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n8n, Make or Zapier: all three tools connect your applications without heavy development. When something happens in one (a form filled in, an email received, an order placed), they trigger an action in another. For an SME, what sets them apart has less to do with their catalogue of connectors than with four questions: what they charge for, where they run, under what licence, and who maintains them the day the person who built them is no longer there.
This comparison draws on the official pages of the three vendors, checked on 4 October 2026. It complements the other guides in our automation section, which deal with putting workflows into production and maintaining them. To find out first which steps need AI, and which a rule can handle, see Automation without AI: when a rule is enough.
In short
Compare the tiers in runs of your own workflow, not in tasks, credits or executions.
Zapier and Make host your data; n8n can also run on your own server.
n8n is not open source in the strict sense: its licence restricts reselling a service built on it.
Without a technician, Zapier or Make; with someone to maintain it, n8n becomes attractive.
Whatever the tool, plan for alerts, a history and a recovery procedure.
What does each tool charge you for?
Zapier charges for the task. According to its pricing page, a task is counted each time Zapier successfully completes a unit of work for you. Triggers do not count, nor do Zapier’s built-in tools (filters, formatting, paths) or failed actions. A Zap that chains five actions and runs 100 times therefore uses about 500 tasks. Zapier’s Free plan includes 100 tasks a month, for two-step Zaps.
Make charges for the credit. According to its pricing page, each action of a module (reading a piece of data, looking one up, creating a row, transforming a field) counts as one credit; error-handling modules and the router use none. Make’s Free plan includes up to 1,000 credits a month, two active scenarios and an interval of at least fifteen minutes between two runs.
n8n charges for the execution. According to its pricing page, an execution is one complete run of the workflow, whatever the number of steps or the amount of data processed. The Community edition, which you install on your own server, has no licence fee as long as the workflows are created and modified by your own organisation.
Take the same workflow in each tool: an email arrives, then five actions follow (save the attachment, look up the customer in the CRM, create a tracking row, notify the team, archive the email). Each run uses about five tasks at Zapier, six credits at Make, which also counts reading the email, and one execution at n8n. If this workflow processes 100 rows of a file on each run, Zapier and Make count each action for each row, whereas n8n still counts a single execution.
The entry tiers therefore cannot be compared as they stand. Their volumes do not represent the same number of runs:
a month in the smallest Professional plan, Zapier’s first paid tier
a month in the smallest Core plan, Make’s first paid tier
a month in Starter, n8n’s first hosted plan
Before comparing prices, convert each tier into runs of your own workflow, steps and rows included. To estimate this volume, n8n gives a benchmark on its pricing page: a workflow scheduled once a day makes 30 or 31 executions a month, and a workflow triggered every five minutes makes about 8,600 to 8,900. The price grids can change: reread the vendors’ pages on the day you decide.
Where does your data run?
Zapier and Make are hosted services: your data passes through their servers. Make states on its security page that its infrastructure is hosted at AWS, and assigns each account to a data zone, in Europe or the United States. For most uses, a hosted service is acceptable, provided you have signed a data processing agreement and know where the data is processed: check this in the contract of the tool you choose, whichever it is.
n8n exists in a version hosted by the vendor, n8n Cloud, and in a version that you install on your own infrastructure, on premises or in a private cloud, according to its hosting documentation. The second matters when flows carry customer, financial or health data: your business data leaves your infrastructure only for the services your workflows call. Only telemetry described as anonymous goes to the vendor by default, and it can be switched off: we go into this in our guide to self-hosted n8n in production.
From the field
Installing n8n yourself moves the cost without removing it
Our own server hosts a dozen services, including the CRM, automation and analytics. Running it is real work, to be compared with a subscription over several years, not over one month.
What does each tool’s licence change?
Zapier and Make are proprietary services: you rent a use, with no access to the code. Make’s pricing page does mention an open-source Community Edition to host yourself, but without any detail, and we have not tested it. n8n is often described as “open source”, which is not accurate: the vendor describes it on its GitHub repository as “fair-code”, distributed under the Sustainable Use License and the n8n Enterprise License. The code is public, but its commercial use is restricted.
For an SME that automates its own processes, this licence is not a problem. For a company that wants to resell a service built on n8n, it is another story: we detail what the n8n licence allows and forbids.
Who maintains the automation when it breaks?
An operations director should ask this question first: the day a workflow stops, who knows how to fix it?
- Zapier can be picked up without a technician: a non-technical person builds and fixes a simple Zap. That is its real strength.
- Make requires a bit more confidence with the tool, but stays visual and readable.
- n8n is visual too, but it comes into its own with code, custom API calls and error branches. It assumes someone technical, in-house or at a service provider.
Watch out
Without monitoring, an overnight failure is discovered on Monday
Whatever the tool, an automation in production needs alerts, a history and a recovery procedure. We describe this setup in our guide to monitoring your n8n workflows.
Which tool to choose for your situation?
| Your situation | Our advice |
|---|---|
| A few simple automations, no technician | Zapier |
| Visual scenarios, medium volume, a team comfortable with the tool | Make |
| Long processes, many rows processed, growing volume | n8n |
| Sensitive data to keep on your own infrastructure | Self-hosted n8n |
| You want to resell an automation service | Read n8n’s licence before anything else |
| Business software with no API to connect | The tool matters less than the way in |
On that last point, our guide to automating software that has no API shows that the choice of access method weighs more than the choice of orchestrator.
What did we choose, and why?
We run n8n workflows in production, including an expense-entry agent on Telegram. n8n is our default choice, not an exclusive one: it spares us a per-operation bill that climbs with volume, and our data stays on our server. That choice has a price, since we are the ones who do the updates and watch over that server. For an SME with nobody to look after it, Make or Zapier may be better choices.
If you are unsure about your own processes, our offer to automate a task with its cost per execution in plain sight starts by observing the task with the person who does it today. The automation then runs on your server or ours, and a counter shows its cost per execution and per month.
Frequently asked questions
How much does self-hosted n8n really cost?
The Community edition has no licence fee when the workflows are created and modified by your own organisation. The cost is elsewhere: a server, backups, updates, monitoring, and the time of the person who looks after it. Put a figure on that time over several years before comparing it with a subscription, and plan who takes over when that person is on leave.
Should you self-host n8n or use n8n Cloud?
n8n Cloud spares you the server: the Starter plan costs €24 a month, or €20 a month paid annually, for 2,500 executions, according to the pricing page checked on 4 October 2026. Self-hosting does not charge per execution and keeps the data with you, but you are responsible for running it. With nobody to look after it, start with the cloud: according to n8n’s documentation, a workflow can be exported as JSON and re-imported into another instance.
Is Make GDPR-compliant, and is n8n more so?
No tool is compliant in itself: compliance depends on the data you put through it, the data processing agreement signed with the vendor and where the data is processed. Make states that its infrastructure runs on AWS, in a European or US data zone. Self-hosted n8n keeps the data on your server, but then you are the one answerable for its security. Have your case checked by the person responsible for data protection.
Can you move from Zapier to n8n later?
Yes, but expect to rebuild each Zap rather than hoping for an automatic conversion. It is a chance to review the processes and to merge several small Zaps into one more readable workflow. Start with the ones that use the most tasks: they are the ones that weigh on the bill, and often the ones that gain most from moving to per-execution billing.
Can you plug an AI agent into n8n?
Yes: n8n’s pricing page lists the AI Agent node and AI steps among its features, from the Starter plan. The real question lies elsewhere. Calls to the model have their own cost, which grows with the number of executions, and you have to decide before going into production what the agent is allowed to read and change. Both answers should be settled before you build.
Sources
- Pricing page (new tab)zapier.com
- Pricing page (new tab)make.com
- Pricing page (new tab)n8n.io
- Security page (new tab)make.com
- Data zone (new tab)help.make.com
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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