Short answer: usually yes if you leave Zapier, rarely if you leave Make. A six-step workflow run 1,000 times a month needs about 5,000 Zapier tasks: $89 a month billed yearly, against €20 on n8n Cloud Starter or $9 on Make Core (October 2026). Moving from Make to n8n only pays above roughly 10,000 credits a month.
Updated October 2026. Every price and limit below was re-read from the vendor's own page on 20 October 2026, and the sources are listed at the end. Several figures in earlier versions of this post were out of date or had no source, and they have been corrected or removed.
Most businesses compare n8n, Zapier and Make as a feature question. The bill is usually what decides it, and the three tools do not count usage in the same unit, so their price lists cannot be compared line by line. This post prices one concrete workflow on all three, shows where the saving comes from, and shows where it disappears.
How Each Platform Counts Usage
The billing unit matters more than the price. Here is what each vendor's own documentation says.
Zapier counts tasks. Zapier's help centre says successful action steps count. Trigger steps, Filter and Paths steps, and Formatter, Delay and Looping steps do not count, and neither do steps that error or halt. Replaying a run counts the previously successful steps again. AI steps and Code steps can use more than one task depending on the model tier or runtime you pick.
Make counts credits. Make renamed operations to credits and says existing plans and prices were unchanged. Most modules use one credit per run, and some AI and advanced modules use a variable amount. The Make documentation I read does not say how routers, filters or retries are charged, so the estimates below assume one credit per module and nothing more.
n8n Cloud counts executions. n8n defines an execution as a single run of the entire workflow, whatever the number of steps or the amount of data. Cloud plans cap executions, not steps.
Self-hosted n8n has no usage meter. You pay for the server. The Community Edition documentation I read lists no execution limit.
Monthly Cost by Task Volume for One Workflow
To compare the units, I priced a single workflow: a trigger plus five action steps, so six modules. On Zapier each run uses 5 tasks, because the trigger is free. On Make each run uses about 6 credits, assuming one credit per module (an estimate). On n8n each run is 1 execution. The table converts Zapier task volume into the number of runs and prices each platform for that many runs.
| Zapier tasks / month | Runs of the workflow | Zapier Professional (yearly / monthly billing) | Make (about 6 credits per run) | n8n Cloud (yearly / monthly billing) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 200 | $39 / $58.50 (1,500-task plan) | $9 Core (about 1,200 credits) | €20 / €24 (Starter) |
| 2,000 | 400 | $49 / $73.50 | $9 Core (about 2,400 credits) | €20 / €24 (Starter) |
| 5,000 | 1,000 | $89 / $133.50 | $9 Core (about 6,000 credits) | €20 / €24 (Starter) |
| 10,000 | 2,000 | $129 / $193.50 | About 12,000 credits, above the 10,000 entry tier (price not verified) | €20 / €24 (Starter) |
| 20,000 | 4,000 | $189 / $283.50 | About 24,000 credits (price not verified) | €50 / €60 (Pro, 10,000 executions) |
| 50,000 | 10,000 | $289 / $433.50 | About 60,000 credits (price not verified) | €50 / €60 (Pro, at its 10,000 limit) |
| 100,000 | 20,000 | $489 / $733.50 | About 120,000 credits (price not verified) | About €121 / €145 (Pro, 50,000 executions) |
How to read it. Zapier and n8n prices come from each vendor's pricing page, read on 20 October 2026. Zapier is in US dollars and n8n is in euros, and I have not converted between them. Zapier's lowest-cost figure is the yearly-billing price per month. The Make figures are the entry price Make publishes for its first 10,000 credits: Core is $9, Pro is $16 and Teams is $29 for that tier, per Make's own comparison page. Make's pricing page sits behind a bot check that I could not pass from this server, so I could not read its higher credit tiers and I have not guessed them. Check Make's pricing page for those. The credit counts are my estimate from the one-credit-per-module assumption.
Self-hosted n8n has no per-run charge, so its monthly cost is the server plus your time. A Hetzner shared cloud server starts at €5.99 a month excluding VAT, and a DigitalOcean 2 GB Basic Droplet is $12 a month (both read 20 October 2026).
Two things stand out. At the low end the prices converge: Zapier Professional's 750-task plan is $19.99 a month billed yearly, and n8n Cloud Starter is €20. And Make Core at $9 is cheaper than n8n Cloud as long as your credits fit inside 10,000 a month. The big gap is against Zapier once step counts and volume rise.
What the Table Leaves Out
Volume is only part of what you pay for. These limits change which plan you land on.
Plan Features That Move You Up a Tier
Zapier Professional includes unlimited premium apps and multi-step Zaps, so connector tiers are not the reason for an upgrade there (older versions of this post said otherwise, and that was wrong). Seats are: Professional has one seat, and Team has 25 users and starts at $69 a month billed yearly. Polling triggers check for new data every 15 minutes on Free, every 2 minutes on Professional and every minute on Team.
n8n Cloud Limits
Every n8n Cloud plan includes unlimited users and workflows. The limits are elsewhere. Starter has 5 concurrent executions, a 5-minute maximum execution time, one shared project and 2,500 saved executions. Pro raises that to up to 50 concurrent executions, a 40-minute maximum and three shared projects. If you run long jobs or heavy parallel traffic, those limits matter more than the monthly price.
Retries and Replays
On Zapier, a step that errors does not use a task, but replaying a run charges again for the steps that had already succeeded. On n8n, the Retry On Fail setting on a node retries inside the same run. n8n's pricing page defines an execution as one run of the whole workflow and does not list retries as a separate charge. Make's documentation did not answer the question, so I leave it open rather than assume.
Currency, Tax and Billing Period
Yearly billing is cheaper on both Zapier and n8n (n8n says 17%, Zapier says 33%). If you cannot commit for a year, use the monthly column. Hetzner quotes its prices excluding VAT; check how tax applies on the others.
What Self-Hosting n8n Really Costs
The server is the small part. The cost people underestimate is the time to keep it running: applying updates, backups, TLS renewal, and watching for failures. I have not measured how many hours that takes on your stack, so the next section treats it as a variable instead of a constant. My Docker self-hosting guide covers the install, backups and updates step by step.
There is also a feature boundary. According to n8n's documentation, the free Community Edition does not include Projects, workflow and credential sharing, SSO, Git-based version control or environments. It says that on Community, only the instance owner and the person who creates a workflow or credential can access it. Teams that need sharing or SSO move to the paid Business plan, which n8n lists at €667 a month billed yearly for 40,000 executions, self-hosted only. If you plan to resell or manage n8n for clients, read what the Sustainable Use License allows for consultants first.
Break-Even: When Does Switching Pay Off?
The question is not whether n8n is cheaper. It is whether the saving beats the migration effort and the upkeep. Work it out in four steps.
- Current bill. Take your Zapier or Make invoice, plus any seat charges.
- New cost. Pick n8n Cloud from the table, or a server plus your upkeep time.
- Monthly saving. Current bill minus new cost, including the value of your upkeep hours.
- Payback in months. Migration cost divided by monthly saving.
Here is a worked example. The inputs marked as assumptions are mine, not measurements: a migration of 10 hours, your time valued at $75 an hour (so $750), and a $12 DigitalOcean server. The Zapier bills are the yearly-billing prices from the table.
| Upkeep time (assumption) | 1,000 runs / month (Zapier $89) | 2,000 runs / month (Zapier $129) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 hours a month | $77 saved a month, payback in 9.7 months | $117 saved a month, payback in 6.4 months |
| 1 hour a month | $2 saved a month, effectively never pays back | $42 saved a month, payback in 17.9 months |
| 2 hours a month | Loses $73 a month | Loses $33 a month |
This is why self-hosting is not automatically the cheap option. If you value your time, one hour of upkeep a month removes almost the entire saving at 1,000 runs. n8n Cloud avoids the upkeep: at 1,000 runs it is €20 against Zapier's $89, with no server to run. For a precise figure on your own volume, use the automation ROI calculator. For the mechanics of moving, see my guide to migrating from Zapier to n8n.
What n8n Does Better Beyond Cost
Cost Does Not Rise With Complexity
A workflow with 30 nodes is still one execution. On Zapier the same workflow uses one task for each successful action step. Branching, error handling and data cleanup therefore cost nothing extra on n8n, and the savings table above understates the gap for workflows with more than six steps.
Code Steps
n8n lists code steps in JavaScript and Python on every Cloud plan, and you can call any API through the HTTP Request node. Zapier has Code by Zapier, with an included runtime of 1 second per step on Free, 30 seconds on Professional and Team, and 2 minutes on Enterprise, and longer runtimes use more tasks.
Where Your Data Lives
On n8n Cloud, data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany, according to n8n. Self-hosted data stays wherever you run the server. If a data-location requirement decides your platform, that is a stronger reason to look at n8n than price is.
What Zapier and Make Do Better
Zapier covers more apps. Zapier's pricing page says 9,000+ app connections. n8n's integrations page shows 2,367 integrations. For most workflows either covers your stack, and n8n's HTTP Request node reaches any service with an API. For a niche app with no n8n node, Zapier may already have a ready-made connector.
Make is the cheapest hosted option at small volume. Make Core is $9 for 10,000 credits, lower than n8n Cloud Starter at €20. If your workflows fit in that allowance and you want a hosted tool, moving to Make is the better saving than moving to n8n.
Zapier bundles extra products. Zapier's help centre says steps in Zapier Tables and Zapier Forms do not count as tasks, which helps if you use them for light data capture.
Hosted tools remove the server. Zapier and Make are fully hosted. n8n Cloud is too, so the server question only applies if you choose to self-host.
Who Should Switch and Who Should Stay
Price the move to n8n if your Zapier bill is about $89 a month or more, your workflows have many steps, and you are happy with n8n Cloud or have someone who will own a server.
Look at Make instead if your workload fits inside roughly 10,000 credits a month and you want the lowest hosted price.
Stay where you are if your volume is low (the Zapier Free plan covers 100 tasks, and Professional starts at $19.99 for 750, about what n8n Starter costs), you depend on an app only Zapier connects to, or nobody can own a server and the saving is smaller than the upkeep hours.
If you are unsure which side you are on, the AI readiness assessment covers current tool costs, workflow complexity and technical capacity, and my comparison of n8n vs Zapier vs Make covers features.
Sources Checked on 20 October 2026
- n8n pricing: Starter, Pro and Business plans, executions, limits (euro prices).
- Zapier pricing: Professional and Team plan tiers, seats, polling intervals, Code runtime.
- Zapier help: what counts as tasks.
- Make vs Zapier and Make vs n8n: Make plan prices for the first 10,000 credits.
- Make help: credits consumption.
- n8n docs: Community Edition features and n8n integrations.
- Hetzner Cloud and DigitalOcean Droplets: server prices.
Labels used above: prices and plan limits are vendor-reported on the date shown. Credit counts for Make and the workload conversion are estimates. The break-even table is my own arithmetic from stated assumptions, not a measured result.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does n8n cost compared to Zapier?
As of 20 October 2026, n8n Cloud Starter is €20 a month billed yearly (€24 monthly) for 2,500 workflow executions, and Pro is €50 (€60 monthly) for 10,000. Zapier Professional is $19.99 a month billed yearly for 750 tasks, $49 for 2,000 and $129 for 10,000. n8n counts whole-workflow runs and Zapier counts successful action steps, so the gap grows with the number of steps.
Is switching from Zapier to n8n worth the effort?
Usually when your Zapier plan is about $89 a month or more, and less clearly below that. For a six-step workflow run 2,000 times a month ($129 on Zapier), moving to a $12 server repays a 10-hour migration valued at $75 an hour in about 6.4 months if upkeep is free, and about 18 months if upkeep takes an hour a month. Those inputs are assumptions, so substitute your own.
What does it cost to self-host n8n?
The server is cheap: Hetzner shared cloud starts at €5.99 a month excluding VAT, and a DigitalOcean 2 GB Droplet is $12 (October 2026). The n8n Community Edition is free but does not include Projects, workflow sharing or SSO, and the paid Business plan is €667 a month billed yearly for 40,000 executions. The larger cost is your time for updates, backups and monitoring.
How does n8n pricing compare to Make?
Make bills credits, usually one per module run. Per Make's comparison page, Core is $9, Pro is $16 and Teams is $29 for the first 10,000 credits a month. For small workflows that fit that allowance, Make Core is cheaper than n8n Cloud Starter at €20. n8n pulls ahead when workflows have many steps, because it counts one execution however many nodes run. I could not read Make's prices above 10,000 credits.
Which hidden costs should I check on Zapier, Make and n8n?
On Zapier, successful action steps and replays of previously successful steps use tasks, while triggers, filters, paths, Formatter and errored steps do not. Seats matter too: Professional has one seat and Team has 25. On n8n Cloud, check concurrency (5 on Starter), the 5-minute maximum execution time on Starter and the one shared project. On self-hosted n8n, the hidden cost is upkeep time.
Does n8n require technical expertise to run?
n8n Cloud needs no server. Self-hosting needs comfort with Docker and Linux, plus ongoing updates and backups; my self-hosting guide walks through the install. If you want help choosing or setting up, see my n8n consulting page.
Want a Second Opinion on Your Numbers?
If you have an export of your Zapier or Make usage and want to know whether switching pays off, book a free 30-minute call on the consulting page and bring the figures.
