n8n Pricing vs Zapier vs Make: What You're Billed Per

Verdict. Pick Make for short, low-volume automations you want running this afternoon. Pick n8n for long workflows or volume, especially if you can operate a server. Pick Zapier when its 9,000-app library and managed polish justify the premium. The three platforms bill different units: n8n bills a run, Make bills an action, and Zapier bills a successful step. Compare your own workflow units, not landing-page prices.

Proof status. Prices come from vendor pricing pages on 21 August 2026 and every figure links back. The worked example states its assumptions. Replace them with your own. Vendor prices change; check the links before committing to a year.

1. The operator and the leak

A solo founder or small micro-SaaS team may run twenty to forty automations: new-signup → welcome sequence → CRM update → Slack ping; invoice paid → ledger row → customer email; lead from the site → dedupe → route. Some have two steps. Some have ten.

Zapier may have started as a $19 convenience and become a $300 surprise, or you may be choosing before building. The decision is about the billing meter and the point where paying per unit stops making sense.

2. Price the unit before comparing plans

Platform	Billable unit	What counts
n8n	Execution	One full workflow run. Steps are unlimited.
Make	Operation (credit)	Each app action, such as a Gmail send or sheet row.
Zapier	Task	Each successful step. Triggers, filters, built-in tools are free; AI and code cost more.

A ten-step workflow running 2,000 times each month uses different meters:

Platform	Calculation	Monthly units
n8n	1 × 2,000 executions	2,000 executions
Make	~10 × 2,000 operations	20,000 operations
Zapier	~10 × 2,000 tasks	20,000 tasks

On n8n, additional workflow steps do not appear on the invoice. On Make and Zapier, each extra step is another unit. A 2-step workflow is 1 execution / 2 operations / 2 tasks, so the gap is small. It shows up with long workflows and volume.

3. Compare current plans and prices

Platform	Plan / allowance	Annual monthly price
n8n Cloud	Starter, 2,500 executions/mo, unlimited steps	€20/mo
n8n Cloud	Pro, 10,000 executions/mo, unlimited steps	€50/mo
n8n Cloud	Business, 40,000 executions/mo; SSO, environments, Git; self-hostable	€667/mo
n8n	Enterprise, custom	custom
n8n Community Edition	Self-hosted, open source, no per-execution fee	server cost
Make	Free, 1,000 credits/mo, 15-minute minimum interval	$0
Make	Core, 10,000 credits/mo	$9/mo
Make	Pro, 10,000 credits/mo; priority execution, full-text log search	$16/mo
Make	Teams, 10,000 credits/mo; roles, shared templates	$29/mo
Make	Enterprise, custom; 20k, 40k, 80k… tiers scale similarly	~15%+ annual discount
Zapier	Free, 100 tasks/mo, two-step Zaps only	$0
Zapier Pro	750 tasks	$19.99/mo
Zapier Pro	1,500 tasks	$39/mo
Zapier Pro	2,000 tasks	$49/mo
Zapier Pro	10,000 tasks	$129/mo
Zapier Pro	20,000 tasks	$189/mo
Zapier Team	Starts at 2,000 tasks	$69/mo

Make and Zapier prices are annual billing. Zapier monthly billing is ~50% higher than annual. n8n Business adds SSO, environments, and Git.

4. Run the worked cost model

Assumptions, not measurements: 2,000 executions/month come from ten 2-step “connect the dots” workflows and four 8-step “whole pipeline” workflows. The average is ~4.2 steps, so actual work is ~8,400 units/month (2,000 × 4.2).

Platform	What you buy	Monthly cost	Cost per unit
n8n Cloud (Pro, 10k execs)	2,000 executions	€50 (~$55)	~$0.0065 / execution
Make (Core, 10k credits)	~8,400 operations	$9	~$0.0011 / operation
Zapier (Pro, 10k tasks)	~8,400 tasks	$129	~$0.015 / task

Make is cheapest here because its 10k-credit tier leaves plenty of room for a solo builder. That is the Make case: short automations, modest volume, and no server to maintain.

n8n Cloud Pro has 5× headroom over 2,000 executions, and self-hosted n8n removes the per-execution line entirely. If a VPS already costs ~$5–20/mo, the marginal automation cost is roughly zero. You still run updates, secrets, retries, monitoring, and incidents.

Zapier costs more in this model because every step is billable and the task price rises with volume. You get its 9,000-app library and managed experience.

5. Watch the failure boundaries

Failure	What breaks	What to do
Budgeted by steps, billed by another meter	A migration looks cheap until long workflows use operations or tasks	Count real units for one month.
Self-hosted n8n without operations ownership	Docker updates, webhook secrets, or queues become your incident	Include on-call cost, not only licence cost.
AI-heavy workflows	Zapier bills model tiers; Make bills credits or your key; n8n uses cloud credits or code	Put model tokens on their own budget line.
Missing integration	A cheaper platform cannot reach the CRM you need	Check each required app before migrating.

If a workflow is 50% LLM calls, model tokens dominate the platform fee. Zapier’s 9,000 apps can also make it hard to leave when only Zapier supports a required app.

6. When a paid platform is unnecessary

• Fewer than ~200 meaningful actions/month: this fits Zapier Free or Make Free.
• One recurring task, such as moving rows and emailing someone weekly: a 30-line cron script or one n8n node on Community Edition may be enough.
• An upstream app does not expose the required field: fix the source first. No automation platform changes missing data.

Bottom line

Pick Make for short, light workflows when you do not want another system to operate. Pick self-hosted n8n for long workflows and scale when you will run the box; n8n Cloud is the managed version of that choice. Pick Zapier for the largest app library and managed convenience. Count a month of real units before signing: an execution, operation, and task are not the same thing.

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More on this decision, three ways to look at it: