Zapier vs Make vs N8n, Best Zapier Alternative from Make com, N8N, IFTTT & Workato

A Zapier flow reads top to bottom: trigger, then each action in order. In this example a new Google Forms response triggers a Gmail step that sends an email, and a Google Sheets step then logs the response as a row.

There's no canvas to arrange, which is why beginners get a working automation fastest here. Zapier can branch.

Paths and Filters are included from the Professional plan upward. The Free plan is limited to two-step Zaps (one trigger, one action) and 100 tasks a month.

A task is counted each time an action completes successfully. Triggers, failed actions and built-in tools such as Filter and Formatter don't count.

Make's scenario builder is a free-form canvas. The difference shows once a workflow needs a decision.

This scenario takes a webhook, reads Google Sheets, and hits a Router module that splits into separate paths: one filtered branch sends a Gmail message, another is still waiting for its module. One trigger fanning out into several conditional outcomes is the main reason people move from Zapier to Make.

The same canvas handles longer chains. A scenario named Social Media Comment Responder links a YouTube trigger, a video-info lookup, a Make AI Agents module and a Slack notification.

Make bills in credits. Each module action, such as adding a sheet row or fetching an email, uses one credit.

Make says routers and error handlers don't consume credits. The Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month with a 15-minute minimum interval between scheduled runs.

n8n's Community Edition is free to self-host, so the engine can run on your own server at no licence cost. Its paid cloud plans charge per execution, and n8n defines an execution as one run of the entire workflow, regardless of how many steps it has or how much data it moves.

For long workflows that fire often, this is the biggest cost difference in this comparison. A ten-step workflow is one execution on n8n, but up to ten tasks on Zapier or ten credits on Make.

The tiers in the recording are Starter, Pro, Business and Enterprise. When the page was re-checked in September 2026 it listed Starter at €20 a month (2,500 executions) and Pro at €50 (10,000 executions), both cloud-only and billed annually.

Business came in at €667 a month for 40,000 executions, as a self-hosted plan with SSO and Git version control, and Enterprise was quote-based. The recording showed dollar prices, including $800 for Business, so expect the figure to vary with currency and billing period.

IFTTT is aimed at personal automations: a smart-home event, a social post, a phone notification. The Free plan allows two applets, each with one trigger and one action.

Pro ($2.99 a month billed annually) raises that to 20 applets and allows multiple actions. Pro+ ($8.99 a month billed annually) removes the applet cap and adds queries and filter code for conditional logic.

Runs aren't metered on any tier. The trade-off is depth: there's no team collaboration or the error handling a business workflow needs.

Workato sits at the other end. It targets larger organisations that need governance and integrations across many business systems.

Its pricing page publishes no figures and routes you to a demo request, so budget for a sales conversation and an annual contract, not a card-on-file signup. If your team has no IT or security requirements to satisfy, the other four tools will be cheaper to start with.

A straight trigger-to-action chain points to Zapier, or to IFTTT if it's personal. Heavy branching and routing point to Make.

Long, frequent workflows, or a need to keep data on your own servers, point to n8n, whose per-run billing and free self-hosted edition reward teams willing to manage infrastructure. Before committing, estimate a month of usage in each tool's own unit.

Count the steps in your busiest workflow and multiply by how often it runs. That number means something different on each platform, as the table below shows.