Zapier vs Make: The 2026 Automation Comparison

Prices as of October 2026. Zapier counts fewer things as usage but charges far more per unit; Make counts more (including trigger checks) at a much lower unit price.

Zapier lists task tiers from 100 to 2 million a month and says yearly billing saves 33%. At your limit, Zapier can switch you to pay-per-task billing at a higher rate, or pause Zaps until the next period. New accounts get a 14-day Professional trial with no card required. Separate Agents plans are still listed: Agents Free (400 activities a month) and Agents Pro at $33.33 a month, billed as $400 a year.

Make lists Core, Pro and Teams starting at 10,000 credits. On annual billing, Core still gets a monthly credit allocation, while Pro and Teams get the whole year's credits up front as one pool. Extra credits cost 25% more than plan credits, bought by hand in multiples of 1,000 or auto-purchased 10,000 at a time. Since November 6, 2025, Core tops out at 300,000 credits a month and Pro at 8 million.

This decides your bill, and most comparisons skip it.

What Zapier charges for

A task is one successful action. Triggers, Filters, Paths, failed actions and built-in tools (Formatter, Delay, Looping, Sub-Zaps, Digest, Storage, Tables, Forms) use no tasks. Since June 15, 2026, AI by Zapier steps are priced by model tier: standard 1 task, advanced 3 and premium 5 per step, with tool calls charged at the same rate. A step that reaches 75 tasks in one run pauses for approval. Zapier MCP uses 2 tasks per tool call.

What Make charges for

Most modules use 1 credit per operation. Triggers use 1 credit per run even when they find nothing new. Action modules use 1 credit per bundle processed. Routers, filters and error handlers are free. Make Code uses 2 credits per second. AI through Make's AI Provider adds token-based credits; with your own OpenAI or Anthropic key (any paid plan), you pay Make for operations and the provider for tokens.

A worked example

A new form entry triggers four actions (CRM, sheet, email, Slack), 500 times a month.

• Zapier: the trigger is free, so 4 x 500 = 2,000 tasks, above the 750-task entry tier.
• Make, instant trigger: 5 credits x 500 = 2,500 credits, inside Core's 10,000.
• Make, polling every 15 minutes: the checks alone add about 2,880 credits a month. Still inside 10,000, but schedules matter.

Add one advanced-tier AI step and the Zap becomes 7 tasks per run, or 3,500 a month.

Solo owner with a few simple automations

Both free plans cover light use, but Zapier's free tier only allows two-step Zaps, so Make's 1,000 credits go further once a flow has several actions.

Non-technical team that needs a niche app

Zapier. With 9,000+ apps against Make's 3,000+, an obscure booking tool or industry CRM is more likely to have a connector. Team adds 25 users, shared Zaps and shared connections.

Branching logic or high volume

Make. Routers and filters are free, the canvas shows every branch, and 10,000 credits for $9 gives far more room than 750 tasks for $19.99. Already hitting Zapier's limits? Our guide to switching from zapier covers other options.

Adding AI to workflows

On Zapier, the model tier multiplies each AI step's task cost. On Make, your own AI provider key keeps AI steps at 1 credit per operation. For background, see what an AI workflow is.

Self-hosting

We did not find a self-hosted edition on Zapier's or Make's pricing pages. That is n8n's niche, covered below and in our n8n vs zapier comparison.

Zapier

• Agents are moving into Zaps. An October 6, 2026 Zapier blog post says agents now live inside a single AI by Zapier step, billed as tasks, with a migration guide for existing agents. The pricing page still lists separate Agents plans.
• One task pool. AI steps, code and the SDK now share the same task-based pricing. The SDK is free in beta.
• Model-tier AI pricing took effect June 15, 2026.
• Canvas, MCP, Agents and Chatbots are listed among Zapier's AI products, with Copilot built into the editor.

Make

• Credits replaced operations as the billing unit in 2025; Make says plan pricing did not change.
• Extra credits moved to a flat 25% premium on November 6, 2025, and own AI provider keys opened to all paid plans.
• Make AI Agent (New) launched February 2, 2026 in open beta, adding sub-agents on July 27 and fallback connections on October 9.
• Maia, an AI co-worker that builds and fixes scenarios, was announced August 12, 2026. It is in beta and uses credits.
• Cycles per run was removed on October 1, 2026, and an official Make plugin for ChatGPT arrived September 9, 2026.

We found no official tool for moving workflows between the two, so switching later means rebuilding by hand.

• Overage. Zapier continues on pay-per-task or pauses. Make stops scenarios, queues incoming webhooks up to its webhook queue limit, and sells extra credits at a 25% premium that expire at the end of the billing cycle.
• Storage. Zapier Tables allows 2,500 records on Free, 100,000 on Professional and 500,000 on Team. Make gives 1 MB of storage per 1,000 credits.
• AI. On both, AI steps draw from the same pool as everything else (Zapier's standalone Agents product still uses a separate activity quota), so check usage dashboards in the first month.

If neither model suits you, see our make alternatives roundup.

• Zapier monthly-billing prices and the price of each higher task tier. Official pages we could read give annual prices only.
• Make's full plan table. We could not read the table on Make's pricing page. Make's comparison page lists Core from $9, Pro from $16 and Teams from $29, and Make says the $9 is on annual billing, but Pro and Teams are not labeled. A June 2026 Make blog lists $12, $21 and $38 a month and says annual billing saves 15% or more, so monthly billing likely costs more.
• Zapier Agents plans. Zapier has not said whether the standalone plans will end.
• Maia and Make AI Agent pricing may change during beta, as Make notes.

We compared Zapier's, Make's and n8n's official pricing pages, help centers, release notes and blogs, all checked on October 23, 2026. n8n prices are in euros as shown on its page. For a wider field, see no code AI automation tools compared.