[2]. Incomplete executions are Make's mechanism for retrying a failed run by hand; the storage cap is small, so clear them.

None of the three publishes an uptime figure on its pricing page.

EU hosting, GDPR and self-hosting

n8n states it plainly: "For hosted plans, data is stored within the EU, on servers located in Frankfurt, Germany. For self-hosted plans, it's wherever you decide to host n8n" ^[3]. For a European team that needs to tell its data-protection officer where personal data in a workflow is processed, that sentence is worth a lot.

Zapier did not mention EU data residency on the pricing page we read; the only regional statement was the Enterprise bring-your-own-model option ^[1]. Assume US processing unless your contract says otherwise.

Make is Czech-founded, and its pricing page did not state data-centre regions in the text we read ^[2]. Check the region selector in your organisation settings.

Self-hosting n8n and the licence. A standard, self-hosted version of n8n is available on GitHub ^[3]. Its Sustainable Use License allows you to "use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use", lets you distribute it "only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes", and excludes the enterprise source files (those with ".ee." in the name) from the licence ^[9]. Running n8n for your own company, on your own server, for your own automations, is squarely inside it. Reselling it as a hosted service to others is not. The licence does not say "hosted service" or "SaaS" verbatim; the limit comes from the internal-use and non-commercial-distribution clauses, so read it before you build a business on it.

The self-hosting arithmetic from the cost table: a shared-vCPU server from EUR 6.49 a month excluding VAT in Germany or Finland ^[4], plus a domain and your time. Treat the time honestly. If nobody on the team has run a Docker container and a reverse proxy, n8n Cloud Starter at EUR 20 is the cheaper option.

What to do next

Count your runs, not your features. Estimate the monthly runs of your three busiest workflows and the number of action steps in each, then read the cost table above. Under about 2,000 tasks a month, Zapier is the simplest answer. Above that, n8n Cloud Pro at EUR 50 covers most small teams, and the self-hosted edition covers the rest if you have the hands. Make belongs on the shortlist for visual builders; read its pricing page yourself, since we could not. The Tool Finder turns your run estimate and team size into a shortlist with the same dated prices, and our guide to business process automation covers what to automate first.

Frequently asked questions

Is n8n cheaper than Zapier?

At volume, by a wide margin. For a five-step workflow at 10,000 runs a month, Zapier's lowest covering tier is USD 289 (50,000 tasks, annual billing) against n8n Cloud Pro at EUR 50, and self-hosted n8n costs only the server. Below about 2,000 tasks a month the difference is small and Zapier's simplicity usually wins. Prices checked 2026-11-09.

What is the difference between a Zapier task, a Make operation and an n8n execution?

A Zapier task is one successful action step; triggers, filters and built-in tools are free. A Make operation (now called a credit) is one module run, including the trigger. An n8n execution is one run of the whole workflow regardless of steps. The same workflow therefore costs 3 tasks, about 4 credits, or 1 execution per run.

Is n8n really free to self-host?

The software is, under the Sustainable Use License, for your own internal business or personal use; you may not offer it to others commercially, and the enterprise ".ee" source files are excluded. You pay for the server: shared-vCPU cloud servers start at EUR 5.99 to 6.49 a month excluding VAT at Hetzner in Germany or Finland (checked 2026-11-09). The real cost is the time to install, update and back it up.

Which automation tool is best for GDPR and EU data residency?

n8n is the only one of the three whose pricing page states where hosted data lives: in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt. Self-hosted n8n lives wherever you put it. Zapier's pricing page does not mention EU residency. Make is Czech-founded but its pricing page did not state data-centre regions in the text we could read.

Does Zapier charge for failed tasks?

No. Zapier counts a task only when an action step completes successfully, and triggers, polling, filters and the other built-in tools are free. With pay-per-task enabled, overage costs 1.25 times the base rate on annual plans or 2.5 times on monthly, and usage pauses at three times your subscription.

Are Zapier Agents included in the price?

Basic access is listed on all plans, including Free, but Agents are billed in a separate unit called activities: 400 a month on Free and 1,500 on the paid Agents tier, which Zapier says starts at about USD 33.33 a month on annual billing. Activities do not consume tasks. AI by Zapier steps, by contrast, do draw from the task pool.

Sources and evidence

1. Zapier pricing (plans, task tiers, task definition, Agents billing) — Zapier (2026), vendor page A zapier.com/pricing (retrieved 2026-11-09)
2. Make pricing page (FAQ text only; price grid not rendered) — Make (Celonis) (2026), vendor page B www.make.com/en/pricing (retrieved 2026-11-09)
3. n8n pricing — n8n GmbH (2026), vendor page A n8n.io/pricing/ (retrieved 2026-11-09)
4. Hetzner Cloud: server prices and locations — Hetzner Online GmbH (2026), vendor page A www.hetzner.com/cloud/ (retrieved 2026-11-09)
5. Zapier Agents and homepage (customer and app counts) — Zapier (2026), vendor page A zapier.com/agents (retrieved 2026-11-09)
6. Hyped AI business automation startup n8n raises $180m, valuing it at $2.5bn — Tech.eu (2025), report B tech.eu/2025/10/09/hyped-ai-business-automation-startup-n8n-raises-180 (retrieved 2026-11-09)
7. Does automation bias decision-making? — Skitka LJ, Mosier KL, Burdick M (1999), RCT B doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.1999.0252 (retrieved 2026-11-09)
8. Complacency and Bias in Human Use of Automation: An Attentional Integration — Parasuraman R, Manzey DH (2010), systematic review A doi.org/10.1177/0018720810376055 (retrieved 2026-11-09)
9. n8n Sustainable Use License (LICENSE.md) — n8n GmbH (2026), vendor page A github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md (retrieved 2026-11-09)