The automation tool comparison genre is dominated by affiliate posts that crown a winner without ever showing the math. This is not that. We use Zapier, Make, and n8n at Genesis Web Digital — sometimes on the same client project, because different layers of a workflow genuinely benefit from different tools. Here's when we reach for each one.
The units problem — why price comparisons almost always mislead
Before the tool comparison, you need to understand how each platform counts work. They don't agree, and the disagreement is the most important thing to know:
- Zapier counts tasks. One task = one successful action step. A 5-step Zap that runs 100 times consumes 400 tasks (the trigger doesn't count, but every action does).
- Make counts operations. One operation = one module execution — including filters, data store lookups, and iterator steps. A 5-step scenario can easily burn 8–10 operations per run if you're checking conditions or looping through arrays.
- n8n counts executions. One execution = one full workflow run, regardless of how many nodes fire. A 50-step workflow costs the same as a 2-step one.
Run a concrete example: 500 runs/month of a 5-step workflow. That's 2,000 Zapier tasks, roughly 3,000–4,000 Make operations (accounting for filters), and 500 n8n executions. The sticker price differences look smaller than they are until you factor in this gap.
Zapier — when it's actually right
Zapier's Free tier gives you 100 tasks/month with single-step workflows. The Professional plan runs $19.99/month billed annually (about $29.99/month-to-month) for 750 tasks. Team starts at $69/month annual for 2,000 tasks. (Prices from zapier.com/pricing — verify before purchasing.)
Those numbers look expensive compared to the alternatives. They're worth it when:
- Your team is non-technical and needs a working automation by Friday — not in two weeks after a dev has set up a server.
- You need one of Zapier's 7,000+ app integrations. It has the broadest connector library of the three.
- You're running simple, low-volume automations: form submission → CRM entry → Slack message. Five triggers a day doesn't justify optimizing for unit economics.
- The integration you need is niche and poorly documented. Zapier's maintained connectors handle authentication edge cases that would cost you hours to replicate in custom code.
Zapier is the right call when speed-to-working matters more than cost-per-run.
It breaks down at volume. A 5-step workflow running 600 times/month consumes 2,400 tasks — over the Professional plan's 750-task limit. You're suddenly paying Team pricing for what is, functionally, a medium workflow. That's when clients call us to migrate.
Make — when it's actually right
Make's Free tier is genuinely useful: 1,000 operations/month. Core runs $10.59/month for 10,000 operations, Pro is $18.82/month with priority execution, and Teams starts at $34.12/month. (From make.com/en/pricing — verify before purchasing.)
The reason to choose Make over Zapier at similar scale is the visual builder. Make's scenario canvas shows branches, loops, error-handling routes, and data transformations all at once. For someone with moderate technical comfort — a marketing ops manager, a business analyst — it's significantly easier to reason about a complex flow in Make than in Zapier's linear editor.
Make shines when:
- Your workflows have branching logic — "if this field is X, do this, else do that" — that would stack up into many separate Zaps.
- You need to manipulate data between steps: parse JSON, transform arrays, aggregate records.
- You're running medium-scale operations (10,000–50,000 ops/month) where n8n's self-hosted setup feels like more infrastructure than the job warrants.
Watch for operation inflation. A scenario that looks like 5 modules can consume 15–20 operations per run once you add iterator steps and condition checks. An unexpected spike in data volume can put you into the next billing tier fast.
n8n — when it's actually right
n8n is open-source and available either self-hosted or through n8n Cloud (from roughly €20/month). Self-hosted means you pay only for your server — typically $5–10/month for a basic VPS — and run unlimited workflows with no per-execution fees. The current release as of May 27, 2026 is v2.23.0.
The platform has 400+ integrations and 900+ pre-built workflow templates. What separates it from the other two is the ability to write JavaScript or Python directly inside a workflow node — so when an API returns something unexpected, you handle it in code instead of hitting a wall.
n8n is the right call when volume is high, logic is custom, or AI agents are involved.
We reach for n8n when:
- Volume is high. 10,000 workflow runs/month in Zapier means thousands of dollars in tasks. In n8n self-hosted, it's the same $8 server bill.
- AI agent workflows are in scope. n8n has native AI agent support built on LangChain — you can wire Claude, GPT, or a local model directly into a workflow with tool calls, memory, and conditional branches. This is where we build most of our client AI agent work.
- You need custom code. Pulling data from an undocumented API, transforming a complex payload, calling a function you wrote — all native in n8n, awkward or impossible in the others.
- Data stays on your infrastructure. Healthcare, legal, finance — industries with data residency requirements. Self-hosted n8n means the data never leaves your server.
The trade-off: n8n has a steeper learning curve. The visual interface is less polished than Make's. Self-hosting adds infrastructure responsibility — someone needs to keep the server running and updated. For a small non-technical team that just needs Gmail to talk to HubSpot, n8n is almost certainly overkill.
The pricing math at real scale
At 500 workflow runs/month for a 5-step process, the cost difference between the three is small enough that you should choose on fit, not price. At 5,000 runs/month of the same workflow, the math changes sharply:
- Zapier: 20,000 tasks → well above Team tier, likely into higher add-on pricing
- Make: ~30,000–40,000 operations → Pro or Teams tier, $18–34/month
- n8n self-hosted: 5,000 executions → same VPS bill ($5–10/month)
For high-volume workflows, n8n's self-hosted model saves hundreds of dollars per month at scale. But that math only makes sense if someone on your team (or on your agency's team) can manage the infrastructure.
How we actually pick for clients
Our decision tree in practice:
- Non-technical team, needs it working this week, simple logic: Zapier. Don't over-engineer it.
- Visual thinker, moderate complexity, budget conscious at mid-scale: Make. The canvas pays off.
- High volume, custom logic, AI agents, or data residency requirements: n8n. Worth the setup investment.
We also migrate clients between tools when they've outgrown what they started with. A business that started on Zapier and is now running 15 multi-step workflows at high volume is usually a good candidate to move to n8n — the migration cost pays back in a few months of subscription savings, and the resulting workflows are usually more maintainable anyway.
If you're not sure where you fall, that's genuinely what the discovery call is for. Thirty minutes, no pitch. We'll tell you which tool fits — and whether you need a tool or an actual agent.
— Cole
Sources
- Zapier pricing: zapier.com/pricing
- Make pricing: make.com/en/pricing
- n8n pricing: n8n.io/pricing
- n8n GitHub (version, integrations, templates): github.com/n8n-io/n8n