Make vs Zapier vs n8n: real costs for solo workflows

Disclosure: Some links on this page may become affiliate links. If you buy through one, Side Stack may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

For most solopreneurs, Make is the cheapest hosted option, with 10,000 credits for $9 a month on annual billing. Zapier is the easiest to set up, but it charges for every action, so loops get expensive fast. n8n charges per full workflow run, so long workflows stay cheap, and you can self-host it free.

Every price and billing rule below comes from the vendors’ own pricing and help pages, checked on October 17, 2026. We did not build these workflows on paid accounts. The costs follow each vendor’s published counting rules, so check the pricing pages again before you buy.

Which one should you pick?

Pick Zapier if you want the shortest setup and your workflows are a trigger plus one or two actions that run a few hundred times a month.
Pick Make if you want the lowest monthly bill for a hosted tool and you’re willing to learn how its scenario builder handles data.
Pick n8n Cloud if your workflows loop over rows or have many steps, because a 40-step run costs the same as a 2-step run.
Self-host n8n if you’re comfortable keeping a server updated and backed up and you want no execution quota.

How does each tool count what you use?

The three tools measure usage in different units, and that difference decides your bill.

Zapier counts tasks. Each successful action step uses one task. Triggers, polling, filters, paths and Zapier’s built-in tools such as Formatter, Delay and Looping use none. Failed steps don’t count. AI by Zapier steps are billed by model tier, and a Zapier MCP tool call costs 2 tasks. See Zapier’s task usage guide and pricing page.

Make counts credits. Credits replaced operations as Make’s billing unit, and a non-AI module run costs 1 credit. A trigger costs 1 credit each time it checks for new data, even if it finds nothing, and every later module costs 1 credit per bundle it processes. If a trigger returns 10 form responses and three modules follow, that run costs 31 credits. Make’s operations guide walks through that example, and its credits guide covers AI modules, which can cost more.

n8n counts executions. One execution is one complete run of a workflow, whatever the number of steps or items. Only production runs count. Manual test runs, sub-workflow calls, error workflows and polls that find no new data are free. See n8n’s executions docs.

What do three common workflows cost?

These are three workflows a one-person business often runs. The numbers apply each vendor’s counting rules to a 30-day month.

Workflow 1: form submission to CRM, plus an email alert

A new form entry creates a CRM contact and sends you an email. Assume 300 submissions a month.

Zapier. 2 tasks per submission, so 600 tasks. This is a three-step Zap, and the Free plan allows only two-step Zaps, so you need Professional. The 750-task tier costs $19.99/month billed annually or $29.99 monthly.
Make. The two actions cost 600 credits. The trigger also costs 1 credit per check. At the Free plan’s fastest interval of 15 minutes, that’s 96 checks a day, about 2,880 a month, which is more than Free’s 1,000 credits. Checking every 2 hours instead brings the total to about 960 credits and keeps you on Free. On Core, $9/month annually gets 10,000 credits, enough for 15-minute checks.
n8n. 300 executions. Empty polls don’t count. That fits the Starter plan’s 2,500 executions at €20/month billed annually.

Workflow 2: a daily loop over 30 spreadsheet rows

Every morning, the workflow reads 30 rows from a sheet, then updates a CRM record and sends an email for each row. That means 2 actions per row, every day.

Zapier. Each row costs 2 tasks, so 60 tasks a day, about 1,800 a month. Zapier charges each action once per row, and Looping by Zapier works the same way. The loop step is free, and every action after it costs 1 task per item. That’s past the 750 and 1,500 tiers and into the 2,000-task tier at $49/month annually or $73.50 monthly. On the 750-task tier, the workflow would use up the month’s tasks in about 12 days. Zapier’s Looping help page, updated May 29, 2026, lists Looping as an open beta on the Enterprise plan, so check that it’s in your account before you plan around it.
Make. The Google Sheets module that reads the rows runs once and costs 1 credit for all 30. The two action modules cost 30 credits each. That’s 61 credits a day, about 1,830 a month. Free’s 1,000 credits cover about 16 days. Core at $9/month covers it with room left over.
n8n. 1 execution a day, 30 a month. Starter covers it many times over.

The loop is the case where per-step billing costs the most. The same daily job takes about 1,800 Zapier tasks or Make credits but only 30 n8n executions.

Workflow 3: summarize each new email with AI and post it to Slack

Assume 500 emails a month, with each one sent to an AI model and the summary posted to Slack.

Zapier. The Slack post costs 500 tasks. The AI by Zapier step is billed by model tier, and Zapier doesn’t list a fixed number on its main pricing page. If the AI step costs 1 task, the total is 1,000 tasks, which puts you on the 1,500-task tier at $39/month annually. More expensive model tiers push that higher.
Make. With your own OpenAI or Anthropic connection, which needs a paid plan, the AI module costs 1 credit per run and you pay the AI provider for tokens separately. That’s 1,000 credits plus trigger checks, so Core covers it. If you use Make’s built-in AI provider instead, credits depend on tokens and the model you pick.
n8n. 500 executions on Starter. You pay your AI provider for tokens, or use the AI models that n8n’s Cloud plans include without an API key.

How do the plans compare side by side?

	Zapier	Make	n8n
Billing unit	Task, one per successful action	Credit, one per module run on non-AI modules	Execution, one per full workflow run
Free plan	100 tasks/month, two-step Zaps only, 15-minute polling	1,000 credits/month, 2 active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval	No free Cloud plan. Free trial with 1,000 executions. Self-hosted Community edition is free
Cheapest paid plan	Professional, 750 tasks: $19.99/mo annual, $29.99 monthly	Core, 10,000 credits: $9/mo annual	Starter, 2,500 executions: €20/mo annual
Next step up	1,500 tasks: $39/mo annual	Pro, 10,000 credits: $16/mo annual	Pro, 10,000 executions: €50/mo annual
Daily 30-row loop, per month	About 1,800 tasks	About 1,830 credits	30 executions
When you run out	Pay-per-task at 1.25× your base rate on annual plans or 2.5× on monthly, if you turn it on. Usage stops at 3× your plan	Scenarios stop until you add credits or upgrade	Upgrade to a bigger plan. Pro-2 monthly can add executions at €2 per 1,000

Sources: Zapier pricing, Make pricing, Make vs Zapier page, n8n pricing, n8n plan limits, n8n extra executions. n8n lists its prices in euros.

What do the free plans actually get you?

Zapier Free handles one trigger and one action, 100 times a month. That’s enough to test whether automation helps you. It isn’t enough for most real workflows, since filters, paths and multi-step Zaps need Professional. New accounts get a 14-day Professional trial with no card required.

Make Free gives you 1,000 credits and 2 active scenarios. Polling triggers spend most of that budget, so set long intervals or run scenarios on a schedule.

n8n has no free Cloud plan. The trial includes 1,000 executions. The free option is the self-hosted Community edition.

Is self-hosting n8n worth it?

It can be, if you already run a server or want to learn. n8n’s docs say the Community edition includes almost the full feature set and is free indefinitely. The missing features mostly matter to teams: workflow and credential sharing, projects, SSO, environments and Git version control.

Before you choose it, plan for these costs:

A server. You pay a hosting provider every month. Prices change often, so check the provider’s own page.
Updates and backups. You install n8n updates, and if your database goes down, your workflows stop.
License limits. Under n8n’s Sustainable Use License, you can run your own business on it and charge clients to build and maintain workflows on your instance. You can’t host n8n for clients so they can build their own workflows.

If that sounds like a chore, n8n Cloud Starter at €20/month annually gives you 2,500 runs of any length with no server to manage.

Can an AI agent replace an automation tool?

For some jobs, yes. If you ask an assistant to “pull last week’s invoices and draft follow-ups” once a week, a chat assistant with app connectors may be enough. All three vendors now sell agent features. Zapier Agents bill in separate “activities”, with 400 a month on the free tier. Make includes AI Agents on its paid plans. n8n includes agent and MCP nodes from Starter up.

For anything that must run on a schedule without you watching, such as syncing form entries to a CRM, a regular workflow is still the safer choice. It runs the same steps every time, and you can see each run in its history. If you connect an AI assistant to Zapier through MCP, each tool call costs 2 tasks from the same pool as your Zaps.

Verdict

Start with Make if cost matters most and your workflows are simple. Pick Zapier if setup time matters more than price and you’ll stay under a few hundred actions a month. Move to n8n once you loop over lists or chain many steps, because that’s where per-step billing grows fastest. Prices checked October 17, 2026.

FAQ

Is Make cheaper than Zapier?

On list price, yes. Make’s Core plan is $9/month annually for 10,000 credits. Zapier’s cheapest paid tier is $19.99/month annually for 750 tasks. Make’s polling triggers use credits even when nothing is new, which Zapier’s don’t, so check your trigger intervals.

Does n8n have a free plan?

Not on n8n Cloud, which offers a trial with 1,000 executions. The self-hosted Community edition is free, but you pay for and maintain the server.

Do Zapier triggers use tasks?

No. Triggers, polling, filters, paths and built-in tools like Formatter and Looping don’t use tasks. Each successful action does.

What happens if I run out of Make credits?

Your scenarios stop until you buy more credits or upgrade. Make queues incoming webhooks up to your plan’s queue limit and processes them once credits are back.

Why do loops cost so much on Zapier and Make?

Both charge per action per item. A 30-row loop with 2 actions costs about 60 tasks or credits per run. n8n counts the whole run as 1 execution.