n8n vs Zapier vs Make: which automation platform fits your business in 2026?

Who is each platform for?

Zapier is for teams whose automations are built and owned by operations, marketing or sales staff rather than engineers. Its app directory is the largest of the three and the trade-off is price: every successful step counts as a task.

Make is for people who think visually and need logic. Routers, iterators, aggregators and data stores let a non-developer build branching, multi-step scenarios cheaply under its credit model. The learning curve sits between Zapier and n8n.

n8n is for teams with at least one technical owner. It is source-available, runs on your own infrastructure if you want, exposes code nodes and HTTP requests freely, and has become the default for AI workflows that chain models, tools, memory and vector stores. You pay per execution, not per step.

How do n8n, Zapier and Make compare side by side?

Pricing details and sources follow below.

• Pricing model: n8n charges per workflow execution with unlimited steps; Zapier charges per successful task (each step that completes); Make charges per credit, with a standard operation costing one credit.
• Hosting: n8n offers cloud or self-hosted (including a free Community Edition); Zapier is cloud only; Make is cloud only, with a separate enterprise tier.
• Integrations: Zapier has the largest catalogue; Make advertises 3,500+ apps; n8n has a smaller native library but an unrestricted HTTP node and community nodes.
• AI and agents: n8n has agent, tool, memory and vector-store nodes plus MCP support; Zapier has Zapier Agents and Zapier MCP; Make has Make AI Agents that run inside scenarios.
• Complexity ceiling: n8n highest (code nodes, sub-workflows, queues); Make high (routers, iterators, data stores); Zapier lowest (linear Zaps with paths and filters).
• Data control: n8n self-hosted keeps data inside your network; Zapier and Make process data in their clouds under their enterprise terms.
• Maintenance burden: Zapier lowest; Make moderate; n8n highest when self-hosted, because you run upgrades, backups and scaling.

How does pricing work in practice?

The vendors meter different units, so the comparison depends on workflow shape. A ten-step workflow that runs 1,000 times a month is 1,000 n8n executions, roughly 10,000 Zapier tasks (triggers and formatter steps are free) and roughly 10,000 Make credits; two-step workflows narrow the gap.

n8n: executions, with self-hosting as the escape hatch

As of October 2026, n8n's pricing page lists Cloud Starter at EUR 20 per month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions, Pro at EUR 50 per month for 10,000 executions, Business at EUR 667 per month for 40,000 executions (self-hosted), and Enterprise on request. Every plan counts executions with unlimited steps. Separately, the self-hosted Community Edition is free: the n8n Sustainable Use License permits use for your own internal business purposes, while files marked .ee require an Enterprise licence. Self-hosting removes the subscription but adds server, upgrade and backup cost.

Zapier: tasks, with triggers and formatters free

As of October 2026, Zapier's pricing page lists a Free plan with 100 tasks per month and two-step Zaps, Professional from USD 19.99 per month billed annually (USD 29.99 monthly) at 750 tasks, and Team from USD 69 per month billed annually at 2,000 tasks, plus a custom Enterprise plan. Zapier defines a task as counted "whenever Zapier successfully completes a unit of work for you. Failed actions are not counted." Triggers, polling and built-in tools such as Formatter are not billed. Polling runs every 15 minutes on Free, 2 on Professional and 1 on Team.

Make: credits, one per standard operation

Make switched its billing unit from operations to credits on 27 August 2025. Its pricing page states that "most actions consume 1 credit, while some advanced features leveraging Make's AI Provider may use more," and that router and error-handler modules do not consume credits. The Make help centre confirms that "by default, 1 operation equals 1 credit" regardless of data size, and that third-party AI modules bill you for Make credits while the AI provider bills tokens separately. According to Jet Admin's Make pricing breakdown (26 September 2026), the Free plan includes 1,000 credits, and Core, Pro and Teams each include 10,000 credits at USD 9, 16 and 29 per month on annual billing, with Free limited to 15-minute scheduling and paid plans allowing 1-minute intervals.

Which handles AI and agent workflows best?

n8n is the strongest platform for engineering-grade AI work. Its AI documentation describes workflows that "connect different LLM providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, add tools and memory, and combine several models in one workflow," with agents, chains, vector databases, built-in evaluations and the ability to connect an agent to an MCP server.

Zapier's pricing page lists Zapier Agents, Zapier Chatbots and Zapier MCP on all plans, the quickest way to give a business user an agent across thousands of apps. Make AI Agents run on the same canvas as scenarios, can "reason, choose what to do next, and trigger real workflows," and show each decision in a reasoning panel. Both are good for bounded, low-risk tasks. For agents that need custom retrieval, strict tool permissions, evaluation sets and cost controls, teams usually move to n8n or to code.

What about data residency, self-hosting and security?

If customer, health or financial data flows through your automations, hosting decides the platform. Only n8n can run inside your own VPC, on-premises or in a chosen region, with credentials in your own database. Zapier and Make are multi-tenant clouds with enterprise security controls on higher tiers, but your data still leaves your network.

Self-hosting is not free of security work. You own patching, TLS, backups, secrets and access control, and a neglected n8n instance full of API credentials is a high-value target. Teams without an engineer to own it should prefer n8n Cloud, Zapier or Make and solve residency with contractual terms.

How do they hold up at scale, and who owns the workflows?

Scale exposes cost curves, error handling and ownership. Zapier's per-task pricing grows with every step, so a workflow that was cheap at 100 runs can dominate the bill at 100,000. Make's credits are cheaper per step but scenarios stop when the allowance runs out, with webhooks queued until credits are topped up. n8n's per-execution model flattens the curve, and self-hosting with queue mode and multiple workers removes the ceiling at the cost of running infrastructure.

Error handling and versioning separate hobby automations from production ones. Make and n8n support error routes, retries and sub-workflows; n8n adds code nodes, environments and Git-backed versioning on paid tiers; Zapier handles retries and alerts but keeps logic shallow. Whichever you pick, insist on named owners, documented workflows, credentials in a company account rather than a contractor's, and exports in source control. The most expensive automation is the one nobody can modify after its builder leaves.

Which should you choose at each company stage?

• Solo founder or team under ten: Zapier for speed, Make if your workflows branch or transform data.
• Growing company, 10 to 100 people, no dedicated engineer: Make for most work; Zapier for apps Make lacks. Start pricing n8n Cloud once monthly task or credit spend rivals a part-time salary.
• Company with an engineering team or high volume: n8n for anything high-volume, AI-driven or sensitive; keep Zapier or Make for business-owned edge cases.
• Regulated or data-residency-bound business: self-hosted n8n or an enterprise contract that fixes region and retention.

How hard is it to migrate between platforms?

There is no reliable converter between the three; a migration is a rebuild, so budget by workflow count and complexity. Inventory every workflow with its trigger, apps, volume and owner, retire the ones nobody can justify, rebuild the most expensive first, and run old and new side by side for one billing cycle before switching off the original.

Zapier to n8n is the most common move in 2026, usually driven by cost or AI needs, and it goes smoothest when an engineer who knows both tools does the rebuild and documents it. Hyparz matches pre-vetted remote workflow automation engineers with n8n, Zapier and Make experience typically within days, with a one-week risk-free trial, which suits a bounded migration well. See hire n8n experts, hire Zapier developers and hire Make experts.