Zapier, Make and n8n: what automation actually costs
Compare billable actions, Make credits and self-hosting costs. Estimate a real workflow before choosing a plan or prepaying a year.
Start with billable usage, not the number of boxes
Zapier counts successful billable actions, not every visible step. Triggers, Filters and Paths do not use tasks. Some AI, code and other features have different task rates.
Make uses credits. Standard operations commonly use one credit, but that is not a rule for every feature. Self-hosted n8n Community has no subscription fee for the software; infrastructure and external services are separate costs. Count billable usage in the workflow you actually intend to run.
A worked example, with its assumptions visible
Assume a Make scenario uses exactly five standard one-credit operations on each run, once an hour for a 30-day month, with no extra operations or AI charges. Its budget is 5 × 24 × 30 = 3,600 credits. An untouched 1,000-credit allowance covers 200 such runs, or about eight days and eight hours.
This is an illustration, not a prediction based on a five-box diagram. If a Zapier workflow instead has one trigger and four standard billable actions, each completing once per run, 720 runs would use 2,880 tasks. Check actual usage history: branches, repeated records and replays can change the result.
Make Free has limits beyond its credits
Make Free includes 1,000 credits per month, at most 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval for scheduled scenarios. A third active scenario needs a different plan or an existing scenario to be deactivated.
The scheduling interval applies to scheduled runs; it is not a claim that every webhook waits 15 minutes. Decide whether your workload fits both the usage allowance and the plan limits.
AI can add another bill
Make's credit documentation distinguishes fixed usage from dynamic usage. Some AI features consume credits according to tokens and other factors. When you connect your own AI provider, provider token charges can be separate from Make's credits.
Budget the automation platform, the AI provider and any other paid APIs separately. A workflow subscription does not mean all the services it calls are included.
Self-hosted n8n is free software to run, not free operations to maintain
n8n Community is free to self-host. Its documentation separates it from paid Business and Enterprise editions: features such as SSO, projects, external secrets and workflow sharing are not all included in Community.
Allow for a server, backups, updates, monitoring and time to recover from failures. Also read the licence for your intended use. A paid self-hosted plan and n8n Cloud are different offers; do not apply Community's price to either.
Choose the volume before the annual discount
Zapier's billing help documents 33% off when prepaying annually. The total still depends on the chosen task allowance and add-ons. Make advertises annual savings of 15% or more, with pricing based on plan and credit volume.
Those percentages do not tell you which product costs less for your workflow. Compare the same usage assumptions, the annual amount due and the required features. Check whether extra usage pauses work or creates additional charges.
Evaluate one useful workflow before committing
Build or evaluate a representative workflow with non-sensitive sample data. Check its recorded usage, required integrations and behaviour when something fails. Then estimate a normal month and a busy one.
Choose according to your maintenance capacity and required features, not an unsupported promise that one vendor is always cheapest or most reliable. This guide is pricing research from the official documents below, not a hands-on reliability test.
Questions
Does every Zapier step use a task?
No. Triggers, Filters and Paths do not count. Successful billable actions do; some product features use different rates. Read the task-usage rules for your workflow.
Do 1,000 Make credits mean 1,000 workflow runs?
No. In the simplified five-credit example above, they cover 200 runs. AI features and the operations executed can change credit usage.
Is self-hosted n8n free overall?
Community has no software subscription fee, but hosting, maintenance, backups and external APIs can still cost money. Paid n8n editions have separate terms.
Should I choose annual billing immediately?
First establish the required features and actual usage, then compare the annual commitment with monthly flexibility. A larger discount on an unsuitable plan is not a saving.
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