Every month, we build automation workflows for clients. Lead routing, data enrichment, AI-powered email sequences, CRM syncs, invoice processing -- the usual. We have strong opinions about which platform to use when, and those opinions come from building real things, not reading feature comparison tables.
So we ran a proper test. We took five workflows we build regularly for clients and implemented each one on all three platforms. Same inputs, same outputs, same 30-day window. Then we tracked everything: build time, reliability, cost, and the stuff nobody talks about -- like what happens when something breaks at 2 AM.
The Test Setup
Five workflows, identical business logic, running simultaneously on all three platforms:
- Lead enrichment pipeline: New HubSpot contact → Clearbit enrichment → AI scoring → Slack notification → CRM update
- Content repurposing: New blog post (RSS) → GPT-4o generates 5 social variants → scheduled to Buffer
- Invoice processing: Email attachment → extract data with AI → create QuickBooks entry → notify finance in Slack
- Support ticket routing: New Zendesk ticket → AI classification → priority assignment → route to team → draft response
- Weekly reporting: Pull data from 4 sources → aggregate → AI summary → formatted email to stakeholders
Each workflow ran against real data. Not test data. Real leads, real tickets, real invoices. That matters because test scenarios never surface the edge cases that make or break a platform.
Pricing: What You Actually Pay
This is where marketing pages lie to you. Let me give you real numbers.
Zapier
- Free: 100 tasks/month, 5 single-step Zaps. Useless for anything real.
- Starter: $29.99/month for 750 tasks. Where most people land initially.
- Professional: $73.50/month for 2,000 tasks. Multi-step Zaps, custom logic.
- Team: $103.50/month for 2,000 tasks. Shared workspaces, permissions.
- Enterprise: Custom. Starts around $250/month if you negotiate.
The catch: Zapier counts "tasks" per step. A 5-step workflow that runs 100 times uses 500 tasks. Our lead enrichment pipeline alone burned through 1,200 tasks in 30 days. That's already past the Starter limit from one workflow.
Our 30-day cost for all 5 workflows: $73.50/month (Professional plan, and we were close to the limit).
Make (formerly Integromat)
- Free: 1,000 operations/month, 2 active scenarios. Actually usable for testing.
- Core: $10.59/month for 10,000 operations.
- Pro: $18.82/month for 10,000 operations + priority execution, full-text log search.
- Teams: $34.12/month for 10,000 operations + team features.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing.
Make counts "operations" -- similar to Zapier's tasks but with one key difference: routers and filters don't count as operations. That matters for complex workflows with branching logic.
Our 30-day cost for all 5 workflows: $18.82/month (Pro plan, used about 7,800 operations). That's 74% cheaper than Zapier for identical functionality.
n8n
- Community (self-hosted): Free. Forever. Unlimited workflows, unlimited executions.
- Starter (cloud): $24/month for 2,500 executions.
- Pro (cloud): $60/month for 10,000 executions + advanced features.
- Enterprise: Custom.
n8n counts "executions" -- one run of an entire workflow is one execution, regardless of how many steps it has. A 12-step workflow that runs once = 1 execution. On Zapier, that same run = 12 tasks. Massive difference at scale.
Our 30-day cost: $0 (self-hosted on a $5/month Hetzner VPS). If we'd used cloud: $24/month on Starter.
Ease of Use: Honest Assessment
Zapier: Easiest for Beginners
Zapier's linear, step-by-step builder is dead simple. If you can follow a recipe, you can build a Zap. We had a client's marketing manager (zero technical background) building functional Zaps within 45 minutes of their first login.
The downside: that simplicity becomes a constraint. When you need branching logic, loops, error handling, or data transformation, Zapier's UI fights you. Paths (their branching feature) work but feel bolted on. Sub-Zaps help with modularity but add complexity and cost.
Build time for our 5 workflows: 6.5 hours total.
Make: Best Visual Builder
Make's visual, node-based builder is gorgeous. You see your entire workflow as a flowchart. Branching, error routes, iterators, aggregators -- it all makes visual sense. The learning curve is steeper than Zapier (give it 2-3 hours), but once you get it, you can build workflows that would require workarounds or be impossible on Zapier.
The downside: Make has quirks. The data mapping interface takes getting used to. Error messages can be cryptic. And their documentation, while decent, has gaps for advanced use cases.
Build time for our 5 workflows: 8 hours total (longer initial learning, faster for complex workflows).
n8n: Most Powerful, Steepest Curve
n8n looks similar to Make -- visual, node-based. But it exposes more power: you can write custom JavaScript/Python in any node, access the raw HTTP request/response, build custom nodes, and chain complex logic that the other two can't touch.
The downside: n8n assumes you're technical. The UI is functional, not polished. Self-hosting means you own the infrastructure -- updates, backups, uptime. If your Hetzner box goes down at midnight, that's your problem. The n8n overview page covers what you're getting into.
Build time for our 5 workflows: 7 hours total (plus 2 hours for initial server setup).
AI Capabilities: The Real Differentiator in 2026
All three platforms have added AI features. But the depth varies dramatically.
Zapier
Zapier has native ChatGPT and Claude integrations, plus their AI-powered "build a Zap with natural language" feature. The natural language builder is impressive for simple workflows -- "when I get a new email with an attachment, save it to Google Drive" works great. For anything complex, you'll still build manually.
Their ChatGPT action supports GPT-4o, custom instructions, and structured output. It works. It's also $0.01-0.02 per AI call on top of your regular task costs, which adds up.
Make
Make has OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google AI modules built in. The OpenAI module is particularly well-implemented -- you get fine-grained control over model selection, temperature, system prompts, and response parsing. Make also has dedicated AI "apps" for text analysis, classification, and summarization that work without an OpenAI API key.
The killer feature: Make's JSON parsing capabilities pair beautifully with AI structured output. You can have GPT-4o return JSON, parse it natively in Make, and route data based on the results -- all without custom code.
n8n
n8n went all-in on AI. They have an "AI Agent" node that lets you build full agent workflows -- tools, memory, chain-of-thought reasoning -- directly in the visual builder. It supports LangChain under the hood, which means you get vector store connections, retrieval-augmented generation, and multi-step reasoning out of the box.
This is genuinely unique. Neither Zapier nor Make can build RAG pipelines visually. On n8n, you can connect a Pinecone vector store, an OpenAI embedding model, and a GPT-4o completion model in a drag-and-drop interface. We built a full AI-powered document Q&A system in under 2 hours.
If AI workflows are your primary use case, n8n is the clear winner. It's not even close.
Self-Hosting: The n8n Advantage
Only n8n offers self-hosting, and it's a genuine differentiator for three reasons:
Cost. We self-host n8n for 8 clients on a single $20/month dedicated server. That's $2.50/client/month for unlimited automation. Try getting that from Zapier.
Data sovereignty. For clients in healthcare, finance, and legal -- industries where we do a lot of automation work -- data never leaving their infrastructure isn't a nice-to-have. It's a requirement. Self-hosted n8n running on a client's own AWS account checks that box immediately.
No execution limits. Self-hosted n8n has no caps on workflows, executions, or data transfer. A client processing 50,000 invoices per month pays the same $5/month server cost as one processing 50.
The trade-off is real, though. You need someone technical to maintain it. Updates, backups, monitoring, SSL certificates. We handle this for our clients as part of our AI automation service, but if you're doing it solo, budget 2-4 hours per month for maintenance.
Reliability: What Breaks
Over 30 days, here's what we observed:
Zapier: 3 failed executions. Two were API timeouts from third-party services (not Zapier's fault). One was a genuine Zapier platform issue that resolved in ~20 minutes. Their error notification emails are the best of the three -- clear, actionable, and fast.
Make: 5 failed executions. Three were data format issues that required adjusting our error handling (Make is pickier about data types than Zapier). Two were execution timeouts on the invoice processing workflow -- Make's timeout limits are tighter on lower plans. Their error logs are detailed but require you to dig.
n8n (self-hosted): 1 failed execution. Our server ran out of memory processing a large batch of invoices. Upgraded RAM, problem solved. Zero platform-level issues. The downside: when something breaks, you're troubleshooting it yourself.
Enterprise Features
If you're evaluating these for a company with 50+ employees, here's what matters:
Zapier has the most mature enterprise offering. SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, shared app connections, granular permissions. Their enterprise team is responsive. If your IT department has a checklist, Zapier will check every box.
Make has teams, roles, and shared scenarios, but their enterprise features lag behind Zapier. No SCIM, limited audit logging. Getting better but not there yet for large organizations with strict compliance needs.
n8n Enterprise offers SSO, role-based access, audit logging, and source control integration (Git). The source control feature is killer for teams -- you version-control your workflows alongside your code. No other platform does this well.
Our Verdict: Which One Wins?
After 30 days and hundreds of workflow executions, here's our recommendation by use case:
Choose Zapier if: Your team is non-technical, you need to move fast, you have fewer than 2,000 automation tasks per month, and budget isn't the primary concern. It's the Toyota Camry of automation -- reliable, predictable, gets you there.
Choose Make if: You have some technical comfort, you're building complex multi-branch workflows, you're cost-conscious, or you need strong AI integration without custom code. Best bang for your buck by a wide margin. This is what we recommend to 60% of our clients.
Choose n8n if: You have a developer on the team (or us), you want self-hosting for cost or compliance, you're building AI-heavy workflows with RAG or agent patterns, or you're running high-volume automations where per-execution pricing kills you. This is our weapon of choice for complex client projects.
For a deeper feature-by-feature breakdown, check our full comparison page.
Getting Started
Here's what I'd do if I were starting from scratch today:
- Pick your most painful manual workflow. The one someone complains about every week.
- Sign up for Make's free tier (1,000 operations is enough to build and test).
- Build the workflow. See if it solves the pain.
- If you need more power or AI agents, try n8n cloud ($24/month) for the next workflow.
- Only go to Zapier if your team explicitly needs the simplest possible interface.
Or skip the trial-and-error and talk to us. We'll tell you which platform fits your workflows in a 30-minute call. We've done this enough times to know within 5 minutes.
