What counts as a task in Zapier, a credit in Make and an execution in n8n?

Zapier: each successful action step is one task. Triggers, polling, Filter, Formatter, Paths and other built in tools use none, an AI step uses 1, 3 or 5 tasks depending on the model tier, and one MCP tool call uses 2. Make: each module action is one credit, including the trigger module, and the Code app uses 2 credits per second of run time; routers and error handlers are free. n8n: one execution is one full run of a workflow, whatever the number of steps or the amount of data.

Is self hosted n8n really free?

The Community Edition licence is free. Running it is not. You pay for a server (DigitalOcean lists a 2 GiB droplet at $12 a month) and, more importantly, for the hours someone spends on updates, backups, monitoring and fixing broken credentials. At 3 hours a month and $95 an hour that is $285 a month of upkeep, which is more than n8n Pro. Self hosting pays off at high volume, with data residency needs, or when someone already runs servers for you.

What happens when I go over my plan limit?

Zapier switches you to pay per task billing at a higher per task rate, or pauses your Zaps until the next period if you turned that off. Make stops running scenarios when credits run out and queues incoming webhooks; extra credits cost 25% more than plan credits, per Make's November 2025 pricing update. n8n Cloud Starter and Pro have fixed execution allowances; on the self hosted Business plan overage is billed at 4,000 EUR per extra bucket of 300,000 executions.

How do AI steps change the cost?

Two ways. The model tokens themselves cost money on every platform: on n8n and Make you normally bring your own API key and pay the model provider directly. On Zapier, AI by Zapier steps are paid in tasks instead, 1 task on standard models, 3 on advanced and 5 on premium, so an AI heavy Zap can use several times the tasks of a plain one. The calculator prices tokens from my AI model leaderboard and adds them to each platform the way that platform bills them.

Why is there no n8n Cloud price above 10,000 executions?

Because n8n does not publish one. On October 10 2026 the hosted plans were Starter (2,500 executions) and Pro (10,000 executions). Business (40,000 executions, $800 a month billed annually) was listed as self hosted only, and Enterprise is sold by quote. The calculator shows n8n Cloud as quote only above Pro rather than inventing a number.

How does the calculator price Make?

From the credit slider on make.com, read in a browser on October 10 2026. For 10,000 credits a month Core was $10.59 billed monthly or $9 a month billed annually, Pro $18.82 or $16 and Teams $34.12 or $29. Bigger tiers cost less per credit: 300,000 credits on Core was $214.31 a month billed monthly. Core stops at 300,000 credits, so above that the calculator uses the Pro price for your tier, up to 8 million credits. Make changes prices without notice, so check make.com before you commit.

What about Dify and Flowise?

Dify Cloud bills a flat price per workspace with allowances for message credits and trigger events (Professional $59 a month or $590 a year, Team $159 a month or $1,590 a year), and its open source Community edition is free to self host on a server with at least 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of RAM. Flowise is being sunset: its site carries a sunsetting banner and its end of life date was August 31 2026, so I do not price it here or recommend it for new work.

Free tool · prices checked October 10 2026

n8n vs Zapier vs Make: what your workflows will cost each month

The three platforms bill in different units. n8n counts one execution per run, Zapier counts a task for every action step, and Make counts a credit for every module. Describe your workflows once and I price them on all three from the vendors' own pricing pages, including AI steps and what self hosting n8n really costs in upkeep time. Every formula and source is on the page.

Choosing between them on features rather than price? Read my Flowise vs Dify vs n8n comparison and n8n vs Zapier verdict.

Your workflows

Workflows

Steps per run

Count the trigger.

Runs per month, each workflow

Total: 5,000 runs a month. A schedule every 5 minutes is about 8,600 to 8,900 runs (n8n's own sizing example).

Billing

What the steps do

AI steps

15%

Share of the steps after the trigger that call a model.

Code steps

15%

Custom JavaScript or Python.

Filters and formatters

15%

Free on Zapier; a credit each on Make, except routers.

Zapier AI model tier

Tasks per AI step on Zapier: standard 1, your own model 1, advanced 3, premium 5.

Model for token cost

Prices per million tokens from my AI model leaderboard, source checked 2026-10-10.

Tokens in

Tokens out

Code time

Self hosting n8n

Server per month

DigitalOcean lists a 2 GiB droplet at $12 a month (checked 2026-10-10).

Upkeep hours a month

hrs

Updates, backups, monitoring, fixes.

Hourly rate

$/hr

Yours or a contractor's.

Make price

Priced from the credit slider on make.com, read October 10 2026. For 10,000 credits a month: Core $10.59 billed monthly or $9 a month billed annually, Pro $18.82 or $16, Teams $34.12 or $29. Core stops at 300,000 credits, so bigger volumes are priced on Pro. Make pricing

At 5,000 runs a month

n8n Cloud costs least: $52.00 a month.

That is $5 a month less than Make.

n8n executions

Zapier tasks

40K

Make credits

55K

per month, from the counting rules below

Monthly cost and the plan that fits

1
$52.00
2
$57.00
3
$289
4
$299

Platform	Usage	Plan or server	AI tokens	Upkeep	Total
n8n CloudAI tokens billed by your model provider (your own API key).	5,000 executions	$50.00	$2.00	$0	$52.00
n8n self hostedServer plus your upkeep time. No per execution fee; a bigger server is your call as volume grows.	5,000 executions	$12.00	$2.00	$285	$299.00
ZapierModel usage is inside the task count for AI by Zapier steps.	40,000 tasks	$289.00	$0.00	$0	$289.00
MakeCore is the cheapest plan that covers this volume.	55,000 credits	$55.00	$2.00	$0	$57.00

n8n Cloud$52.00

Pro, 10,000 executions, billed annually

Usage: 5,000 executions
Plan or server: $50.00
AI tokens: $2.00
Upkeep: $0

n8n self hosted$299.00

Community Edition, free licence

Usage: 5,000 executions
Plan or server: $12.00
AI tokens: $2.00
Upkeep: $285

Zapier$289.00

Professional, 50,000 tasks, billed annually

Usage: 40,000 tasks
Plan or server: $289.00
AI tokens: $0.00
Upkeep: $0

Make$57.00

Core, 80,000 credits, billed annually

Usage: 55,000 credits
Plan or server: $55.00
AI tokens: $2.00
Upkeep: $0

Cost as runs grow from 1,000 to 1,000,000 a month

Same workflows, more runs. Lines stop where a platform stops publishing prices. Markers show where the cheapest platform changes.

n8n Cloudn8n self hostedZapierMake

n8n Cloud gets cheaper than Make at about 2K runs a month
n8n self hosted gets cheaper than Zapier at about 6.8K runs a month
n8n self hosted gets cheaper than Make at about 29K runs a month

The billing unit

One run: 1 n8n execution, 8 Zapier tasks, 11 Make credits

This is one run of your 8 step workflow, counted the way each vendor bills it. Multiply by 5,000 runs and you get the usage above.

Trigger

AI step

Code step

Formatter or filter

App action

per runn8n

the whole run is 1 execution

1Zapier tasks

free

8Make credits

n8n: executions

One execution is one run of the whole workflow. Step count and data volume do not change it.

n8n, 2026-10-10

Zapier: tasks

Each successful action is a task. The trigger, polling, filters, formatters and paths are free. An AI step is 3 tasks on your chosen tier; a code step is 1. Failed actions do not count.

Zapier, 2026-10-10

Make: credits

Each module action is a credit, the trigger module included. Code uses 2 credits per second, so your 2 second step is 4. Routers and error handlers are free.

Make, 2026-10-10

Make counts filters that sit between modules as free and formatter or iterator modules as a credit. The calculator charges a credit for every filter or formatter step, which is the conservative case. AI tokens: $0.0004 per AI step on Anthropic Claude Haiku 5.5 at your token counts.

Self hosting n8n

Free licence, not a free bill

The Community Edition costs nothing to license. The server is cheap. The hours are not, and they are the part most comparisons leave out.

n8n self hosted$299.00

Server $12.00Upkeep time $285AI tokens $2.00

n8n Cloud (cheapest hosted)$52.00

Plan $50.00AI tokens $2.00

Self hosting beats n8n Cloud only while upkeep stays under 0.4 hours a month at $95 an hour.

What the upkeep hours buy

n8n version upgrades and the occasional breaking node change
Database backups you have actually restored once
Uptime and failed execution alerts
Expired OAuth credentials and rotated API keys
A bigger server, or queue mode with workers, as volume grows

A single small server will not carry a million runs a month. Raise the server price as you move right on the chart.

Server prices for reference

1 GiB, 1 vCPU$6/mo
2 GiB, 1 vCPU$12/mo
2 GiB, 2 vCPU$18/mo
4 GiB, 2 vCPU$24/mo

DigitalOcean Basic Droplets, checked 2026-10-10. Self hosting also unlocks the n8n Business licence ($800 a month billed annually for 40,000 executions) if you need SSO, Git version control or queue mode; the calculator assumes the free Community Edition.

Before you commit

Billing details that change the answer

n8n

Hosted plans stop at Pro, 10,000 executions. Above that it is Enterprise by quote or self hosting.
Starter allows 5 concurrent executions and runs of up to 5 minutes.
Business overage is 4,000 EUR per extra 300,000 executions.
Scheduled workflows count every run, found data or not: every 5 minutes is about 8,600 to 8,900 executions a month.

n8n, checked 2026-10-10

Zapier

Over your tier, pay per task billing kicks in at a higher per task rate, or your Zaps pause.
AI by Zapier steps cost 3 tasks on advanced models and 5 on premium, plus tool calls.
One MCP tool call uses 2 tasks.
Paying monthly costs about half as much again: $283.50 vs $189 for 20,000 tasks.

Zapier, checked 2026-10-10

Make

When credits run out, scenarios stop and webhooks queue until you add credits.
Extra credits cost 25% more than plan credits (Make, November 2025).
Credits expire at the end of the term.
The Free plan allows 2 active scenarios and a 15 minute minimum interval.

Make, checked 2026-10-10

The AI builders

Dify and Flowise, priced where possible

Dify bills by workspace, not by run, so it does not sit on the same chart. Here is what it charges and what it meters.

Dify Cloud

Plan	Per month	Per year	Message credits	Trigger events
Sandbox	Free	Free	200	3,000
Professional	$59	$590	5,000	20,000 / month
Team	$159	$1,590	10,000	Unlimited

Prices per workspace. The self hosted Community edition is free under Dify's open source licence and needs at least 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of RAM (Dify docs), which is the $24 droplet above. Plans: Dify, checked 2026-10-10.

Flowise

Not priced here. Flowise is being sunset: its homepage carried a sunsetting banner on October 10 2026, and its notice set end of life for August 31 2026. I would not start new work on it. My Flowise vs Dify vs n8n post maps where each Flowise feature lives in Dify and n8n.

FlowiseAI, checked 2026-10-10

No black box

Exactly how the numbers are worked out

Runs per month       = workflows x runs per workflow
Action steps         = steps per run minus 1 (the trigger)
AI, code, logic      = action steps x each share, rounded; the rest are app actions

n8n executions       = runs                      (1 per run, any number of steps)
Zapier tasks         = runs x (app actions + AI steps x tier tasks + code steps x code tasks)
                       tier tasks: standard 1, own key 1, advanced 3, premium 5
                       code tasks: 1, plus 1 per 30 s beyond 30 s
Make credits         = runs x (1 trigger + app actions + logic steps + AI steps
                       + code steps x 2 x seconds)

AI token cost        = runs x AI steps x (tokens in x input price + tokens out x output price) / 1,000,000
                       added to n8n and Make, and to Zapier only on the own key tier

n8n Cloud            = smallest plan that covers the executions (Starter 2.5K, Pro 10K), else quote
n8n self hosted      = server + upkeep hours x hourly rate + AI tokens
Zapier               = Free if 2 steps and 100 tasks or fewer, else the smallest
                       Professional tier that covers the tasks (750 to 2M), else quote
Make                 = Free if 1,000 credits and 2 workflows or fewer, else the smallest
                       Core tier that covers the credits (10K to 300K), else the smallest
                       Pro tier (to 8M), at make.com's listed price for your billing, else quote
Crossovers           = 73 volumes from 1,000 to 1,000,000 runs, log spaced; a marker
                       where the cheapest platform changes

The starting values are examples, not a benchmark: five workflows of eight steps running a thousand times a month each, three hours of upkeep a month at $95 an hour, and Claude Haiku 5.5 for the AI steps. Plan prices are the vendors' published list prices on the date shown, before tax, for one seat. Zapier Team, Make Pro or Teams and n8n Business add seats and features at a higher price; this tool prices the entry plan that covers your usage. Replace every number with your own before you decide anything.

Sources

n8n: n8n Plans and Pricing
checked 2026-10-10
USD view. Starter $20/mo billed annually or $24 billed monthly, 2.5K workflow executions. Pro $50 annually or $60 monthly, 10K executions. Business $800 annually or $960 monthly, 40K executions, listed as self hosted only. Enterprise: contact sales. Business overage: "4,000 EUR for extra buckets of 300,000 executions". Community Edition: free, self hosted. Execution: "a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn't matter how many steps are in the workflow". Starter: 5 concurrent executions, 5 min max execution duration.
Zapier: Plans & Pricing
checked 2026-10-10
Professional tier prices read from the task tier slider in a browser, both billing intervals, 750 to 2M tasks. Free: 100 tasks/mo, two step Zaps. Triggers and polling do not use tasks; Filter, Formatter, Paths, Delay, Looping, Sub Zaps, Digest, Storage, Tables and Forms do not use tasks; failed actions do not count. Over the limit: pay per task billing at a higher per task rate, or Zaps pause. One MCP tool call uses two tasks.
Zapier: Task usage rates
checked 2026-10-10
Standard step 1 task. Code step 1 task, plus 1 task per 30 seconds beyond the plan allowance. AI by Zapier per AI step: standard models 1 task, bring your own model 1 task (you pay the provider), advanced models 3 tasks, premium models 5 tasks; tool calls billed separately (3 or 5). MCP tool call 2 tasks. Built in tools 0 tasks.
Zapier Help Center: How is task usage measured in Zapier?
checked 2026-10-10
Only successful action steps count; triggers, Filter and Paths, Formatter, Delay and Looping do not; only the branch of a path that runs is billed.
Make: Pricing & Subscription Packages
checked 2026-10-10
Read in a browser, moving the credit slider through every tier with both billing intervals. Free $0 up to 1,000 credits/mo, 2 active scenarios, 15 minute minimum interval. 10k credits: Core $10.59 monthly or $9/mo billed annually, Pro $18.82 or $16, Teams $34.12 or $29. Core tiers 10k to 300k; Pro and Teams 10k to 8M, then 8M+ by quote. Full tier table in ./pricing.ts. "Each module action in your scenario ... counts as one credit." Make Code App: "2 credits per 1 sec of code execution time". Router and error handler modules: no credits. Out of credits: scenarios stop, webhooks queue. Credits expire at the end of the term. (An earlier pass recorded Core $12, Pro $21, Teams $38; the live page did not show those figures on Oct 10 2026.)
Make Help Center: Credits
checked 2026-10-10
Apps without AI: 1 operation equals 1 credit. Third party AI apps (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini): 1 operation = 1 credit; with a custom AI provider connection "You pay your provider directly for tokens." Make's own AI provider bills by tokens.
Make Help Center: Adjustments to plans and pricing (Nov 6 2025)
checked 2026-10-10
Extra credits "now cost 25% more than credits included in your plan". Core includes up to 300,000 credits per month; Pro up to 8 million.
Dify: Pricing
checked 2026-10-10
Dify Cloud. Sandbox free: 200 message credits, 3,000 trigger events. Professional $59/mo monthly or $590/yr per workspace: 5,000 message credits/mo, 20,000 trigger events/mo, 3 members. Team $159/mo or $1,590/yr per workspace: 10,000 message credits/mo, unlimited trigger events, 50 members. Community (self hosted): free under the Dify open source licence.
Dify docs: Deploy with Docker Compose
checked 2026-10-07
Minimum: CPU 2 cores or more, RAM 4 GiB or more.
FlowiseAI: Flowise sunset notice
checked 2026-10-10
Homepage banner on Oct 10 2026: "We're sunsetting Flowise." Per the sunset notice (read Oct 7 2026): code freeze Jul 29 2026, repository archived Aug 2026, end of life Aug 31 2026.
DigitalOcean: Droplet pricing
checked 2026-10-10
Basic Regular Droplets: 1 GiB / 1 vCPU $6/mo; 2 GiB / 1 vCPU $12/mo; 2 GiB / 2 vCPU $18/mo; 4 GiB / 2 vCPU $24/mo.
Provider pricing pages, via my AI model leaderboard: AI model leaderboard
checked 2026-10-10
Per million token input and output prices, each with its provider URL and check date.

Flowise vs Dify vs n8n

Which AI agent builder to pick now that Flowise is archived.

n8n vs Zapier

The feature and fit comparison behind the numbers on this page.

Make vs n8n for AI agents

How the two handle agents, tools and memory.

Custom workflow automation

When I build the workflow for you, on n8n or in code.

Operations Autopilot

The named agent I deploy for recurring back office work.

AI agent cost calculator

Model and infrastructure cost for a full agent, not a workflow.

Questions

n8n, Zapier and Make pricing, answered

Usually, once a workflow has more than two or three steps, because n8n bills one execution per run however many steps it has, while Zapier bills a task for every successful action step. A run with seven action steps is 1 n8n execution and about 7 Zapier tasks. At very low volume Zapier can still be cheaper because its Professional plan starts at $19.99 a month billed annually for 750 tasks, against $20 a month billed annually for n8n Starter. Put your own numbers into the calculator above to see where the lines cross.

Not sure the platform is the problem?

Send me the share link. I will tell you whether to stay where you are, move platforms, or replace the busiest workflow with a few hundred lines of code, even when the honest answer is to keep paying Zapier.

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