n8n vs Zapier vs Make: An Honest Comparison From Someone Who Builds on All Three

Most "n8n vs Zapier vs Make" articles are written by people who've never shipped a workflow on any of them. They're affiliate content: rewrite the pricing pages, sprinkle in some screenshots, collect the commission.

We build client automations on all three platforms, every week, for UK small businesses. This is what we'd tell you over a coffee.

The short answer

• Zapier if you're non-technical, low volume, and want the thing that just works with everything. You pay heavily for that convenience.
• Make if you want the best value on a hosted platform and you're willing to climb a slightly steeper learning curve.
• n8n if you run real volume, want AI steps and complex logic, or need your data to stay in the building. Self-hosted, it's close to free at any scale — you pay in maintenance instead.

That's the verdict. The rest of this piece is the working.

Who's actually writing this

FFFLab is a UK AI consultancy that builds. We've been shipping automations on Zapier and n8n since 2022, and we run self-hosted n8n in production for our own business and for clients across construction, real estate, hospitality, retail and telecoms. One of our restaurant clients saved around 15 hours a week through workflow automation, with the build paying for itself in two months.

We have no affiliate deals with any of these platforms. When we recommend one, it's because we'll be the ones building and maintaining the thing — so we have every incentive to pick whichever one won't ruin our week.

The pricing maths that actually matters: per-task vs per-credit vs per-execution

The three platforms don't just charge different prices. They count different things, and this is where almost every comparison gets lazy.

Take a typical lead-capture workflow: a form submission triggers it, then five steps run — enrich the lead, write it to the CRM, post a Slack alert, add the contact to a mailing list, log it to a spreadsheet.

• Zapier charges per task. Every action step that runs is a task (triggers are free). That workflow costs 5 tasks per run.
• Make charges per credit (it renamed operations to credits in 2025). Every module counts, including the trigger. That workflow costs 6 credits per run.
• n8n charges per execution. One run of the whole workflow — five steps or fifty — is 1 execution. Self-hosted n8n doesn't meter at all.

Now put verified prices on it. Zapier's Professional plan starts at $19.99/month on annual billing for 750 tasks, per Zapier's own pricing (roughly £15 at current exchange rates); the 2,000-task tier is $49/month (£37). Make's Core plan is $9/month on annual billing for 10,000 credits, per Make's pricing page (£7). n8n Cloud's Starter is €20/month for 2,500 executions (~£17), and the Community Edition is free to self-host.

Work that back to a cost per run of our six-module workflow:

• Zapier (2,000-task tier): about 1.8p per task × 5 tasks = ~9p per run
• Make (Core): about 0.07p per credit × 6 credits = ~0.4p per run
• n8n Cloud (Starter): ~0.7p per run, however many steps it has
• n8n self-hosted: a flat £5–15/month server, so the marginal cost per run is effectively zero

Same workflow. A 20× price difference between Zapier and Make before you've done anything clever.

Worked examples at 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 runs a month

At 1,000 runs a month (5,000 Zapier tasks / 6,000 Make credits / 1,000 n8n executions): eesel's 2026 pricing breakdown pegs Zapier's 5,000-task tier at around $130/month (~£98). Make fits inside Core's base 10,000 credits at ~£7. n8n Cloud Starter covers it at ~£17. Self-hosted n8n: ~£5.

At 10,000 runs a month (50,000 tasks / 60,000 credits / 10,000 executions): Zapier stops publishing clean numbers up here — the slider quotes you, and third-party breakdowns put you well north of £220/month. Make's slider lands you somewhere around £30–50/month at that credit volume (their per-credit rate falls as you scale — get an exact quote, we won't pretend to precision Make doesn't publish). n8n Cloud Pro covers 10,000 executions at €50/month (~£43). Self-hosted n8n on a slightly beefier server: ~£7.

At 100,000 runs a month: Zapier is enterprise-sales territory and four figures monthly. Make wants a Teams or Enterprise conversation. n8n Cloud's Business tier (€667/month, ~£570) caps at 40,000 executions, so you're into custom pricing too — unless you self-host, where 100,000 executions runs happily on a £15/month box. This is the volume where self-hosting stops being a nerd hobby and becomes the only sane answer.

Head to head where it counts

Ease of use for non-technical owners

Zapier wins, and it's not close. The editor is linear — this happens, then this, then this. A busy owner can build a two-step Zap in ten minutes with no training. That's genuinely worth money.

Make is a visual canvas of connected bubbles. More powerful, and honestly quite pleasant once it clicks, but the first afternoon is confusing and error handling will make a non-technical person cry.

n8n looks similar to Make but assumes more: you'll meet JSON, expressions, and occasionally a code node. Fine for us; not a Sunday-afternoon tool for most owners.

App integrations and the gaps

Zapier claims 8,000+ apps (its own site says anywhere from 8,000 to 9,000 depending on the page). Make lists 3,000+. n8n ships 400+ built-in integrations plus several hundred community nodes.

But the raw count is misleading. Both n8n and Make have proper HTTP modules, so anything with a REST API is reachable — we've connected niche UK property portals and till systems that no platform has a native connector for. Where Zapier's count genuinely matters is the long tail of small SaaS tools where you want a pre-built, pre-authenticated connector and zero fiddling. If your stack is Xero, a CRM, Gmail and a form tool, all three cover you.

The honest gap: some UK-specific tools have thin or ancient connectors everywhere. Always check your two or three critical apps before choosing a platform — not the headline number.

Complex logic, branching and AI steps

n8n wins. Loops, branches, merges, sub-workflows, error workflows, and code when you need it — plus the strongest native AI tooling of the three, with LangChain-based agent nodes, memory, and support for any model provider (including local models, which matters for the GDPR section below). It's also one of the most popular projects on GitHub — around 195,000 stars per n8n's own site — so the community moves fast.

Make handles branching and iteration well; routers and iterators are genuinely good. AI steps exist and work.

Zapier has bolted on paths, tables and AI steps, but complex logic in Zapier always ends up feeling like building a shed out of cutlery. And remember: every extra step is another task on your bill, so complexity literally costs more on Zapier than anywhere else.

Data residency and GDPR

If your workflows carry customer personal data — and lead-capture, CRM and booking flows all do — where that data gets processed matters under UK GDPR.

Zapier is a US company processing data through US infrastructure, so you're relying on the UK–US data bridge and their DPA. Make (Czech-based, part of Celonis) processes in the EU. n8n is a Berlin company with EU cloud hosting — and, uniquely, self-hosted n8n means the data never leaves a server you control. No international transfer, no third processor in the chain, a much shorter conversation with anyone who audits you. For clients in regulated or trust-sensitive sectors, that alone has decided the platform.

When Zapier stops making sense — the £ tipping point

Zapier is fine at the bottom. £15–37/month to never think about servers is a good deal, and the free plan (100 tasks, two-step Zaps only) is a reasonable toe in the water.

The problem is the slope. Task pricing punishes exactly the behaviour automation is supposed to encourage: more steps, more volume. Go over your allowance and Zapier bills overage at 1.25× your base task rate, then pauses your Zaps entirely at 3× your limit — mid-month, when you're busiest.

Our rule of thumb from client work: once you're consistently past ~5,000 tasks a month (roughly £100/month), the migration pays for itself within the year. At that point Make would cost you ~£7–15/month and n8n Cloud ~£17–43. That's £1,000+ a year back for a one-off rebuild.

What migration really costs

Nobody migrates for free, and anyone who tells you it's a one-click export is selling something. Realistically:

• Simple two-to-four-step Zaps: 30–60 minutes each to rebuild and test.
• Complex Zaps (paths, filters, formatters, lookups): half a day each, because you'll also discover the undocumented edge cases the old Zap was silently handling.
• Re-authentication: every connected account needs reconnecting on the new platform. Tedious, not hard.
• Parallel running: run old and new side by side for a week or two before switching off the old one. Skipping this step is how leads go missing.

A typical UK SMB with 15–25 Zaps is a one-to-two-week project. Done professionally, budget roughly £500–£3,000 depending on count and complexity. Against a £100–300/month Zapier bill, the payback maths is rarely worse than 12 months — often under six.

Self-hosting n8n: real running costs and what maintenance actually involves

We self-host n8n in production, so here's the unvarnished version.

The money. The Community Edition is free. A capable VPS — Hetzner's entry cloud servers run €5.49–€7.99/month (about £5–£7); DigitalOcean and UK providers are similar — handles thousands of executions daily. For serious production use you want 4GB of RAM and Postgres rather than the default SQLite, which nudges you to £10–15/month. Add a domain and that's genuinely the whole bill. Total: £5–15/month for what would cost hundreds on Zapier.

The catch — and it's real. Self-hosting means you own:

• Updates. n8n ships releases weekly. You don't need every one, but drift too far behind and upgrades get spicy.
• Backups. Your workflows and credentials live in your database. No backups, no sympathy.
• Uptime. If the server falls over at 2am, no one is coming. Set up monitoring or accept the risk.
• Security. HTTPS, access control, and keeping the box patched are on you.

In practice, once it's set up properly with Docker, it's about an hour a month of care — until the month something breaks, when it's an afternoon. If nobody in your business is comfortable with a terminal, don't self-host unsupported. Either use n8n Cloud (still cheap, zero ops) or have someone like us run it for you as part of a managed workflow automation service — you get self-hosted economics and data residency without adopting a server as a pet.

Is it worth it for a small business? If you're under ~2,500 runs a month and have no data-residency concerns: no, n8n Cloud's £17/month Starter is the better trade. Above that, or if the data must stay in-house: yes, decisively.

Our honest recommendation by business type

• Solo operator or 5-person team, a handful of simple automations, nobody technical: Zapier. Pay the convenience tax, get on with your day. Revisit when the bill crosses £50/month.
• Growing SMB with real volume — marketing ops, lead flows, reporting: Make. Best pound-for-pound value on a hosted platform, and the canvas grows with you.
• Volume-heavy, AI-heavy, or you have technical help on tap: n8n Cloud first, self-hosted once the execution count or the data-sensitivity justifies it.
• Regulated or trust-sensitive sectors (finance-adjacent, health, legal, property): self-hosted n8n. Customer data stays on your infrastructure, full stop.
• Already on Zapier and wincing at the invoice: do the tipping-point maths above. If you're past ~£100/month, the rebuild pays for itself.

And the meta-answer: the platform matters less than the design. A well-built Zapier setup beats a badly-built n8n one every time. The expensive mistake isn't picking the wrong logo — it's automating a broken process faster.

FAQ

Zapier vs Make vs n8n — which one should a small business use?

Zapier if you're non-technical and low volume: easiest to use, priciest per run. Make if you want hosted value: ~£7/month covers 10,000 credits. n8n if you have volume, complex logic or data-residency needs: one execution covers a whole workflow run, and self-hosting is nearly free at any scale.

Is Zapier too expensive, and what are the alternatives?

At low volume, no — £15–37/month is fair for the convenience. Past 5,000 tasks a month (£100+), per-task billing gets painful, and overages bill at 1.25× your rate. The main alternatives for UK businesses are Make (from $9/month for 10,000 credits) and n8n (from €20/month hosted, or free self-hosted).

Is self-hosting n8n worth it for a small business?

Only above roughly 2,500 workflow runs a month, or when customer data must stay on your own infrastructure. The server costs £5–15/month, but you own updates, backups and uptime — about an hour a month when things go well. Below that threshold, n8n Cloud at ~£17/month is the smarter trade.

What does it cost to migrate from Zapier to n8n or Make?

Budget 30–60 minutes per simple Zap and up to half a day per complex one, plus reconnecting every app account and a week or two of parallel running. A typical 15–25-Zap migration done professionally runs roughly £500–£3,000. Against a £100–300/month Zapier bill, payback is usually 6–12 months.

Want it built and maintained for you?

We design, build and run automations on all three platforms — including managed self-hosted n8n where the economics or the data-residency case demands it. If you'd like to know which platform your business should actually be on, and what your current tool stack is quietly costing you, start with our free AI automation audit. We'll do the maths on your real volumes, not the pricing-page fantasy ones.