For most growing businesses, Zapier is the fastest start for non-technical teams, Make suits visual, multi-step logic with branches, and n8n suits teams with technical staff who need self-hosting or long workflows. Compare them by the pricing unit, where your data runs, and who will maintain the workflows.

Picture an operations lead at a 40-person services firm. Leads arrive from a web form, get enriched, land in the CRM, trigger a Slack alert and create a draft proposal. A year ago one person built this in an afternoon. Now it runs thousands of times a month, the bill has grown, and nobody is sure which of the 30 automations still matter. The question isn't which tool is best. It's which tool the business can still live with when volume, data rules and staff change.

What is the difference between n8n, Zapier and Make?

The three tools do the same basic job, connecting apps so that an event in one starts actions in others, but they differ in where they run, how they charge and who can maintain them. A workflow (called a Zap in Zapier and a scenario in Make) is a trigger followed by one or more steps.

As of 8 October 2026, the vendors' own pricing and documentation pages describe them like this:

• n8n. Hosting: n8n Cloud, or self-hosted (free Community edition; paid Business and Enterprise editions). Pricing model: Per workflow execution: one run of the whole workflow, however many steps. Who it suits: Teams with technical staff, long multi-step workflows, data that must stay on your own infrastructure. Where it gets hard: Self-hosting means you own setup and maintenance; SSO, environments and Git version control need a paid edition.

• Zapier. Hosting: Zapier's cloud only; no self-hosted option is listed. Pricing model: Per task: each action Zapier completes successfully; Zapier Agents billed separately in activities. Who it suits: Non-technical teams connecting common SaaS apps quickly. Where it gets hard: Every action step counts, so cost climbs with steps and volume; the Free plan allows only two-step Zaps.

• Make. Hosting: Make's cloud on AWS (EU or North America); an on-prem agent for local systems is Enterprise-only. Pricing model: Per credit: each module action uses one credit; some AI features use more. Who it suits: Operations teams building visual scenarios with branches and data transformation. Where it gets hard: Loops over many items use credits per item; credit use for AI features isn't published per feature.

The rest of this post goes through each column.

How does each tool charge: tasks, credits or executions?

Each vendor counts a different unit, so the same workflow can cost very differently on each. Before comparing price lists, count what your workflows will use in each unit.

Zapier: tasks

A task is, in Zapier's pricing page wording, "counted whenever Zapier successfully completes a unit of work for you." Failed actions, triggers and built-in tools such as Filter, Formatter and Paths don't count. The Free plan includes 100 tasks a month, and paid plans are sold in task tiers. Zapier Agents are billed in a separate unit called activities, where each billable action an agent takes is one activity.

Make: credits

Make's pricing page says credits are now its billing unit. Each module action in a scenario, such as adding a spreadsheet row, uses one credit. Router and error-handler modules don't use credits, and some features that use Make's AI Provider "may use more." The Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month and two active scenarios.

n8n: executions

The n8n pricing page defines an execution as "a single run of your entire workflow." The number of steps and the amount of data don't change the count. The cloud Starter plan includes 2,500 executions a month, and every plan includes unlimited users and workflows.

A quick way to compare

Take one workflow with a trigger and five action steps that runs 1,000 times a month. Using each vendor's own definition, that is 1,000 executions on n8n, up to 5,000 tasks on Zapier (fewer if some steps are filters or formatters), and at least 5,000 credits on Make. Do this for your five busiest workflows before you look at a price. Prices and tiers change often, so read the current amounts on each pricing page on the day you decide.

Should you self-host n8n or use a cloud plan?

Self-host n8n only if you have someone who will own the server, because n8n's own guide marks technical expertise as "required for installation and configuration." For everyone else, a cloud plan from any of the three is the safer default.

n8n is the only one of the three you can run on your own infrastructure. Its guide to choosing a deployment lists the trade-off plainly: on n8n Cloud, hosting, updates and scaling are handled for you; self-hosted, you provide and maintain the infrastructure, and in return you get full control over deployment and configuration.

What the free Community edition leaves out

The free, self-hosted Community edition has most of the product. According to n8n's edition comparison, it doesn't include single sign-on, environments, external secrets, projects, sharing of workflows and credentials, log streaming or Git-based version control. Teams that need those buy a Business or Enterprise license key.

Check the license if you serve customers

n8n's source code is under the Sustainable Use License, which says you may use or modify the software "only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use." Running your own operations on it is covered. If you plan to offer n8n-powered automation to your customers as part of your product, read the license and ask n8n first.

When Zapier or Make need to reach private systems

Zapier's pricing page lists no self-hosted option. Make offers an on-premise agent that lets scenarios reach applications and databases on a local network without changing firewall settings. Make's help page says it is available to Enterprise customers.

Which automation tool is best for AI agents?

All three now ship AI agent features, so the deciding factors are how agent use is billed and how much control you have over each tool call. An AI agent, in this context, is a workflow step where a language model decides which tools to call and in what order.

• n8n lists an AI Agent node, AI steps, an MCP Server Trigger and an MCP Client, and human approval for tool calls. Evaluations for testing AI steps are included, with metric-based evaluations on Pro and above. Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI applications call external tools and data sources.

• Zapier offers Zapier Agents (billed in activities), Copilot in the editor (marked Beta), and Zapier MCP on all plans. The pricing page's example rate for Zapier MCP is two tasks per tool call, drawn from your task pool.

• Make offers Make AI Agents (beta), the Make AI Toolkit, Maia for building scenarios through conversation, and a Make MCP Server. Agents and the toolkit can use Make's AI Provider or your own model API key.

Whichever tool you choose, put a human approval step before any action that writes to a customer record, sends a message or moves money. If you are still deciding which model sits behind the agent, choose per task and keep the model swappable.

When do teams outgrow each automation tool?

Teams usually outgrow a tool when the pricing unit stops matching how their workflows grow, or when nobody can see what the automations do. Neither problem shows up in the first month.

Signs you are outgrowing Zapier

Long Zaps that run often, because every successful action is a task. Also workflows that need to reach a system with no public API.

Signs you are outgrowing Make

Scenarios that loop over large lists, because each module action per item uses a credit. Also heavy AI use, since AI Provider features may use more credits than standard actions.

Signs you are outgrowing n8n

On cloud plans, the execution allowance and concurrency limits on lower tiers. Self-hosted, the cost is staff time: updates, backups, monitoring and security fall to you.

How do you avoid rebuilding your automations later?

Treat the automation layer as part of your systems, not as a set of personal shortcuts. These five habits make a later move cheaper and keep today's setup understandable.

1. Write down every workflow: its owner, trigger, systems touched and what breaks if it stops. Our post on managing automated operations calendars covers how to keep that view current.

2. Keep business logic in your own systems where you can. Rules for pricing, routing or eligibility belong in the CRM, a database or a small service, so the automation tool moves data rather than deciding things.

3. Use shared service accounts, not personal logins, for every connection, so a workflow doesn't break when someone leaves.

4. Log failures somewhere a person reads. Decide who is alerted and what they do.

5. Estimate volume a year ahead in each vendor's unit before you commit to a plan.

Most automation projects fail for the same reasons other transformation projects do: no owner, no measure of success and no plan for change. Why AI Transformations Fail goes into those causes.

How we approach it at Vizio AI

We start with an inventory, not a tool. With the client, we list every existing automation and manual hand-off, who owns it, what triggers it and how often it runs. Then we check the constraints: where the data may be processed, which systems have no public API, and who on the team will maintain the workflows after handover.

Next we count each candidate workflow in tasks, credits and executions and compare the tools on the client's own volumes. We document every workflow, move business rules out of the automation tool where that makes sense, and put approval steps in front of anything an AI step can change. If a workflow has outgrown no-code tools, we say so and build that part as software instead. When a codebase has stalled rather than an automation, Why Projects Built With Claude or Codex Stall Before Launch covers that case.

This is the work our DX Studio does.

Sources

• n8n, Pricing: https://n8n.io/pricing/

• n8n Docs, Choose how to use n8n: https://docs.n8n.io/choose-how-to-use-n8n

• n8n Docs, Compare editions: https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/community-edition-features/

• n8n, LICENSE.md (Sustainable Use License): https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md

• Zapier, Plans and pricing: https://zapier.com/pricing

• Make, Pricing: https://www.make.com/en/pricing

• Make Help Center, On-premise agent: https://help.make.com/on-premise-agent