Disclosure
We have no affiliate relationships with any of these tools. We use n8n as our default build platform because we think it's the best fit for client-owned infrastructure builds — but we build in Make and Zapier when the client's situation calls for it. This comparison reflects our working experience, not a commission structure.
What all three tools actually do
Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), and n8n are all workflow automation platforms. You define a trigger (something happens in App A) and one or more actions (do something in App B, C, D). A customer fills out a Typeform → create a HubSpot contact + send a Slack notification + add a row to Google Sheets. That's a Zap, a Scenario, or an n8n workflow depending on which tool you're using.
Where they differ: the pricing model, how much you can customize the logic in the middle, and critically — where your data and your workflows actually live.
Zapier: fastest to start, most expensive to scale
Zapier is the easiest to get running. The interface is designed for non-technical users, the documentation is clear, and the integrations library is the largest of the three. If you need something automated today and you're doing it yourself, Zapier will get you there fastest.
The cost structure is the problem:
- Free plan: 100 tasks/month, single-step Zaps only. This covers one-trigger-one-action, which is enough to test but not enough for real workflows.
- Starter: $29.99/month for 750 tasks with multi-step Zaps. Most small businesses outgrow this quickly.
- Professional: $73.50/month for 2,000 tasks. At this tier you're paying for features that the other tools include by default or by running it yourself.
A "task" in Zapier is each action step in a workflow. A five-step workflow processing 200 leads per month = 1,000 tasks. It adds up fast. And at the free tier, you cannot build multi-step automations — which means the free plan will not handle any of the useful patterns for a real business.
Best for: quick proof-of-concept, non-technical owner doing it solo, limited workflow complexity.
Not great for: anything with significant volume, custom logic, complex branching, or where you want to own the infrastructure.
Make: more power, better pricing, still vendor-hosted
Make is meaningfully more capable than Zapier for complex workflows. The visual "Scenario" builder lets you see the flow as an actual diagram, which matters a lot once you have branching logic. Pricing is based on "operations" (each module execution), and the free plan gives you 1,000 operations/month across unlimited Scenarios — which is more useful than Zapier's free tier.
Paid tiers:
- Core: $9/month for 10,000 ops/month. This is dramatically cheaper than Zapier's comparable tier and covers most small-business use cases.
- Pro: $16/month for 10,000 ops/month plus full execution history and priority support.
The catch is the same as Zapier: Make owns the infrastructure. Your workflows run on Make's servers. If Make has an outage, your automations stop. If Make changes their pricing (they were acquired by Celonis in 2022 and have shifted focus), you're dependent on their roadmap. And if you stop paying, your automations stop too.
Best for: moderate complexity, tight budget, comfortable with GUI-based building, willing to stay on a hosted platform.
Not great for: maximum customization, client ownership requirements, data that must stay on your own infrastructure.
n8n: steeper learning curve, fully ownable, no per-task tax
n8n is an open-source workflow automation tool. You can self-host it on a server you control — meaning your workflows run on your own infrastructure, your data doesn't pass through a third party, and there's no per-task pricing. You pay for the server (typically $5–$15/month on Railway, Render, or a Hetzner VPS), and that's it, regardless of how many workflows you run or how many tasks they execute.
n8n also has a cloud-hosted option ($20–$50/month) for people who don't want to manage a server, but the self-hosted version is where the real value proposition lives.
What you get that the others don't:
- Code nodes. You can drop JavaScript or Python into any step in the workflow. This lets you handle edge cases, transform data in arbitrary ways, and call APIs that don't have a native integration — without switching to a different tool.
- You own the instance. If n8n goes out of business tomorrow, your automations keep running. They're on your server.
- No licensing cost at scale. Running 500,000 workflow executions a month? Same server cost. Zapier would bill thousands for that volume.
- Data stays on your infrastructure. For businesses with any sensitivity around client data — healthcare-adjacent, legal, financial services — this matters.
The honest tradeoff: n8n is harder to set up and harder to maintain. If something breaks at 2am, you're the one who's responsible for it (or we are, if you're on a retainer with us). The interface is less polished than Zapier. Some integrations that Zapier handles out of the box require building an HTTP request in n8n. For non-technical owners doing it themselves, n8n is not the right call.
Best for: businesses with higher volume, data sensitivity, a desire to own their infrastructure, and either a technical person on staff or a builder handling it.
Not great for: solo non-technical operators building their own automations without any support.
The ownership question — why it matters for your business
This is the part that most tool comparisons skip. Zapier and Make are services. You subscribe to them, you build on them, and your automations live there. If you stop paying, the automations stop. If the service goes down, your automations stop. If the service changes its pricing structure — Zapier raised prices significantly in 2023 — you absorb the increase or migrate.
n8n, self-hosted, is infrastructure you own. The workflows are on your server, exported as JSON files you can back up, modify, or move. When we build on n8n for a client, the deliverable is a set of n8n workflow exports, a running self-hosted instance on the client's own account, and documentation they can use to modify it themselves. We're building you something you keep, not something you rent.
This is why we default to n8n for custom builds. It's not that the other tools are bad — for the right use case, Make at $9/month is a completely reasonable choice. It's that when we're building something a client is going to rely on for their business, we want them to own it.
Quick decision guide
- You're testing an idea yourself, non-technical, low volume: Zapier free tier. If it works, reassess before scaling.
- You want hosted, reasonable price, willing to learn a visual tool: Make. $9/month covers most small-business workflows.
- You want to own the infrastructure, have a technical resource, or have volume/data concerns: n8n self-hosted.
- You're hiring someone to build for you: Ask them what they build in and why, and make sure the deliverable is something you own — not something that lives on their accounts.
If you're not sure which applies to your situation, that's exactly what an Operations Audit is for. We map your workflows, figure out the right stack for your volume and data requirements, and give you a recommendation with the reasoning behind it. You're not paying us to recommend n8n — you're paying us to recommend whatever is actually right for your business.