Three no-code automation platforms, three completely different meters running. Zapier bills you per task, Make bills you per credit, and n8n bills you per workflow execution. Feed the same workflow into all three and the monthly bills can differ by an order of magnitude, which is why "which one is cheapest" has no answer until you know how your work is shaped.
This is a buying decision, not a feature comparison. Below are the real 2026 prices, the billing mechanic that decides your bill, where each platform genuinely wins, where each one loses, and an honest note on where none of them is the right purchase at all.
Why do the three platforms produce such different bills?
Because they count different things. Zapier counts every action step that runs. Make counts every module operation. n8n counts one execution per workflow run, no matter how many steps that workflow contains. A ten-step workflow run 1,000 times is 10,000 billable units on Zapier and 1,000 on n8n.
That single difference explains most of the price gap people find confusing. It also means the cheapest platform changes depending on workflow shape. Short workflows running often favour Zapier's simplicity, since the step count stays low. Long, branching workflows punish per-step billing severely and push you toward execution-based pricing.
Before comparing plan prices, work out your own number: how many steps does your typical workflow contain, and how many times does it run per month? Multiply. That is the figure the pricing pages are quietly designed around.
What does each platform cost in 2026?
Entry pricing is close enough to be misleading. Make starts lowest at roughly US$10.59 per month on annual billing, Zapier's Professional plan is US$19.99 annually or US$29.99 monthly, and n8n Cloud Starter is about €20 per month annually or €24 monthly. The divergence appears at volume, not at the entry tier.
Published 2026 pricing, at a glance
- Zapier Free: US$0, 100 tasks per month, two-step Zaps only
- Zapier Professional: US$19.99/mo billed annually, US$29.99 monthly, from 750 tasks
- Zapier Team: around US$69/mo annually, US$103.50 monthly, from 2,000 tasks
- Zapier Enterprise: custom, from 5,000 tasks
- Make Free: US$0, 1,000 operations per month
- Make Core: about US$10.59/mo annually, 10,000 operations
- Make Pro: about US$18.82/mo annually, 10,000 operations, priority execution
- Make Teams: about US$34.12/mo annually, 10,000 operations, team roles and shared templates
- n8n Cloud Starter: about €20/mo annually (€24 monthly), 2,500 executions, 5 concurrent
- n8n Cloud Pro: about €50/mo annually (€60 monthly), 10,000 executions, 20 concurrent
- n8n Community Edition: free, self-hosted, unlimited executions, you pay only for the server
- Monthly billing across all three: roughly 15 to 50 percent more than annual
Two figures matter more than the headline prices. Make's Core, Pro and Teams plans all include the same 10,000 base credits, so the step up between them buys features, not capacity. And n8n's per-execution maths works out to roughly US$0.0096 on Starter and US$0.006 on Pro, which is the number to compare against your own per-run value.
How do you work out your own cost before you buy?
Do not model this from a blog post, including this one. Model it from your actual workflow. Paste the prompt below into any capable model with your real numbers and it will produce the three-way comparison for your specific case rather than a generic one.
Try this prompt
I am evaluating Zapier, Make and n8n for one specific workflow. Calculate my monthly cost on each.
MY WORKFLOW: [describe it, e.g. "new form submission triggers: enrich the contact, check a condition, write to a spreadsheet, send a Slack message, send an email"]
Number of action steps per run: [count them]
Estimated runs per month: [number]
Team members needing access: [number]
CALCULATE for each platform:
1. Total billable units per month, using that platform's own billing unit (Zapier tasks, Make operations, n8n executions).
2. The cheapest plan that covers that volume, with the annual and monthly price.
3. What happens if my volume triples.
THEN: State plainly which platform is cheapest at my current volume and which is cheapest at 3x, and whether those are the same answer. If the difference is under US$15 a month, say so and tell me to choose on usability instead of price.
Do not recommend a platform on brand reputation. Use only the arithmetic above.
The last instruction matters. Ask an assistant which automation tool to buy and it will usually name Zapier, because Zapier dominates the written record. Ask it to do arithmetic on your numbers and the answer often changes.
Where each platform genuinely wins
Zapier wins on breadth and time-to-first-automation. With 7,000 to 9,000 integrations and an interface a non-technical person can learn in an afternoon, it is the fastest route from idea to running automation. For a small marketing team with low volume and no engineer, that speed is usually worth the higher per-unit price.
Make wins on value once logic gets complicated. Its visual builder handles branching, looping and error handling that would take awkward workarounds elsewhere, and it delivers substantially more operations per dollar. Around 100,000 monthly records, Make lands near US$300 a month where Zapier passes US$700.
n8n wins on volume and control. Execution-based billing means step count stops mattering, so a ten-step workflow run 10,000 times can cost 80 to 90 percent less than the equivalent on Zapier. The self-hosted Community Edition is free with unlimited executions on a server that costs a few dollars a month, and it keeps data inside a border you choose.
Where each platform loses, including ours
An all-wins comparison is an advertisement, so here is the other side of each, including the honest limits of UD's own product.
Zapier's loss is arithmetic. Per-task billing scales badly and punishes exactly the workflows that mature teams build. If your automations are growing in step count rather than count, your bill grows faster than your usage.
Make's loss is the learning curve and the plan structure. The visual canvas is more capable and correspondingly less obvious, and because Core, Pro and Teams all ship the same 10,000 credits, buyers regularly upgrade expecting more capacity and receive only features.
n8n's loss is who has to run it. The free Community Edition is only free if someone maintains the server, handles updates, and is on call when a workflow fails at 3am. Most small marketing teams do not have that person, which makes n8n the wrong default for them despite the attractive number.
And UD's own limit. AI Employee Hub is not an integration platform and does not replace any of the three. It does not offer thousands of app connectors, and it will not wire your CRM to your spreadsheet. It addresses a different question: what to do when the work you are automating is judgement work rather than data movement, at which point more automation steps stop helping. If your problem is genuinely "move this record from A to B", buy one of the three above, not us.
The verdict by buyer type
Same evidence, different answers, depending on who is asking.
Solo freelancer, under 1,000 runs a month: Make Core at about US$10.59, or the free tiers if you can live inside them. Zapier's free 100 tasks disappear faster than people expect.
Small marketing team, 2 to 5 people, no engineer: Zapier Professional. You are buying setup speed and connector coverage, and at low volume the price premium is small in absolute terms.
Operations team with branching, conditional workflows: Make Pro or Teams. The logic handling is the reason, and the operations-per-dollar advantage compounds.
Anyone above roughly 10,000 monthly runs, with technical support available: n8n, cloud or self-hosted. This is where execution billing stops being a preference and starts being a material saving.
Data that must stay in a specific jurisdiction: self-hosted n8n. It is the only one of the three that answers this cleanly.
Teams whose bottleneck is judgement, not integration: none of the three fixes this. More connectors will not help if the slow step is a person deciding something.
The question to answer before you pay anyone
Count the steps, count the runs, multiply, then compare against the plan tables above. That five-minute exercise settles the decision more reliably than any comparison article, this one included, because the right answer is a property of your workflow rather than of the platforms.
And check first whether the job needs a platform at all. A recurring information task can often run inside the AI tool you already pay for, as we covered in our guide to ChatGPT's built-in scheduled tasks. The cheapest automation platform is the one you did not need to buy.
Choosing a tool is easy. Knowing which of your problems it actually solves, and which it does not, is the part worth having someone alongside you for. We understand AI. We understand you better. With UD by your side, AI doesn't feel cold.
Reviewed by the UD AI team. Pricing verified against publicly listed 2026 plan pages at time of writing; vendors change prices without notice, so confirm before purchase.
Once the arithmetic points to a platform, the harder question is which of your workflows deserve automating first. We'll walk you through every step, from workflow audit to build and deployment.
