Automation Pricing Breakdown
Zapier vs Make vs n8n: what one automation actually costs on each
One identical six-step automation costs 3 tasks on Zapier, roughly 5 credits on Make, and 1 execution on n8n. The three billing units measure different things, so every comparison that lines up "10,000 tasks vs 10,000 operations vs 10,000 executions" is comparing numbers that do not correspond. Here are the billing rules each vendor publishes, and what they mean at solo-operator volume.
Comparison Outline
Quick verdict Three units that don't line up One workflow, counted three ways When Zapier is the cheap one Monthly cost as volume grows Three plan traps Free plans compared FAQQuick verdict
For most solo operators running a handful of automations, Make's Core plan at $9 a month for 10,000 credits is the cheapest realistic entry point — cheaper than n8n Cloud's €20 Starter and far cheaper than Zapier's $19.99 Professional plan, which includes only 750 tasks. The popular verdict that "n8n saves you 5–8x" is measured at volumes most readers here will never hit. n8n's flat per-execution billing only pays off once your workflows are long, high-volume, or both. And Zapier's headline price is misleading in its own favour: it does not bill triggers, filters, paths or formatting steps, so a logic-heavy Zap can consume a third of the billable units the same scenario costs on Make.
Three billing units that do not line up
This is the whole comparison in one table. Each vendor bills a different thing, and none of the three numbers is convertible into another without knowing the shape of your workflow.
| Platform | Billing unit | What the vendor says it counts | What is free |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier | Task | "All successful action steps", plus successful steps inside an error-handler path and replayed steps. | All triggers, Filter and Paths steps, Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage, Zapier Manager, Tables, Forms, and any step that errors or never runs. |
| Make | Credit | "Each module action in your scenario, like adding a Google Sheet row or fetching Gmail account data, counts as one credit." Includes modules that read, search, transform or check for data. | Routers and error handlers. |
| n8n | Execution | "A single run of your entire workflow. It doesn't matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes. It's still a single execution." | Every additional step and every additional record inside one run. |
Quotes read August 2026 from Zapier's "How is task usage measured" help article, Make's pricing page and n8n's pricing page.
Notice what Zapier does not charge for. Filters, paths, formatting, delays and loops — the entire logic layer of an automation — are free. Zapier bills only for work performed in another app. Make takes the opposite position: a module is a module, and a text-parsing step costs the same credit as writing a row to a database.
One workflow, counted three ways
Take a workflow almost every online business builds eventually: a new paid order arrives in Stripe → check the product is the one you care about → tidy the customer's name → add a row to Google Sheets → send a welcome email → post a notification to Slack. Six steps as a human describes it.
| Step | Zapier tasks | Make credits | n8n executions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe trigger | 0 | 1 | — |
| Filter on product | 0 | 0–1 | — |
| Format the name | 0 | 1 | — |
| Add Google Sheets row | 1 | 1 | — |
| Send welcome email | 1 | 1 | — |
| Post to Slack | 1 | 1 | — |
| Total per run | 3 | 5–6 | 1 |
Our count, applying each vendor's published rules above. Make's documentation confirms routers and error handlers are free but does not state whether a filter placed on the connection between two modules consumes a credit, so treat 5 as the floor and 6 as the safe planning figure. n8n bills the entire run as one execution regardless of step count.
Identical business logic, and the billable count differs by up to 6x. This is why plan-price tables are close to useless on their own: you cannot know whether 10,000 units is generous until you know how many units your own workflow burns per run.
The case where Zapier is the cheap one
Zapier's reputation is "powerful but expensive", and on price per billable unit that is accurate. But because the logic layer is free, the reputation inverts on a certain shape of workflow.
Consider a lead-routing automation: a form submission arrives → three filters decide which of three paths it takes → four formatting steps clean up the phone number, split the full name, reformat the date and build a message string → two actions write to your CRM and send one email.
| Workflow shape | Steps as built | Zapier tasks/run | Make credits/run | n8n executions/run |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action-heavy (6 apps written to) | 7 | 6 | ~7 | 1 |
| Balanced (the Stripe example above) | 6 | 3 | ~5 | 1 |
| Logic-heavy (lead routing) | 10 | 2 | ~10 | 1 |
Our arithmetic applying the published rules. The logic-heavy row is the one that overturns the usual advice: 2 billable tasks on Zapier against roughly 10 credits on Make, a 5x gap in Zapier's favour on the same automation.
The practical rule: count only the steps that write data to another app. That number is roughly your Zapier bill. Then count every box on the canvas — that is roughly your Make bill. If the two counts are close, Make's cheaper unit price wins easily. If your workflow is mostly logic, Zapier can be genuinely cheaper despite costing more per task.
What it costs per month as volume grows
Using the balanced Stripe workflow (3 Zapier tasks, ~5 Make credits, 1 n8n execution per run), here is where each platform lands as the number of runs a month increases.
| Runs/month | Units needed (Zapier / Make / n8n) | Cheapest listed plan that covers it |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 300 / 500 / 100 | Make Core $9 · Zapier Pro 750 $19.99 · n8n Starter €20 |
| 1,000 | 3,000 / 5,000 / 1,000 | Make Core $9 · n8n Starter €20 · Zapier above its $49 tier |
| 5,000 | 15,000 / 25,000 / 5,000 | n8n Pro €50 · Make Core with the slider raised · Zapier far above listed tiers |
| 10,000 | 30,000 / 50,000 / 10,000 | n8n Pro €50 (exactly 10,000 executions) |
Plan prices as listed August 2026: Make Core $9/mo at 10,000 credits; Zapier Professional $19.99/mo billed annually at 750 tasks, $39 at 1,500 and $49 at 2,000; n8n Starter €20/mo billed annually at 2,500 executions and Pro €50/mo at 10,000. Make and Zapier both use a volume slider above the entry tier; we have not quoted slider prices we did not read, so the higher-volume rows name the winner rather than a figure.
The crossover sits between roughly 1,000 and 5,000 runs a month for this workflow shape, and it moves depending on how many steps your workflows contain. Below it, Make Core's $9 entry is hard to beat. Above it, n8n's flat execution billing takes over decisively, and the longer your workflows get, the earlier that crossover arrives. Zapier is the most expensive of the three at every volume in this table — its case rests on the free logic layer, the app library, and being the one your collaborators already know.
If you have not built the underlying workflow yet, our content pipeline automation walkthrough covers what is worth automating before you pay for any of this, and the Make review covers whether the platform suits your operation at all.
Three plan traps worth knowing before you pay
Free plans compared
All three have a free tier, and they are not remotely equivalent.
| Platform | Free allowance | The binding constraint |
|---|---|---|
| Zapier Free | 100 tasks/month | Two-step Zaps only, and a 15-minute polling interval. The step limit bites long before the task limit does. |
| Make Free | 1,000 credits/month | Maximum 2 active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval, 5-minute maximum execution time. |
| n8n | Trial, then self-host | The Cloud trial runs at Starter limits with no card required. The self-hosted Community Edition is where the genuinely free option lives. |
Free-tier limits from each vendor's pricing page, August 2026.
Make's free tier is the only one of the three you can do real work on, at ten times Zapier's allowance. The catch is the two-scenario cap: it is enough to prove a workflow out, not to run an operation. Zapier's free tier is a demo, not a plan — two-step Zaps rule out the filter-and-format workflows that are the reason to use Zapier at all.
n8n's third option is self-hosting. n8n publishes a self-hosted version on GitHub under its fair-code Sustainable Use License, and because it runs on infrastructure you own, n8n Cloud's execution allowances do not apply to it. We could not verify the licence terms directly this cycle — n8n's documentation site returned errors to automated retrieval — so before you build a business on the self-hosted edition, read the licence yourself. The relevant question is whether you are automating your own operations, which the licence is designed to permit, or reselling n8n itself as a product, which it is designed to restrict.
Tool Income Lab recommendation
Start on Make's free plan and build the workflow you actually need. Count the modules on the finished canvas, multiply by your expected runs a month, and only then pick a plan. If that number lands under 10,000, Core at $9 covers you. If your workflows turn out long or high-volume, move to n8n before you pay for a bigger slider setting.
FAQ
Do triggers count as tasks in Zapier?
No. Zapier's help centre lists all trigger steps, Filter and Paths steps, and the Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage, Zapier Manager, Tables and Forms utilities as not consuming tasks. Steps that error or never run are not billed either. Only successful action steps count.
Is Make cheaper than Zapier?
Per unit, clearly — $9 for 10,000 credits against $19.99 for 750 tasks. Per workflow, not always. Make bills every module while Zapier bills only successful actions, so a logic-heavy automation can cost around 10 Make credits and 2 Zapier tasks per run. Count your own billable steps first.
Does n8n charge per step or per workflow run?
Per run. n8n's pricing page states an execution is "a single run of your entire workflow" and that step count and data volume do not change it. A 40-node workflow processing 1,000 records is one execution.
Does upgrading Make from Core to Pro give me more credits?
Not on its own. Core, Pro and Teams all start at 10,000 credits a month in August 2026, and the slider controls volume independently of tier. Pro adds priority execution, custom variables and full-text log search.
Why do published prices for these tools differ so much between roundups?
Partly because Make renamed operations to credits in August 2025 and re-tiered, and partly because Make and Zapier both price on sliders, so a roundup can quote any point on the curve. Read the vendor's own pricing page and note the volume the price is attached to — including for the figures on this page, which are an August 2026 snapshot.
Final recommendation
Do not choose between these three on plan price. Choose on workflow shape, because that is what decides how many billable units the same automation consumes. Short workflows that write to several apps favour Make. Long workflows and anything that loops over records favour n8n. Workflows that are mostly filters, paths and formatting favour Zapier, whose free logic layer is worth more than its unit price suggests.
For most readers building an online income operation, the honest answer is Make Core at $9 a month, and the popular "just use n8n" advice is optimising for a scale you have not reached. Revisit that when your automations get long or your run count passes a few thousand a month — those are the two things that move the crossover.
Every figure here is an August 2026 snapshot read from the vendors' own pages, and all three change pricing without much warning. Re-check before you commit to an annual plan.
Related reads: comparison hub, our Make review, best AI tools for small business, automating store support with AI chatbots, and Gumroad vs Payhip vs Lemon Squeezy fee maths.