What will automation actually cost you?

Zapier counts tasks, Make counts operations, n8n counts executions — three different things. Enter your real volume and compare like for like.

Prices are approximate, based on annual billing as of June 2026 — always check the current pricing pages before committing. Zapier task counts exclude triggers and filters; Make operations include every module run; one n8n execution covers the whole run no matter how many steps. LLM cost assumes a mid-size model at roughly $0.002 per run.

How the math works

The same workflow consumes different units on each platform. Say a lead-qualification flow runs 2,000 times a month with 4 steps (trigger → AI scoring → CRM update → Slack ping):

Zapier: 3 billable tasks per run (the trigger is free) = 6,000 tasks → you need a 10,000-task tier.
Make: 4 operations per run (trigger counts) = 8,000 ops → a 10,000-op Core plan covers it.
n8n: 1 execution per run = 2,000 executions → the Starter cloud plan covers it, or self-host for the price of a small VPS.

This unit difference — not the sticker price — is why costs diverge so sharply as you scale. For the full breakdown, read our Zapier vs Make pricing teardown or the three-way comparison.