Zapier vs Make vs n8n: Cost Comparison 2026

The sticker prices aren't the story. The story is that these three platforms charge for different units of work, which means the same workflow can cost wildly different amounts depending on where it runs.

Pricing below verified July 2026 against vendor pages and current comparisons. These change often — always confirm on the vendor's own pricing page before committing.

How each platform bills

The same workflow, three different bills

Take a 5-step workflow that runs 1,000 times a month — say, new order → enrich data → update CRM → send confirmation → post to Slack.

• Zapier: 5 tasks × 1,000 runs = 5,000 tasks/month. That's well past the 750-task base tier — you're buying a higher task tier at meaningfully more than $29.99.
• Make: 5 credits × 1,000 runs = 5,000 credits/month. Fits comfortably in the 10,000-credit Core plan at roughly $9–12.
• n8n: 1,000 executions/month — steps don't matter. Fits the ~$24 Cloud Starter with room to spare, or runs free self-hosted on a ~$5/month server.

Same automation, and the monthly cost can differ by 5–10× depending on platform. The more steps your workflows have, the more the per-step billers (Zapier, Make) diverge from the per-run biller (n8n).

So which one?

Zapier if your team is non-technical and speed of setup matters more than cost. Largest integration library (9,000+ apps), easiest interface, best support — you pay a real premium for it, and that premium grows with volume.

Make if you want the middle path: visual builder, 3,000+ integrations, and the best price-to-volume ratio among hosted no-code tools. Watch polling triggers — checking for new data every few minutes burns credits even when nothing happens.

n8n if you have technical capability. Per-execution billing makes complex multi-step workflows dramatically cheaper, and the self-hosted Community Edition is genuinely free with unlimited executions — you just own the hosting and maintenance.

The cost question nobody asks until it's too late

Whichever platform you choose, the subscription is only part of your AI automation spend. API usage fees, maintenance hours, and the platform bill together determine whether an automation is actually profitable. Plenty of automations that look cheap on the platform invoice are net losers once you count everything — and plenty that look expensive pay for themselves in days.

That's a net-dollar question, and it's the one that matters: here's how to calculate it properly.