n8n vs. Make vs. Zapier: Which Automation Tool Fits Your Business?

The most important difference between the three platforms is not the feature set — it is the billing logic. Zapier counts tasks: every action executed in a Zap costs one task; only the trigger is free. The free plan includes 100 tasks per month and allows only two-step Zaps; the Professional plan starts at $19.99/month (billed annually) for 750 tasks. If you exceed your quota, each additional task costs 1.25 times the base price.

Make counts operations: every module executed in a scenario consumes at least one credit. Since the switch to the credit model in August 2025, AI features can consume more credits than standard modules. The free plan offers 1,000 operations per month; the Core plan starts at $9/month (annual) for 10,000 credits — on paper, considerably cheaper than Zapier.

n8n counts executions: one complete workflow run is one execution — whether the workflow has 3 steps or 30. The Cloud Starter plan costs €20/month (annual) for 2,500 executions. The self-hosted Community Edition is free, offers nearly the full feature set with unlimited executions, and the running costs come down to the server — typically €5–20/month for a VPS.

At small volumes the billing models look similar — as volume grows, they diverge sharply. A worked example: a workflow with 8 steps runs 10,000 times a month. On Zapier, that amounts to roughly 70,000 tasks (7 actions × 10,000 runs) — far beyond the standard quotas and, depending on the plan, several hundred dollars per month. On Make, it is up to 80,000 operations, eight times the Core quota; since November 2025, add-on packs have run about 25% more expensive than plan credits — a pack of 10,000 operations comes to roughly $11.

On n8n, the same 10,000 runs are simply 10,000 executions: the Cloud Pro plan covers that for €50/month — and self-hosted, you only pay for the server. Independent comparison calculations put the savings for this scenario at 80–90% versus Zapier; these are sample calculations from industry blogs, not vendor claims, but the order of magnitude matches the official list prices.

The rule of thumb: the more steps your workflows have and the more often they run, the more n8n's execution model pays off. For a few hundred runs of simple two-step connections, on the other hand, the difference is negligible.

Zapier is a US vendor; data processing typically takes place in the United States. That is not inherently impermissible under the GDPR, but it requires a data processing agreement and a solid legal basis for the third-country transfer (Standard Contractual Clauses or the Data Privacy Framework) — and therefore an assessment that should be documented whenever personal or sensitive data is involved. Make belongs to a company headquartered in Prague, i.e. inside the EU, and EU data centers are available as an option — verify the concrete choices with the vendor before signing.

Self-hosted n8n reframes the question entirely: the data never leaves your own infrastructure, there is no tool vendor with access to your data flows, and you only need a data processing agreement with your hosting provider — not with the automation tool itself. The encryption key for stored credentials stays with the operator, and the source code is open for inspection. For companies routing customer data, HR data, or health data through their workflows, this is the single most consequential difference in the entire comparison.

Zapier is the easiest to use and, with over 7,000 integrations, has the largest app catalog — but you quickly hit the ceiling with branching, loops, and error handling. Make offers a visual scenario editor with real branching and is the solid middle ground. n8n has the highest complexity ceiling: custom code steps in JavaScript, granular error handling, sub-workflows, and native AI agent nodes for AI workflows — whereas on Make, AI features come with elevated credit consumption.

The price for that power: n8n has the steepest learning curve, and the self-hosted variant needs to be operated — updates, backups, monitoring, access control. If you cannot or do not want to handle that, you need either n8n Cloud or a service provider to run it for you.

On licensing: n8n is released under the Sustainable Use License (fair-code) — not open source in the OSI sense, but internal business use on your own infrastructure is explicitly permitted, as are paid services around installation and operation. An enterprise license only becomes necessary when a service provider centrally hosts workflows for multiple clients on its own instance. An installation on your infrastructure is not affected; the license model has been unchanged since 2022.

Honestly: for many cases, n8n is overkill. If you run two or three simple connections — say, writing form submissions into your CRM or filing invoices into a cloud folder — and stay under a few thousand runs a month, Zapier or Make is the more pragmatic choice. Make's Core plan at $9/month already covers 10,000 operations; that is enough for most small setups.

Caution is also warranted if you have no technical capacity in-house: an unattended n8n server without updates and backups is not a saving — it is a risk. And if you already have a stable Zapier setup that stays within its quota, there is no urgent reason to migrate — the move costs time and money that your volume first has to earn back. n8n pays off where at least one of these factors applies: high run volume, many steps per workflow, sensitive data, or logic that SaaS tools cannot model.

The software is free; running it is not. Budget €5–20/month for the server, plus the effort for updates, backups, and monitoring. If you would rather not handle that yourself, QubeLogix installs and operates n8n directly on your infrastructure — license-compliant, since you use the tool internally and the data stays with you.

Concrete prices: a single production workflow including setup starts at €1,500; larger automation projects typically run €3,500–8,000; ongoing operations (updates, backups, monitoring, adjustments) start at €450/month. All prices are net; as a small business under Section 19 of the German VAT Act (UStG), QubeLogix does not charge VAT. That gives you the cost advantage of the execution model without having to do server administration yourself.