Make vs Zapier vs n8n: Real Automation Cost per 10,000 Workflow Runs in 2026
The short answer: a Zapier task, a Make operation and an n8n execution are three different meters, and the same workflow can consume 2, 3 or 1 units per run on them. Zapier counts each successful action, Make counts every module that runs (triggers included), and n8n counts one execution per whole workflow no matter how many steps it has. Under the workflow shapes below, 10,000 runs a month of a 25-step branching workflow costs about $1,799 a month on Zapier, about $168 on Make at its entry per-operation rate, and $667 on n8n Cloud Business, or roughly $30–$205 a month self-hosted. Complexity is the multiplier: going from a 3-step to a 25-step workflow raises Zapier's units per run 8.8 times, Make's 6.2 times and n8n's by only 5%, but the n8n cloud bill can still jump 13 times when retries push it past a plan cap.
What each vendor counts
| Meter | Zapier | Make | n8n |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unit | Task = one successful action step; triggers and filters are free (REPORTED) | Operation, now sold as credits = one module run, including triggers, routers and filters (REPORTED) | Execution = one full workflow run, regardless of step count (REPORTED) |
| Polling | Polling triggers do not consume tasks | Each poll is a module run; operations can drain fast on polling triggers (REPORTED) | A 5-minute polling workflow generates about 8,640 executions a month (REPORTED) |
| AI steps | Actions like any other, plus the model API cost | AI modules were reported to cost 2 to 50 times the credits of standard modules | One node inside an execution; only the model API cost is extra |
| Overage | Next plan tier | Overage credits at a 25% surcharge (REPORTED) | Starter and Pro pause at the limit; Business overage reported at €4,000 per 300,000 executions (REPORTED) |
Published prices
Zapier (REPORTED, third-party summaries of vendor pricing, annual billing). Professional tiers by monthly task volume: 750 tasks $19.99, 2,000 $49, 5,000 $73.50, 10,000 $103, 50,000 $349, 100,000 $599, 500,000 $1,799 and 2,000,000 $5,999. Only these price points were listed, so a volume between two of them is priced at the next listed tier here, which slightly overstates cost. Team plans start at $69 a month (25 users). Enterprise is custom (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN). Sources disagree on entry prices ($19.99 versus $29.99 for 750 tasks).
Make (REPORTED). Core at about $9 a month for 10,000 credits (operations), Pro about $16 and Teams about $29. Other sources list $10.59, $18.82 and $34.12, or $12 for Core, depending on billing term and page version. Higher-volume price steps were not listed in the sources reviewed (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN), so larger volumes below use the Core per-operation rate of $0.0009 as an ILLUSTRATIVE linear reference.
n8n Cloud (REPORTED, from pricing pages as of June to July 2026). Starter €20 a month annual (€24 monthly) for 2,500 executions, Pro €50 (€60) for 10,000, Business €667 (€800) for 40,000, Enterprise custom. Users and workflows are unlimited. USD figures for the same plans appear on some pages, and this article treats euros and dollars at parity for simplicity (ILLUSTRATIVE). Self-hosted Community Edition is free software with unlimited executions.
Workflow shapes
Units consumed per run are ILLUSTRATIVE. Shape A: 3 steps (trigger plus 2 actions). Shape B: 10 steps (trigger plus 9 actions). Shape C: 25 steps with branching where about 16 actions run on a typical path, plus a 10% retry overhead on steps, and 5% of runs re-executed on n8n. Completion rate is 95% for every platform.
| Shape | Zapier tasks per run | Make operations per run | n8n executions per run |
|---|---|---|---|
| A: 3 steps | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| B: 10 steps | 9 | 10 | 1 |
| C: 25 steps, branching, retries | 17.6 | 18.7 | 1.05 |
Formula: monthly units = runs × units per run. The cost per 10,000 completed workflows is monthly cost ÷ (runs × 0.95 ÷ 10,000).
Monthly cost by shape and volume
Self-hosted n8n is an ILLUSTRATIVE range: a virtual server, managed database, cache and backups (reported at $30–$95 a month for a production setup, and about $12 for a lean single server) plus 2–5 hours a month of maintenance at $50 an hour (reported). The ranges below add $175 of labor, and $500 at 1 million runs where the server also scales (infrastructure $12, $30, $95 and $400 by volume). n8n Cloud at 40,000 executions or more uses Business plus the reported overage block; at very high volume a negotiated Enterprise contract is more likely (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN).
Shape A (3 steps)
| Runs per month | Zapier | Make (linear reference) | n8n Cloud | n8n self-hosted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $49 (2,000 tasks) | $9 (Core minimum) | $20 | $12–$187 |
| 10,000 | $349 (20,000 tasks) | $27 | $50 | $30–$205 |
| 100,000 | $1,799 (200,000 tasks) | $270 | $4,667 | $95–$270 |
| 1,000,000 | $5,999 (2M tasks, at the top listed tier) | $2,700 | $16,667 | $400–$900 |
Shape B (10 steps)
| Runs per month | Zapier | Make | n8n Cloud | n8n self-hosted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $103 (9,000 tasks) | $9 | $20 | $12–$187 |
| 10,000 | $599 (90,000 tasks) | $90 | $50 | $30–$205 |
| 100,000 | $5,999 (900,000 tasks) | $900 | $4,667 | $95–$270 |
| 1,000,000 | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN (9M tasks exceeds the listed tiers) | $9,000 | $16,667 | $400–$900 |
Shape C (25 steps, branching, retries)
| Runs per month | Zapier | Make | n8n Cloud | n8n self-hosted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $349 (17,600 tasks) | $17 | $20 | $12–$187 |
| 10,000 | $1,799 (176,000 tasks) | $168 | $667 | $30–$205 |
| 100,000 | $5,999 (1.76M tasks) | $1,683 | $4,667 | $95–$270 |
| 1,000,000 | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN (17.6M tasks) | $16,830 | $16,667 | $400–$900 |
Make figures are a linear floor at $0.0009 per operation, and Make's overage surcharge of 25% would raise the rate to about $0.0011. The n8n Cloud cells at 100,000 runs and above are the Business plan plus reported overage blocks, which is a reference calculation, not a quote.
Effective cost per 10,000 completed workflows
| Case | Zapier | Make | n8n Cloud | n8n self-hosted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A, 10,000 runs a month | $367 | $28 | $53 | $32–$216 |
| B, 10,000 runs a month | $631 | $95 | $53 | $32–$216 |
| C, 10,000 runs a month | $1,894 | $177 | $702 | $32–$216 |
| A, 100,000 runs a month | $189 | $28 | $491 | $10–$28 |
| C, 100,000 runs a month | $632 | $177 | $491 | $10–$28 |
Sensitivity to workflow complexity
At 10,000 runs a month, moving from shape A to shape C multiplies the monthly bill by 5.2 on Zapier ($349 to $1,799) and 6.2 on Make ($27 to $168). On n8n Cloud it moves from $50 to $667, a 13 times increase, not because the workflow is longer but because 5% re-executions push volume from 10,000 to 10,500 and cross the Pro plan's 10,000-execution cap. A per-execution meter is nearly immune to workflow length and highly sensitive to plan cliffs.
Break-even for self-hosting n8n
Formula: self-hosting saves money when infrastructure + labor hours × hourly cost < the cloud plan it replaces.
- Versus Pro ($50, up to 10,000 executions): a lean $12 server saves $38 a month only if labor is effectively free. With 3.5 hours a month at $50, self-hosting costs $187 and never beats Pro.
- Versus Business ($667, up to 40,000 executions): at $30–$95 of infrastructure, self-hosting breaks even at about 11.4 to 12.7 hours of maintenance a month at $50 an hour.
- Above 40,000 executions: the reported overage price (about €0.013 per execution) makes cloud far costlier than a server, so self-hosting wins unless the volume is negotiated onto an Enterprise contract.
Self-hosting therefore pays off when volume is well above 10,000 executions a month and the team has spare maintenance capacity, or when a platform engineer already exists and the labor is sunk.
Polling, webhooks and retries
A workflow that polls every 5 minutes runs 8,640 times a month whether or not data arrives. On n8n that is 8,640 executions (reported), which would exhaust Starter's 2,500 executions in about 9 days, and on Make each poll consumes an operation. Zapier does not charge tasks for triggers. Webhooks avoid the issue on all three. Retries cost extra tasks or operations on the step-counting platforms and can cost nothing on n8n unless the whole workflow re-runs.
Budgeting traps
- Comparing headline plan sizes. 10,000 Make operations is 3,333 runs of a 3-step workflow and 1,000 runs of a 10-step one; 10,000 n8n executions is 10,000 runs of anything.
- Premium apps and AI steps. These change either plan eligibility or credit burn and are not in the base numbers.
- Plan cliffs. n8n's Pro-to-Business jump is 13 times; Zapier's tier ladder rises in steps.
- Self-hosting labor. Backups, upgrades and monitoring are real hours, and Community Edition has no built-in error alerting (reported).
What to ask before you buy
Count units per run for your longest workflow on each platform, add polling and retries, and price the resulting monthly volume against each ladder. Ask what happens at the plan cap, and what the overage rate is.