As a team grows, moving data between apps by hand becomes a bottleneck. Zapier, Make and n8n all solve that, but they charge in very different ways, and what decides your bill is how each pricing model behaves once your volume goes up.

Exact prices change often, so check each vendor's pricing page before you commit. The figures below are list prices as of October 2026.

How each platform charges

Zapier bills by the task. Zapier counts a task each time it successfully completes an action for you [1]. Triggers don't count, and neither do Zapier's built-in tools like Filter and Paths. If one new lead kicks off five actions in five apps, that's five tasks.

Make bills in credits. Each time a module in a scenario performs an action, it uses credits, usually one per action, though some AI features cost more [3]. Reading, searching, creating, updating and transforming data all count. A few modules, like the Router and the error handlers, are free. Because Make counts more of the steps inside a scenario, the same workflow often uses more units on Make than on Zapier.

n8n bills by the execution on its cloud plans, and an execution is one full run of a workflow, no matter how many steps it has [2]. n8n also publishes a self-hosted version on GitHub. If you run it on your own server, n8n doesn't bill per execution. You pay for the server instead.

Zapier: easiest to start, priciest to scale

Zapier is the easiest of the three to pick up. It has a huge integration library and you don't need much technical skill to build your first workflow.

As of October 2026 list price, Zapier's Professional plan starts at $19.99 a month billed annually ($29.99 billed monthly) with 750 tasks, and the Team plan starts at $69 a month billed annually ($103.50 monthly) with 2,000 tasks. Higher task volumes cost more on every plan, so your bill climbs as your volume does.

Example: lead handling

Picture a team that gets 1,000 leads a month, where each lead runs through five steps:

  1. Add the lead to the CRM.
  2. Send a Slack notification.
  3. Add them to the email list.
  4. Create a Trello card.
  5. Update a Google Sheet.

That's 5,000 tasks a month, well past the entry allowance. At 10,000 leads, it's 50,000 tasks, and the bill moves up with it.

Make: more control for the money

Make sits in the middle. Its visual canvas makes complex logic and branching easier to build and to see.

Make has a free plan with 1,000 credits a month as of October 2026. Paid plans are priced by how many credits you need each month, so the bill grows with usage, but you get room for more complex scenarios.

Example: the same lead workflow

On Make, every module in the five-step lead workflow uses credits, including any extra search or transform steps, so your count per lead will usually be higher than Zapier's. Whether the bill ends up lower depends on your per-credit price versus Zapier's per-task price, so run your real volume through both pricing calculators.

n8n: built for volume

n8n fits teams with some technical help, or teams that don't want their automation bill to grow every time their business does.

On n8n Cloud, the Starter plan begins at 20 euros a month and Pro at 50 euros a month, both billed annually, as of October 2026 list price. Because n8n counts a whole run as one execution, the five-step lead workflow above is 1,000 executions a month, not 5,000 units.

Self-hosting goes further. Run n8n on your own server and the per-run charge goes away. Your cost is the hosting plus the time it takes someone to maintain it.

Example: high volume syncing

Say a team syncs 100,000 records a month between a database and a marketing tool. On Zapier, that's at least 100,000 tasks. On Make, expect a similar or higher number of credits, since every module that touches a record uses them. On self-hosted n8n, it costs whatever the server costs.

Side by side

| Metric | Zapier | Make | n8n (self hosted) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Pricing unit | Per task | Per credit | Per server (fixed) | | Entry cost | Low | Low | Medium (setup time) | | Cost at scale | High | Medium | Low | | Technical skill | Low | Medium | Medium to high |

Which one fits your team

Pick Zapier if your team is small and not very technical, and you'd rather pay more than spend time on setup. Getting running fast is worth the monthly cost.

Pick Make if you need complex logic and like seeing your data flow on a visual map, but Zapier's pricing at your volume doesn't make sense.

Pick n8n if you're growing fast, moving a lot of data, or have someone who can look after a server. Self-hosted, it's the only one of the three where your bill doesn't follow your run count.

Check your numbers

Pull your monthly task or operation count and see what you're actually paying for. If your automation bill is growing faster than your revenue, it's worth looking at a platform that prices differently.