Zapier, Make or n8n: a decision table

Pick by job, not by feature list. Zapier wins on breadth of connectors and speed to a working automation. Make wins on visual logic and iteration over collections. n8n wins on self-hosting, code, and cost at volume. Below is a table of twelve real jobs and which tool each one points at - most businesses end up with two of the three, and that is a reasonable outcome rather than a failure.

Feature comparisons make these tools look interchangeable, because at the feature level they largely are. What separates them is which job you are doing.

Key takeaways

• Connector breadth is Zapier’s real advantage, and it is a decisive one for long-tail SaaS.
• Iterating over many records is where Make’s pricing model bites and n8n’s does not.
• Only n8n self-hosts. If that is a requirement, the comparison is over.
• Running two tools is normal. Standardising on one for its own sake is a cost, not a virtue.
• The volume at which the cheap option flips is lower than most teams assume.

Who this applies to

You are choosing an automation platform, or reconsidering one, for business workflows. If you have already narrowed it to two of the three, n8n vs Make goes deeper on that pair specifically.

The table

Two rows deserve expanding.

Connector breadth is Zapier’s real edge

The comparison people run is on the big integrations - the major CRM, the major helpdesk - where all three are fine.

The difference appears in the long tail. A niche scheduling tool, a regional payments provider, an industry-specific platform: Zapier is meaningfully more likely to have a maintained connector, and building the same thing against a poorly documented API with an HTTP node is a day rather than ten minutes.

Check your three most obscure systems before deciding anything. That single check settles more of these decisions than any feature table, and it is the one people skip because they check the systems they already know are supported.

The volume flip is earlier than expected

Zapier bills per task, where a task is roughly one step execution. A five-step Zap running 1,000 times a month is around 5,000 tasks.

The point where that becomes uncomfortable arrives sooner than teams plan for, and it arrives suddenly, because it is driven by multi-step workflows rather than by workflow count. Ten simple Zaps are cheap; two complex ones running frequently are not.

Make bills per operation with a similar shape, and its specific weakness is iteration - a scenario looping over 500 records can consume 500-plus operations in a single run.

n8n Cloud bills per execution, so that same loop is one. Self-hosted has no per-run charge at all, in exchange for infrastructure and operational attention - see self-hosted n8n.

Model your own shape. The question that settles it: does a typical run process one record or many? If many, the per-operation models are the expensive ones and the gap widens as you grow.

Running two is normal

Standardising on one tool is an instinct worth resisting.

A common and sensible arrangement: Zapier for the long-tail marketing and sales integrations that the marketing team owns and modifies, and n8n for the data-heavy, engineering-owned workflows that need code, version control or reach into internal systems.

That splits by owner as well as by job, which is usually the more durable boundary. The alternative - forcing every workflow into one tool - either gives operations people workflows they cannot safely edit, or gives engineers a tool that fights them on transformation.

The cost of running two is a second subscription and a second place to look when something breaks. That is real and it is usually smaller than the cost of the mismatch.

Test it yourself in an afternoon

Rather than reading further comparisons, run the decision against your own case. It takes about half a day and it settles things that no table can.

Pick your single most awkward workflow - the one with the obscure system, the odd data shape, or the volume. Not the easy one; the easy one works everywhere and tells you nothing.

Build it in two of the three. Far enough to prove the integration and the data handling actually work, not to production quality. Where a connector does not exist, build the HTTP version, because that is what you would really be doing.

Record four things: how long it took, whether the connectors existed, how many operations or executions one realistic run consumed, and whether the person who will own it could modify what you built.

That fourth question is the one that decides most of these and the one a feature comparison cannot answer. A workflow the owner cannot safely edit is a workflow that will be abandoned or that will break, whichever comes first.

Then multiply the run cost by your projected monthly volume at each platform’s pricing. Not today’s volume - the volume you expect in a year, because switching later is manual work in every direction.

Half a day of this produces a better decision than any amount of reading, including this page.

When the answer is none of them

Worth stating, because it applies more often than the market implies.

If the workflow is a scheduled job doing heavy transformation with few integration points, it is a script. Fifteen lines and a cron entry is less to maintain than a workflow, a platform account and a billing relationship - and it is testable, versionable and debuggable with tools your team already has.

The signal: node count climbing past about thirty, with most nodes doing transformation rather than talking to another system. At that point the tool has stopped saving you work.

Automation platforms are excellent at crossing system boundaries and mediocre at holding business logic. Use them for the first.

What we recommend by default

n8n for client work, for the reason given in the deeper comparison: workflows are JSON, so they live in the client’s repository under version control and hand over as an actual transfer rather than a shared login.

We recommend Zapier without hesitation in two cases. When the integration is with something niche enough that no other tool has a connector - that is a decisive practical advantage and no amount of architectural preference outweighs it. And when the workflow needs to exist this afternoon and may not exist next month, where speed genuinely is the requirement.

We recommend Make when the person maintaining it after we leave is not technical and the logic is genuinely branchy. A version-controlled n8n workflow that the operations manager cannot safely edit is worse for that business than a Make scenario they can.

The recommendation that trims our own scope most often: for a meaningful share of what we are asked to build in any of these, the honest answer is a small scheduled script. We say it on the call, and it converts a workflow engagement into a much smaller piece of work.

When to switch tools

Rarely worth it on price alone below a few hundred dollars a month, because migration is manual - nothing exports between them. See migrating from Zapier to n8n for what that actually costs.

Switch when a requirement changes rather than when a bill annoys you: a residency obligation appears, you need to reach something private, or volume has grown enough that the arithmetic is no longer close.

Frequently asked questions

Can we use all three?

You can, and most businesses past a certain size effectively do. Two is common and manageable. Three usually means nobody has decided anything, and the cost is that no one person knows where a given automation lives.

Which is cheapest?

Depends entirely on volume shape. At low volume and few steps, Zapier is often cheapest in total cost including your time. At high volume with loops, self-hosted n8n is dramatically cheaper on licence and more expensive in attention.

Which is easiest for non-technical people?

Make for complex visual logic, Zapier for simple linear automations. n8n is the hardest of the three once expressions and Code nodes appear.

Does n8n have fewer integrations?

Fewer maintained connectors than Zapier, comparable to Make, and all three have a generic HTTP option. The gap shows in the long tail, not the mainstream.

What about the platform-native automation in our CRM or helpdesk?

Check it first. Platform-native automation carries no extra subscription and no integration risk, and for workflows entirely inside one product it is frequently the right answer over any of these three.

Next step

The check that settles most of this is listing your three most obscure systems and confirming which tools reach them. The n8n and Make engagement starts with that and the volume arithmetic - including the answer that a script would do.

Related: n8n vs Make for business automation · Migrating from Zapier to n8n · Self-hosted n8n · Business process automation