n8n vs Zapier vs Make for AI Agents and Automation (2026)

Who Wins for What

Pick n8n when you are building AI agents you want to own, Zapier when you want the most apps with the least setup, and Make when you want a visual builder at a low entry price. That is the short version. The longer version is that the three platforms charge for different things (executions, tasks and credits), so the same workflow can cost very different amounts on each, and the cheapest option flips depending on how many steps each run contains.

All prices and limits below were read from vendor pages on November 12, 2026, and every figure is date-stamped as of that day. Where a vendor page would not render or did not state a number, we say so instead of filling the gap. If you already use n8n with a coding agent, our Antigravity and n8n integration guide shows the hands-on side; for the wider tool-hub market see best MCP integration platforms.

A third-party side-by-side walkthrough of the three platforms (Marsk AI, YouTube). Not a vendor video; treat its numbers as the creator's own and use the tables below for prices.

Quick Picks

Master Comparison Table

One table, three platforms, every row sourced from a vendor page fetched on November 12, 2026 unless it says third-party. Make's own pricing page rendered without prices when fetched, so the Make paid-plan prices come from a third-party summary (Toolradar, which states its prices were last confirmed on Nov 7, 2026) and are marked accordingly. Check make.com/en/pricing before you buy.

Executions vs Tasks vs Credits

Most of the price difference between the three comes from what each vendor counts. Understand the unit first and the pricing pages stop being confusing.

Two details deserve a warning. First, Zapier overage is expensive: with pay-per-task on, monthly plans pay 2.5 times the base rate per extra task and annual plans pay 1.25 times, and usage pauses at 3 times your subscription until the next cycle. With pay-per-task off, usage simply stops at your limit. Second, Make credits replaced the older operations unit as of August 27, per Make's help center, and when credits run out scenarios stop while incoming webhooks queue up to a limit. Extra credits are sold in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000 and expire.

Worked Cost Examples

These examples use only prices we fetched and state their assumptions. They are arithmetic illustrations, not quotes. Zapier prices are the Pro plan in USD; n8n prices are in euros as shown on its page; Make prices are third-party and approximate.

What the examples show: for example A, n8n Starter at 20 EUR a month is far below Zapier's $129, and Make Core sits in the same low range as n8n. Example B moves the break-even: at 50,000 runs, Zapier's monthly bill climbs past a thousand dollars, and the n8n hosted plans stop fitting (Business covers 40K executions and is self-hosted only), which is exactly where self-hosting Community Edition or an Enterprise quote comes in. Example C is the one most people miss: every MCP call on Zapier costs 2 tasks, so an agent that makes many small tool calls burns the task pool faster than the call count suggests.

One more cost layer applies to all three: LLM tokens. When you bring your own key to n8n or use a third-party AI module in Make with your own connection (1 credit per operation), you pay the model provider separately for tokens. n8n's Starter plan also advertises AI models without API keys and 1,600 Assistant credits a month, and Make's AI Provider bills tokens through credits (its help page gives, for example, 18,080 input and 2,260 output tokens per credit on the Small and Medium tiers using GPT-5 nano, and 3,616 input and 452 output tokens per credit on the Large tier using GPT-5 mini). Zapier does not list AI by Zapier rates on its pricing page; they sit on a separate rates page.

n8n

What it is. n8n is a node-based workflow tool with a hosted cloud and a self-hostable Community Edition. Its AI layer is built from LangChain-style sub-nodes: you add an AI Agent node, attach a chat model and at least one tool, and the agent decides which tool to call. Since n8n 1.82.0 every AI Agent node works as a Tools Agent; the old agent-type setting is deprecated and the v1 node is due to be removed in n8n 3.0.

Pricing (Nov 12, 2026, billed annually). Starter 20 EUR a month with 2.5K executions, 5 concurrent executions, unlimited active workflows and 1,600 Assistant credits a month. Pro 50 EUR a month with 10K executions, up to 50 concurrent executions and unlimited metric-based evaluations. Business 667 EUR a month with 40K executions, self-hosted only. Enterprise is contact sales with 200+ concurrent executions and hosted or self-hosted options. The page shows annual prices only in the text we could read. Max execution duration is 5 minutes on Starter and 40 minutes on Pro and Enterprise; execution log retention is 7 days, 30 days and unlimited respectively.

Strengths. Execution-based billing makes long agent workflows cheap. The MCP Server Trigger node turns n8n into an MCP server and the MCP Client Tool node lets agents call other servers. The Code node supports JavaScript and native Python. You can self-host, so data can stay inside your network. The integrations page lists 2,677 integrations.

Weaknesses. The learning curve is steeper than Zapier. The Community Edition lacks SSO (SAML and LDAP), environments, external secrets, projects, sharing of workflows and credentials, Git-based version control, log streaming, custom variables and multi-main mode; those need a paid license key. Running MCP behind queue mode with multiple webhook replicas needs all /mcp* requests routed to one dedicated replica, and reverse proxies like nginx need buffering disabled. The license is the Sustainable Use License, not an OSI open-source license, so embedding n8n in a product you resell needs legal review.

Best for. Engineering-led teams, agent prototypes that need loops and branching, and anything with data-residency requirements.

Zapier

What it is. Zapier is the incumbent no-code automation tool with the widest app catalog: its pages cite 9,000+ apps. Its AI surface has three parts: AI by Zapier steps inside Zaps, Zapier Agents (autonomous teammates that work across those apps), and Zapier MCP.

Pricing (Nov 12, 2026, USD). Free: 100 tasks a month, unlimited two-step Zaps, 15-minute polling, basic access to Agents (400 activities a month) and MCP. Professional ranges from 750 tasks at $19.99 a month billed annually ($29.99 monthly) up to 2,000,000 tasks; 2,000 tasks is $49 annual or $73.50 monthly, 10,000 is $129 or $193.50, and 100,000 is $489 or $733.50. Team starts at 2,000 tasks for $69 annual or $103.50 monthly with 25 seats, 1-minute polling and SAML SSO. Enterprise is custom. Professional adds multi-step Zaps, premium apps, webhooks, 2-minute polling and AI by Zapier.

Strengths. The app catalog and the lowest learning curve. MCP is included on every plan and the vendor states SOC 2 Type II certification, per-app and per-action access controls and a History log of MCP actions. App credentials stay in Zapier's managed connection layer rather than being passed to the model. IT admins can disable MCP per workspace.

Weaknesses. Task billing punishes long workflows and agent loops, overage rates are steep, and there is no self-hosting. Code by Zapier includes only 1 second of runtime per step on Free and 30 seconds on Pro and Team. Zapier's MCP page cites both 66,000+ actions and 30,000+ actions for the same 9,000+ apps in different places, so treat the action count as approximate. Next Gen Zaps are in early access and free to run until billing starts on December 1, 2026.

Best for. Operations, marketing and sales teams who want agents and automations across many SaaS tools without running any infrastructure.

Make

What it is. Make is a visual scenario builder where you drag modules onto a canvas and wire them with routers, iterators and aggregators. Its AI layer includes Make AI Agent (New), where you define instructions, knowledge and tools (modules, scenarios and MCP tools), plus an MCP Server and an MCP Client. Make's help center marks the earlier AI Agents guide as superseded by the newer version.

Pricing. From Make's own pages we could verify only the Free plan: 1,000 credits a month, 1 MB of data storage and 1 data store. The paid plans are Core, Pro and Teams, plus Enterprise. A third-party summary (Toolradar, last confirmed Nov 7, 2026) lists Core at $12 a month billed annually or $16 monthly, Pro at $21 or $28, and Teams at $38 or $51, each with 10,000 credits a month. We could not confirm these on Make's own page because it rendered without prices. A start-up discount of 50 percent off Business is mentioned for organizations under 20 employees.

Strengths. A strong visual canvas for branching logic, a low entry price, free Router and error handler modules, and MCP on every plan according to Make's MCP page. The MCP Server exposes active, on-demand scenarios as tools, supports OAuth and API-key access, and uses stateless streamable HTTP. Its pages cite GDPR, SOC 2 and SOC 3 compliance.

Weaknesses. Credits are harder to predict because a single scenario run can cost from 2 credits to thousands, and AI Provider credit rates are subject to change. MCP tool calls time out at 25 seconds on scenario run tools with OAuth (40 seconds with an API key); a timed-out scenario keeps running for up to 40 minutes. Help docs warn that multiple MCP servers and tools can drive high AI token usage. Pages disagree on counts and plans: the MCP page cites both 3,500+ integrations and 3,000+ native apps, and a Make blog post describes the MCP Client as available on paid plans while the MCP page says all plans. We could not verify code-step limits from a first-party page.

Best for. Teams that think in flowcharts and want branching, iterators and aggregation on a small budget, with agents as one part of the scenario.

AI Agents Head to Head

All three can now put a language model in a loop with tools. The differences are in how much of that loop you control and how the loop is billed.

In practice: n8n exposes the agent as nodes, so you can inspect each tool call in the execution view, swap chat models, and attach evaluations to test changes. Zapier's agents are managed teammates; you configure instructions and tools, and billing for agents runs through a separate activity pool instead of tasks. Make's agent runs inside a scenario, so the agent's tool choices sit next to deterministic modules you already built. There is no neutral public benchmark that compares agent quality across the three platforms, because the model you attach drives most of the result.

MCP Support

The Model Context Protocol lets an assistant like Claude or ChatGPT call tools. Automation platforms matter here because they can turn thousands of SaaS actions into tools. For the broader market see best MCP integration platforms, and for ready-made servers see top MCP servers.

n8n note: the MCP Client Tool page we read names only an SSE endpoint, while the Server Trigger page names SSE and streamable HTTP; check the node version you run. n8n also notes that claude.ai asks users to sign in even when authentication is set to None.

Self-Hosting and Code Steps

Self-hosting. Only n8n offers it. Docker Compose is the recommended route for production, with a one-line setup script for local trials; npm installs are deprecated from n8n 3.0. Community Edition has no license fee (the pricing page lists no price for it), but you pay for the server, backups and upgrades. If you need a box for it, our AI agent hosting platforms guide covers the options. A minimal Compose file looks like this (check the n8n docs for the current image tag and required environment variables before using it):

services:
  n8n:
    image: docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n
    ports:
      - "5678:5678"
    volumes:
      - n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n
volumes:
  n8n_data:

Code steps. n8n's Code node runs JavaScript on Node.js and native Python (stable in n8n 2; the Pyodide option was removed in 2.0) in Run Once for All Items or Run Once for Each Item mode. It cannot access the file system or make HTTP requests directly; use the HTTP Request node. Self-hosted instances can enable external npm modules; n8n Cloud allows only crypto and moment, and no Python imports. Zapier's Code by Zapier includes 1 second of runtime per step on Free, 30 seconds on Pro and Team, and 2 minutes on Enterprise, with extra runtime billed in 30-second blocks at 1 task each. For Make we could not verify a code-step page, so we do not claim limits.

Alternatives

• Pipedream. Developer-first with code steps. Free for development with full API, SDK and MCP access; Startup is $99 a month billed annually ($150 monthly) with 10,000 usage credits, where each action or MCP tool call uses 1 credit per 30 seconds of compute. Production use needs Startup.
• Activepieces. Describes itself as open source with TypeScript pieces. Free plan with 1,000 credits a month; Plus $20 a month with 10,000 credits; Team $200 a month with 50,000 credits; unlimited flows on every plan. We could not confirm its license from the pricing page.
• Gumloop. An AI-first workflow builder with an API and MCP server linked from its site. We could not retrieve plan prices, so we do not list any.

For connector-heavy agent work without building workflows at all, see best MCP integration platforms; for code-first agents instead of visual flows, see best AI agent frameworks.

How to Choose

A simple procedure: count the billable steps in your busiest workflow, multiply by monthly runs, price that against each unit, then add LLM token cost. If the Zapier task count is more than about three times the n8n execution count, run the n8n comparison seriously. Start on the free tiers (Make Free, Zapier Free) to prototype, then price the real workload.

How We Compared

We read each vendor's pricing, docs and MCP pages on November 12, 2026 and recorded exact figures. There is no paid placement and no affiliate link in this comparison. We did not run our own benchmarks because no neutral public benchmark exists for cross-platform agent quality, and cost depends on your workflow shape. Where a page failed to render (Make's pricing and several Make help pages returned no prices) we used a clearly labeled third-party summary or left the cell as unverified.

FAQ

Sources

All fetched November 12, 2026.

• n8n pricing
• n8n integrations
• n8n docs: advanced AI
• n8n docs: AI Agent node
• n8n docs: MCP Server Trigger
• n8n docs: MCP Client Tool
• n8n docs: Code node
• n8n docs: Community Edition features
• n8n docs: hosting
• n8n LICENSE.md (Sustainable Use License)
• Zapier pricing
• Zapier MCP
• Zapier Agents
• Make pricing (rendered without plan prices)
• Make help: credits
• Make help: MCP tools for AI agents
• Make help: Make AI Agents
• Make MCP Server and Client
• Make developers: MCP server
• Toolradar: Make pricing (third-party, prices confirmed Nov 7, 2026)
• Pipedream pricing
• Activepieces pricing
• Gumloop pricing page (no plan data retrievable)
• Marsk AI: Make vs n8n vs Zapier side by side (YouTube)