Make, Zapier or n8n for your flows?

Make, Zapier or n8n is mostly a question of how you pay. Zapier charges per task, every step after the trigger. Make charges per credit, every module that does something. n8n charges per full run, however many steps it contains. Choose Zapier if you want a first flow fast and need the most integrations. Choose Make if you build flows with many steps or branches and want more flow for your money. Choose n8n if your flows are long and busy, or your data has to stay on a server of your own. If the flow touches the core of your business, build it as custom AI automation.

The same flow, three different bills

Take a flow almost every small business knows. Someone fills in the form on your site, the contact goes into your CRM, the customer gets a confirmation email and your team an alert. Four steps, every time an enquiry comes in.

In Zapier every step after the trigger counts as a task. The form itself does not count, the three steps after it do: three tasks per enquiry. In Make every module counts a credit, including the first one that fetches the data: four credits per enquiry. A router that splits the flow does not count in Make. In n8n a full run counts as one execution, with unlimited steps: one execution per enquiry.

With a four-step flow that difference looks small. With a twelve-step flow that runs fifty times a day, it decides which plan you need. If none of the three fits, the other routes are on API integration services.

What Make, Zapier and n8n cost

Prices before VAT. Zapier also bills in euros and pounds; the dollar amounts are its reference. Make shows its amounts only in a calculator on its pricing page; work it out there with your own number of credits. What you need depends on your volume, so do the sum as below.

Worked example: two flows, three bills

An installer with two flows. Flow A is the enquiry on the site (four steps, 200 times a month). Flow B processes every order: fetch the order, look up the customer, create the invoice, update stock, email the customer, alert in Teams (six steps, 300 times a month).

In this example n8n is cheapest and stays so as you grow, because it counts per run. Zapier gets most expensive, because every step counts. Make sits in between. But price is not everything: who builds and maintains the flow for you, and how fast, weighs just as much. A flow nobody on your team dares to touch any more costs you more than a pricier plan.

Zapier: the fastest start

Zapier is the best known of the three and has the largest library of integrations. You build a flow as a list of steps, in plain language, and Zapier helps you set it up with AI. For someone who has never automated anything, that is the shortest route to a first flow that works. Note: the free plan allows only two-step flows, so the enquiry flow above already needs a paid plan. The downside is the bill: flows with many steps or high volume get expensive fast.

Make: many steps, built visually

Make shows your flow as a diagram of circles and lines. That reads more easily once there are branches: a quote request goes to sales, a complaint to after-sales. Make also lets you work deeper in the data, with filters, loops and your own formulas, and has more than 3,000 integrations. You need a little more time, but you get more flow for your money. When your credits run out, your flows stop until you buy more or upgrade.

n8n: control over your own data

The biggest difference between n8n and Make is where it runs. Make and Zapier always run in their own cloud. n8n you can also host yourself, on a server in Europe you choose. For a payroll office, a law firm or an accountant working with sensitive data, that can decide it. n8n does need more technical knowledge, and whoever self-hosts is responsible for updates, security and backups.

n8n is also strong at AI steps: a language model that reads an email and decides who it goes to, or drafts a reply. What separates such a flow from a real agent: AI agents explained.

Power Automate if you work in Microsoft

If your business runs on Microsoft 365, you may already have Power Automate at hand. It lives in the world of Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel, and is strongest there: saving an email attachment to the right folder, running an approval through Teams. Premium costs 13 euros per user per month in Belgium. Outside Microsoft it has fewer integrations than Zapier or Make. If you mostly work in Microsoft, also read ChatGPT or Copilot.

Which to choose? By situation

Mistakes we often see

• Counting flows instead of stepsAlways calculate steps times runs per month.
• No error alertA flow that fails silently misses enquiries without anyone noticing.
• Using a personal accountWhen that colleague leaves, your flow stops. Use a company account.
• Sending sensitive data through a free planwithout knowing where it is stored. Set down what may go through which tool; see the EU AI Act for business.
• Building workarounds around the tool's limitsHelper sheets and extra steps make a flow expensive and fragile.

When to build a solution of your own

A tool like Zapier or Make is ideal to get something working fast. But some flows you do not want to run at a third party. If the flow is the core of your business, touches sensitive data or gets more expensive with every price change of the tool, a solution of your own pays off.

We do that ourselves. The contact forms of eleven client domains run through our own form service on AWS, with spam filters that stop bots and gibberish before anything lands in a mailbox. With VBS Mail we built our own mail service on Amazon SES, in which clients and email templates are data instead of code; the fleet form of Park & Wash already runs on it. No task or credit counter, and the data stays in our own environment. If your flow grows into a whole process, it becomes custom software, as at DA Logistics, where the platform itself emails the drivers. Starting from spreadsheets? Read Excel to web app.