The short answer. Pick Zapier when non-technical speed and app coverage matter most. Pick Make when you want visual control over branching logic at a lower price point. Pick n8n when volume is high, the logic is complex, or your data needs to stay on your own servers. I build client systems on all three, and the rest of this page is the reasoning I walk clients through before we commit to one.
Most comparisons of these platforms are written to earn an affiliate commission. This one is written to stop you buying the wrong subscription. The three tools solve the same problem, connecting your apps so information moves without anyone retyping it, and they differ in three places that matter: how they charge, how much logic they can hold, and who is able to maintain them after the consultant leaves.
How they charge is the real difference
Each platform meters a different unit, and the units are not comparable with each other. Zapier charges per task: each action step that runs consumes one task, while triggers, filters and path splits are free. Make charges per operation: the trigger and every app module that runs each consume one operation. n8n charges per execution: one run of an automation counts once, however many steps it contains. Counting units across platforms tells you nothing on its own. You have to follow one real process all the way to the invoice, so let's do that.
One enquiry, three invoices
Here is a process almost every business runs in some form. An enquiry arrives through your website form. You look the sender up in your CRM. If they are an existing customer, their account manager gets a message so a familiar name replies within the hour. If they are new, the automation creates a contact, then sends a welcome email. Say 2,000 enquiries arrive a month, and 30 percent turn out to be existing customers.
Now count a month. On Zapier, an existing-customer enquiry uses 2 tasks (the lookup and the message; the trigger and the path split are free) and a new lead uses 3 (lookup, create contact, welcome email). That is 600 × 2 + 1,400 × 3, or 5,400 tasks a month. On Make, the trigger itself bills too, so an existing customer uses 3 operations and a new lead uses 4: 7,400 operations a month. On n8n, all 2,000 enquiries are simply 2,000 executions, whatever happens inside each one.
Here is the part the unit counts hide: Make bills the most units yet sends the smallest invoice, because its operations are far cheaper than Zapier's tasks.
| Platform | This process bills | Plan that covers it | Rough monthly cost | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier | 5,400 tasks | Professional, upper tier (entry tier covers 750 tasks) | ≈ $70–120 | ≈ 3.5–6¢ |
| Make | 7,400 operations | Core, $12 for 10,000 ops (this uses about three quarters) | $12 | ≈ 0.6¢ |
| n8n Cloud | 2,000 executions | Starter, €20 for 2,500 | €20 | ≈ 1¢ |
| n8n self-hosted | 2,000 executions | Free Community Edition on your own server | Server cost only | ≈ 0¢ |
Vendor pricing pages, July 2026. Zapier does not publish tier prices above the $19.99 entry tier; the range is estimated from its entry per-task rate, which falls at higher tiers. Cost per enquiry assumes the plan runs only this process; Make's plan has a quarter of its capacity left over for everything else you automate.
Two things change this picture as you grow. Add steps and Zapier's line moves fastest: bolt one more action onto this flow and Zapier's bill rises by up to 2,000 tasks a month while n8n's does not move at all. Add volume and everything rises except self-hosted n8n. At 2,000 enquiries a month the differences are noticeable. At 10,000, with a few more processes running, they are a salary line.
Why growth is harder on Zapier
Two reasons, both simple. The first is the bill. Every step you add is charged on every run, so a business doing more volume pays more for the same process, and pays again for each improvement to it. Teams end up trimming useful steps just to control the spend.
The second is structure. Zapier builds in a straight line. Real processes branch, and once yours needs a third route the work usually gets split across two or three separate Zaps. From then on, one change to your CRM means editing every one of them, and one failure means searching several run histories to find where it stopped.
What happens when something breaks
Automations fail for ordinary reasons: an app is briefly down, a field gets renamed, a token expires. What matters is what the platform does next, and this is where my experience running client systems separates Make and n8n. When Make keeps hitting an error it can deactivate the scenario completely, and the process stays switched off until someone notices and turns it back on. Those are the mornings you discover three days of enquiries went nowhere. When a step fails in n8n, the rest keeps working: the failed run is logged, you fix the cause and rerun it from the step that broke. Day to day, that makes n8n the lighter one to look after, and it is worth weighing against Make's lower entry price.
Ease against power
Zapier is the easiest of the three by a distance, and its 9,000+ app catalogue is the largest on the market. A capable operations manager can build and maintain Zaps with no technical background. The trade is that its editor works in a straight line, so branching processes end up split across several Zaps, and every step added makes each run cost more.
Make sits in the middle. Its visual canvas shows every branch of a scenario, which makes medium-complexity logic easier to reason about than Zapier's linear editor. It connects to 3,000+ apps. There is a learning curve in the first two weeks, and most teams cross it.
n8n is the most capable and the most technical. It handles loops, error branches, custom code and AI agent steps that the other two either limit or price steeply. Its open-source repository is among the most popular automation projects on GitHub, with roughly 197,000 stars. The trade is that someone on your side needs to be comfortable with data structures, or you need a partner who is.
Control, security and where your data lives
For regulated businesses and for anyone connecting AI to internal systems, this section decides the choice. Zapier and Make are cloud services: your data passes through their infrastructure, with Make offering EU or North America hosting regions. n8n is the only one of the three you can fully self-host, on your own server, behind your own firewall, at no licence cost on the Community Edition. n8n's cloud plans host data in Frankfurt, which simplifies UK and EU data conversations.
If you are already thinking about connecting AI models to email, drives or CRMs, the same reasoning applies there, and I have written about it separately in the piece on AI connectors and what your AI can see.
Which one should your team choose?
Speed beats depth
Non-technical team, standard tools, processes under five steps, and you want automations live this week.
Logic needs a canvas
Branching approvals, routing and mid-complexity processes, with a budget closer to £10 than £50 a month.
Volume or control decide
High run counts, complex or AI-heavy logic, or data that must stay on infrastructure you control.
Plenty of the businesses I work with run two of these side by side: Zapier for the quick administrative glue, n8n or Make for the heavy processes. The platforms are means, the outcome is hours back. If you want a second opinion on your specific stack, that is precisely what my n8n, Make and Zapier consulting covers, and the free AI readiness assessment takes ten minutes if you would rather start there.