Make vs n8n vs Zapier in 2026 — which to choose for your business

Picking an automation platform is one of the first decisions that will shape your operational costs and flexibility for years. In 2026 the market is dominated by three names: Zapier (oldest, priciest, simplest), Make (formerly Integromat, the European middle ground), and n8n (open source, cheapest at scale). Each solves the same problem — for a completely different kind of company.

Zapier — the most expensive, but your intern can run it

Zapier is the McDonald's of automation: everywhere, expensive, but always working and easy to order. Simpler UI than the competition, massive docs, more than 7,000 integrations.

• Pros: easiest to start, enormous integration catalog, great community, templates for everything.
• Cons: pricing scales brutally with task count. Professional = $49/mo for 2,000 tasks. Team = $399/mo. Every step in a workflow counts as a task — 500 leads/month × 5-step flow = 2,500 tasks, which already busts the lower plan.
• No real conditional logic without higher tiers. Loops and advanced data transforms are awkward.

Make — mid-priced, European

Make is a Czech platform (formerly Integromat), visually the most interesting of the three — you build scenarios like mind maps. Free plan gives 1,000 ops/month, which realistically covers a small business.

• Pros: great value/capability ratio. Core plan = $9/mo for 10,000 ops. Rich data transforms, loops, routers, iterators — all out of the box.
• GDPR-friendly — data hosted in the EU (Czechia, Germany).
• Cons: steeper learning curve than Zapier. Beginners get lost in routers and filters.
• Fewer "click-install" integrations than Zapier, but the HTTP module talks to any API.

n8n — open source, cheapest at scale

n8n is the game-changer for companies running thousands of operations daily. Self-hosted, it gives you unlimited executions for ~$5/mo on a VPS. n8n Cloud starts around €20/mo.

• Pros: cost is basically flat regardless of volume. Full data control (critical for regulated industries — medicine, law, finance). Write custom nodes in JS/Python. AI integration — LangChain, OpenAI, Anthropic — more mature than competitors.
• Cons: self-hosting = you own updates, backups, monitoring. Fewer out-of-box integrations, but HTTP module + community nodes cover most cases.

Real-world cost — 1,000 leads/month

Workflow: lead from Meta Ads → company data enrichment → GPT scoring → CRM write → Slack + SMS notification. That's 6 steps × 1,000 leads = 6,000 ops/month.

• Zapier: Professional $49/mo (2,000 tasks) won't cut it. You need Team $399/mo.
• Make: Core $9/mo (10,000 ops) = plenty of headroom.
• n8n self-hosted: Hetzner CX22 at €5/mo. Unlimited ops.

45× cost difference between Zapier and n8n for the same outcome.

When to pick what

• Zapier: solo founder, 5–10 simple automations, your own hour costs more than $400/mo. Zap it and move on.
• Make: you have 10–50 automations, budget under $100/mo, want non-trivial things without learning DevOps. Default pick for most SMBs.
• n8n: thousands of ops/day, sensitive data (GDPR), custom integrations with local systems, someone technical on the team or an agency that handles it.