The bottom line is this: choosing the wrong automation platform costs you more than the subscription fee. It costs you in delayed implementations, workarounds that break, and teams that eventually abandon the tool altogether.
I’ve watched businesses commit to platforms based solely on brand recognition, only to realize six months later that they’re paying for capabilities they can’t use or missing features they desperately need. The automation platform market has matured beyond the early days when Zapier was the only game in town. Now you have genuine alternatives, each with distinct advantages depending on your specific situation.
The decision between Zapier, Make and n8n isn’t about which platform is “best” in abstract terms. It’s about which platform aligns with your team’s technical capacity, workflow complexity, and budget reality. A platform that’s perfect for a five-person marketing agency will frustrate a 50-person operations team, and vice versa.
This comparison cuts through the marketing claims to examine what each platform actually delivers in practice. We’ll discuss pricing structures, technical requirements, integration ecosystems, and real-world scenarios where each platform excels or falls short.
What you’re actually comparing
These three platforms solve the same fundamental problem—connecting applications that weren’t designed to work together—but they approach it from different angles.
Zapier pioneered the no-code automation space and built the most extensive integration library in the market. It’s designed for users who want to connect apps without writing code or understanding APIs. The interface guides you through building workflows step by step, with extensive documentation and pre-built templates. This accessibility comes at a premium price point, particularly as your automation needs scale.
Make (formerly Integromat) takes a visual approach that reveals more of what’s happening under the hood. You build automations by connecting modules on a canvas, allowing you to see the data flow between steps. This visibility makes it easier to develop complex workflows with conditional logic and data transformation. The learning curve is steeper than Zapier’s, but the platform offers more control at a lower price point for equivalent usage.
n8n represents the open-source alternative. You can self-host it on your own infrastructure or use their cloud hosting service. The platform provides you with full access to customize workflows, add custom nodes, and integrate with internal systems. This flexibility requires technical knowledge to implement and maintain, but it eliminates vendor lock-in and provides the most control over your automation environment.
Pricing models and what they mean for your budget
Zapier’s pricing starts at $29.99 per month for the Professional plan, which includes 750 tasks per month. A task is counted each time an action executes in your workflow. If you have a workflow that triggers 100 times per day and performs three actions each time, that’s 300 tasks per day or 9,000 tasks per month. You’d need the Team plan, priced at $103.50 per month for 2,000 tasks, or the Company plan, starting at $415.80 per month for 10,000 tasks.
Make uses a different metric called operations. Each module in your workflow counts as one operation when it executes. The pricing starts at $10.59 per month for 10,000 operations, with the next tier at $18.82 per month for 40,000 operations. For equivalent usage levels, Make typically costs 40-60% less than Zapier. The platform also offers a free tier with 1,000 operations monthly, compared to Zapier’s 100 tasks on the free plan.
n8n’s cloud hosting starts at $24 per month for 2,500 workflow executions. Their pricing is based on workflow executions rather than individual actions, which can be more economical for workflows with many steps. The self-hosted version is free for core features, with an enterprise license starting at approximately $500 monthly for additional security and support features. If you have the technical capacity to self-host, your costs are limited to infrastructure, typically ranging from $20 to $ 100 per month, depending on usage volume.
The pricing difference compounds as you scale. A business running 50,000 monthly actions would pay approximately $415.80 with Zapier, $37.65 with Make, or $48 with n8n cloud (assuming average workflow complexity). Over the course of a year, that’s $4,989.60 versus $451.80 versus $576.
Integration ecosystems and where gaps appear
Zapier maintains the most extensive integration library with over 6,000 apps. This breadth is its primary competitive advantage. If you need to connect Shopify to Slack, HubSpot to Google Sheets, or any combination of popular business applications, Zapier almost certainly has a pre-built integration. The platform also offers webhook support for custom connections; however, using webhooks requires an understanding of the API documentation.
Make offers of approximately 1,500 integrations, focusing on the most commonly used business applications. The integration quality is generally high, with more granular control over how data passes between apps. Make’s visual interface makes it easier to see exactly what data you’re pulling from one app and pushing to another. Where Make lacks a native integration, it provides robust HTTP modules for building custom connections with any API.
n8n offers approximately 400 native integrations, along with the ability to create custom nodes using JavaScript. This smaller integration library reflects the platform’s open-source nature and its relatively short time on the market. For businesses with technical resources, the ability to build and maintain custom nodes eliminates the gap. For non-technical teams, the limited integration library can be a significant constraint.
The practical impact: if your workflow involves mainstream business applications like Salesforce, Gmail, Slack, and QuickBooks, all three platforms will work seamlessly. If you need to connect niche industry-specific software, Zapier has the highest probability of native support. If you need to integrate with internal tools or APIs, n8n offers the most flexibility, provided you have the necessary development resources.
Technical requirements and team capacity
Zapier requires minimal technical knowledge. The interface uses plain language rather than technical terminology. Building a workflow means selecting triggers and actions from dropdown menus, mapping fields between apps and testing the connection. Most users can develop their first automation within an hour of signing up.
Make demands for more technical fluency. You need to understand data structures, JSON formatting and how to use filters and routers for conditional logic. The visual canvas helps, but you’re seeing the workflow’s actual structure rather than an abstraction of it. Marketing team members can learn Make with dedicated training, but expect a steeper initial learning curve than with Zapier.
n8n assumes technical capability. You’ll work directly with JSON data, write expressions for data transformation and troubleshoot API responses. Self-hosting requires DevOps knowledge to configure Docker containers or Kubernetes deployments, manage updates and monitor performance. The cloud-hosted version removes infrastructure management but still requires comfort with technical concepts.
Consider your team’s composition. If your automation needs are handled by operations or marketing staff without developer support, Zapier’s accessibility justifies the higher cost. If you have a technically-minded operations person or a developer who can dedicate time to automation, Make or n8n become viable options with better economics.
Complex workflow capabilities
Simple linear workflows—where a trigger occurs, data is transferred from App A to App B—work identically across all three platforms. The differences emerge when you need conditional logic, error handling, data transformation or workflows with multiple branches.
Zapier handles complexity through filters and paths. You can add conditions that determine whether a workflow continues, and create multiple paths based on different situations. The limitation is that each path essentially becomes a separate workflow in terms of how it is managed. Debugging complex workflows in Zapier involves examining the output of each step individually.
Make’s visual canvas excels at complex workflows. You can see the entire flow at once, including conditional branches, loops and error handling routes. The platform supports iterators for processing arrays of data and routers for directing flow based on conditions. Make’s execution history shows you exactly how data moved through each module, making debugging substantially easier than Zapier’s linear step view.
n8n provides the most sophisticated workflow capabilities. You can build subworkflows, use JavaScript for complex data transformation and implement advanced error handling strategies. The platform supports wait nodes for creating workflows that pause and resume, as well as merge nodes for combining data from multiple sources. These capabilities support use cases that would require custom development in other platforms.
The business implication: if your workflows involve processing arrays of data, implementing complex business logic or handling edge cases, Make and n8n provide better tooling. Zapier works for these scenarios, but requires more workarounds and can become fragile as complexity increases.
Performance and reliability considerations
Zapier runs on robust infrastructure with high uptime guarantees. The platform processes millions of tasks daily and has established operational practices for managing scale. Their status page shows typical uptime above 99.9%. When issues occur, they’re usually related to third-party API changes rather than Zapier’s infrastructure.
Make operates on a similar enterprise infrastructure with comparable reliability. The platform’s performance is generally strong, though some users report occasional slowdowns during peak usage times. Make’s visual editor can become sluggish with extensive workflows containing dozens of modules.
n8n’s reliability depends on your hosting choice. The cloud-hosted version runs on scalable infrastructure managed by n8n, offering reliability comparable to that of other platforms. Self-hosted deployments vary based on your infrastructure and configuration. If you run n8n on a single server without redundancy, you own the uptime risk. With proper DevOps practices, such as containerization, load balancing, and database backups, self-hosted n8n can achieve high reliability.
Execution speed varies based on workflow complexity rather than platform choice. All three platforms execute simple workflows in seconds. Complex workflows with many steps and data transformations take proportionally longer, regardless of the platform used.
Where each platform wins
Zapier wins on accessibility and breadth. Choose it when your team lacks technical resources, when you need to connect apps quickly without a learning curve, or when your required integrations include niche applications that only Zapier supports. The premium pricing reflects the platform’s focus on eliminating friction for non-technical users.
Make wins on value and visibility. Choose it when you want lower costs without sacrificing capability, when your workflows involve complex logic that benefits from visual representation, or when your team has moderate technical ability and can invest time in learning the platform. Make provides the best balance of cost, capability and accessibility for most businesses.
n8n wins on control and customization. Choose it when you need to integrate with internal systems, when you want to avoid vendor lock-in, when your workflows require custom logic that pre-built platforms can’t support, or when you have technical resources to manage implementation and maintenance. The open-source nature provides maximum flexibility for businesses with specific requirements.
Making the decision
Start by auditing your current and planned automations. List the applications you need to connect, the complexity of the workflows and the volume of executions. This baseline helps you determine whether Zapier’s premium pricing is justified by its extensive integration breadth, or whether Make’s lower cost is more suitable for your actual usage.
Assess your team’s technical capacity honestly. If automation lives with your marketing team and no one has developer access, Zapier’s simplicity prevents the tool from being abandoned. If you have an operations person who can learn technical tools, Make opens up more sophisticated automation at a lower cost. If you have developer resources who can own automation as infrastructure, n8n provides maximum control.
Consider your growth trajectory. Automation costs scale with usage volume, so a platform that fits your current needs might become expensive as you scale. Make’s pricing model typically scales more gracefully than Zapier’s. n8n’s self-hosted option eliminates scaling concerns entirely, assuming you can manage the infrastructure.
Run a pilot with your top choice. All three platforms offer free tiers or trials. Build several representative workflows to validate that the platform handles your actual use cases. Pay attention to debugging experience—you’ll spend more time troubleshooting broken workflows than building new ones, so ease of debugging matters more than ease of initial setup.
Conclusion
The automation platform market has matured beyond the binary choice of Zapier or custom code. Make and n8n provide legitimate alternatives that make sense for different business contexts.
Zapier remains the right choice for businesses that prioritize ease of use and comprehensive integrations over cost optimization. You pay a premium, but you eliminate the learning curve and maximize integration options. For teams without technical resources or businesses that need to move quickly without investing in infrastructure, Zapier’s premium is often justified.
Make delivers the best value proposition for most businesses. The visual workflow builder provides enough transparency to debug complex automations without requiring developer skills. The pricing is sustainable as you scale. The learning curve exists but isn’t prohibitive for motivated users.
n8n serves businesses with technical capacity who want control over their automation infrastructure. If you have developers or DevOps resources, the ability to self-host, customize, and integrate with various platforms provides capabilities that other platforms can’t match. The open-source model also eliminates concerns about vendor changes or pricing increases.
The numbers don’t lie—the question is whether you’re ready to act on them. Audit your requirements, assess your team’s capabilities and run a pilot. The right platform is the one that your team will actually use consistently, not the one with the most impressive feature list.
Calculate your automation costs across all three platforms using your actual workflow requirements. Then run a two-week pilot with your top choice before committing to an annual plan.
Disclaimer: This article provides general information about automation platforms. Platform features, pricing and capabilities change over time. Verify current specifications with each vendor before making purchasing decisions. The recommendations reflect everyday use cases but may not apply to your specific situation.