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n8n vs Make vs Zapier: pricing and limits compared (checked November 2026)

Updated November 13, 2026 · Facts come only from the vendors' official pages listed under Sources. We have not run paid accounts on these products for this page.

The three tools look similar on a landing page, but they bill for different things. That difference matters more than the headline price: the same workflow can cost almost nothing on one plan and need a much bigger tier on another. Below is what each vendor's own pricing page said on November 13, 2026, followed by a worked example.

The short answer

• n8n bills per workflow execution: one run of a workflow counts once, no matter how many steps it has. There is also a free, self-hosted Community Edition if you are willing to run the server yourself.
• Make bills in credits: each action in a scenario generally uses one credit. The free plan includes 1,000 credits a month.
• Zapier bills per task: each successful action step counts as one task. Checking for new data does not. The free plan includes 100 tasks a month and only two-step Zaps.

If your workflows have many steps, a per-run model (n8n) and a per-step model (Make, Zapier) can differ several-fold for the same work.

What each plan includes

Notes on the table:

• n8n currency: the n8n page showed prices in euros when we checked. It may show another currency depending on where you are. The annual toggle said annual billing saves 17% compared with monthly.
• Make prices: Make's pricing page loads its paid prices in the browser, and the copy our checker received on November 13, 2026 did not include them. Rather than guess, we leave them out. Open Make's pricing page for current numbers. The page text did confirm the free plan's 1,000 credits a month, that annual billing is cheaper than monthly, and that extra credits come in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000.
• Zapier tiers: Professional and Team prices rise with the monthly task tier you pick; the figures above are the entry tiers shown on the page.

How each one counts usage

n8n: executions

n8n's pricing page says pricing is "based on monthly workflow executions, regardless of complexity," and that all plans include unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration. A workflow with two steps and a workflow with forty steps each count as one execution per run. The page's own example: a daily schedule is 30 or 31 executions a month.

The paid plans also cap concurrent executions: 5 on Starter, up to 50 on Pro, and 200+ on Enterprise.

Make: credits

Make's pricing page says each action generally consumes one credit, while error-handler and router modules consume none. Credits expire at the end of the billing term; extra credits bought on top expire after one month on monthly plans, or one year on annual Pro and Teams plans.

Zapier: tasks

Zapier's pricing page says that when Zapier performs an action successfully it counts as a task, and each successful action in a Zap is a separate task. Polling for new data never uses a task. Several built-in steps are listed as not counting as tasks, including Filter, Formatter, Paths, Delay, Looping, Sub-Zap and Digest by Zapier, plus Zapier Tables and Forms.

How often a Zap checks for new data also depends on the plan: every 15 minutes on Free, 2 minutes on Professional, and 1 minute on Team and Enterprise.

Worked example: one workflow, three bills

Say a workflow has one trigger and five action steps, and it runs 1,000 times a month.

1. n8n: 1,000 executions. That fits inside the Starter plan's 2.5K.
2. Make: about 5 credits per run if each of the five actions uses one credit, so roughly 5,000 credits a month, five times the free plan's 1,000. Check how your trigger module is counted in Make's own help pages.
3. Zapier: 5 tasks per run if all five actions are task-counting steps, so 5,000 tasks a month. That is above the 750-task entry tier of Professional and above Team's 2,000-task entry tier, so you would pick a larger tier on the pricing page. If some steps are Filter or Formatter steps, they do not count.

The same work can sit inside an entry plan on one tool and need a much larger tier on another. Before you compare headline prices, count how many runs and how many action steps your real workflows have.

Which one fits which situation

These follow directly from the billing models above, not from hands-on testing.

• Long, multi-step workflows that run often: per-execution billing (n8n) is the easiest to predict, because adding steps does not add cost.
• You want no server to look after: Zapier, Make and n8n's hosted plans are all managed. n8n's free option is self-hosted, which means you handle hosting, updates and backups yourself.
• You need many people on one account cheaply: n8n lists unlimited users on all plans. Zapier's Free and Professional plans are single-user; Team allows 25.
• You only need a couple of simple two-step automations: Zapier's free plan covers two-step Zaps up to 100 tasks a month, and Make's free plan covers 1,000 credits a month.

Might not fit if

• n8n self-hosted is not a good fit if nobody on your side wants to run and update a server. The free Community Edition also leaves out features such as SSO, environments, Git-based version control, projects, and sharing of workflows and credentials, according to n8n's docs.
• Zapier gets expensive if your Zaps have many action steps that each count as a task.
• Make: we could not confirm current paid prices on the day we checked, so compare them yourself on Make's pricing page.

Check the current numbers

• n8n pricing
• Make pricing
• Zapier pricing

Sources

1. n8n pricing page — https://n8n.io/pricing/, checked November 13, 2026
2. n8n docs: Community Edition features — https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/community-edition-features/, checked November 13, 2026
3. Make pricing page — https://www.make.com/en/pricing, checked November 13, 2026
4. Zapier pricing page — https://zapier.com/pricing, checked November 13, 2026