If you’re running a business by yourself, automation is what lets you act like a five-person team. But the three biggest players in this space — n8n, Make, and Zapier — price their tools in completely different ways, and the plan that looks cheapest on the marketing page isn’t always the one that’s cheapest once you actually turn on your workflows.
Table of Contents
This guide breaks down how each tool bills you, what the free and entry-level plans really include, and which option tends to stay affordable as a solo business grows past its first few automations.
Quick Answer
For a bootstrapped solopreneur, n8n is generally the cheapest option — especially if you self-host it, since the core software is free and you only pay for a small VPS (often $5–10/month). If you’d rather not manage a server, n8n’s own Cloud Starter plan and Make’s Core plan both undercut Zapier’s paid tiers at similar usage levels. Zapier is the easiest to learn but tends to become the most expensive once you’re running more than a handful of automations regularly.
How Each Tool Actually Charges You
Zapier bills by ‘tasks’ — one task is consumed every time an action step successfully runs. A single Zap with five action steps burns five tasks per run, which adds up fast. The free plan gives you 100 tasks a month but restricts you to two-step Zaps (one trigger, one action), so you can’t build anything more elaborate without upgrading. Paid plans start around $19.99/month (billed annually) for roughly 750 tasks, or about $29.99/month billed monthly, and prices climb steeply from there as task volume grows.
Make (formerly Integromat) bills by ‘operations,’ also referred to as credits. Each time a standard module — a trigger, an action like sending an email, an API call, and so on — processes a bundle of data, that’s one operation. Make’s own documentation lists routers, filters, and several flow-control modules as modules with no credit cost, so branching your scenario or adding conditions with a filter doesn’t multiply your bill the way extra action steps do. The free plan includes 1,000 operations a month and up to two active scenarios, which is enough for light testing. Paid plans start around $9–12/month for the Core tier (roughly 10,000 operations/month), moving up through Pro and Teams tiers as needs grow. Make’s visual, flowchart-style builder makes it easier to see exactly how many operations a scenario will use before you run it.
n8n bills by ‘workflow executions,’ not by the number of steps inside a workflow. That distinction matters: a single execution can contain dozens of steps and still count as one unit. n8n Cloud’s Starter plan runs roughly $20–24/month for 2,500 executions, with a Pro tier around $50–60/month for 10,000 executions. The bigger difference is that n8n also offers a free, self-hosted Community Edition under its fair-code license — the software itself costs nothing and has no execution ceiling, so your only real cost is hosting it yourself on a cheap server.
Which Is Cheapest at Real Solopreneur Usage
At very low volume — a few dozen automations a month for basic tasks like lead notifications or form-to-CRM syncing — all three free plans can technically work, though Zapier’s two-step restriction and Make’s two-scenario cap will feel limiting quickly if you’re doing anything more than the simplest handoff.
As usage grows into the thousands of monthly runs (typical once a solopreneur automates invoicing, email follow-ups, social posting, and client onboarding together), the billing unit stops being a technicality. Because Zapier counts every action step as a task, a moderately complex multi-step Zap can burn through a paid plan’s task allowance far faster than an equivalent scenario in Make, where routers and filters used to branch and narrow your logic don’t add to the bill, or an equivalent workflow in n8n, where extra steps inside one run don’t multiply the cost either.
That’s why self-hosted n8n tends to win on pure cost for anyone comfortable with a little technical setup: once it’s running on a cheap VPS, adding more steps, more workflows, or more volume doesn’t increase your bill at all. If you want a managed, no-maintenance option instead, compare n8n Cloud’s Starter plan and Make’s Core plan directly against your expected monthly volume — both are usually less expensive than Zapier’s Professional tier for equivalent output.
Tips and Common Mistakes
Don’t compare list prices in isolation — compare them against how many steps your actual automations need, since ‘tasks,’ ‘operations,’ and ‘executions’ aren’t measured the same way across tools. A workflow that costs one execution in n8n might cost five tasks in Zapier.
Watch for free-plan restrictions beyond the usage cap: Zapier’s free tier blocks multi-step Zaps entirely, and Make’s free tier caps you at two active scenarios, so you may need to upgrade sooner than the raw task/operation numbers suggest.
In Make, don’t assume every module you add costs you credits — routers, filters, and several flow-control modules are free, so use them liberally to organize logic without worrying about inflating your operation count. The modules that do cost you are the ones that actually connect to an app or service.
Factor in your own time, not just the subscription price. Zapier’s interface is the most beginner-friendly of the three, so if self-hosting n8n or learning Make’s scenario builder would cost you several hours you’d rather spend on client work, the ‘cheaper’ tool on paper isn’t necessarily the cheaper choice overall.
If you choose self-hosted n8n to save money, budget a little time for basic maintenance — updates, backups, and uptime are on you, unlike with a fully managed SaaS plan.
Explore more: more business automation guides.
n8n vs Make vs Zapier FAQs
Which is truly free: n8n, Make, or Zapier?
n8n’s Community Edition is free software you self-host, with no execution cap — you only pay for server hosting. Make and Zapier both offer free cloud plans, but Make caps you at 1,000 operations and two active scenarios, and Zapier caps you at 100 tasks and two-step Zaps only.
Is n8n hard to set up for a non-technical solopreneur?
Self-hosting n8n requires comfort with basic server setup (a VPS, Docker, or a managed host). If that’s outside your comfort zone, n8n’s own Cloud plans remove the hosting step while still typically costing less than Zapier at comparable volume.
Do routers and filters cost extra in Make?
No. Make’s documentation lists routers, filters, and other flow-control modules as free to run — they don’t consume operations or credits. Only modules that actually connect to an app, service, or API count toward your usage.
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