Zapier vs Make(2026)
Zapier is better for teams that need largest integration catalog. Make is the stronger choice if much cheaper than zapier. Zapier is freemium (from $19.99/mo) and Make is freemium (from $9/mo).
Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.
By Bikram NathLast updated
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Zapier
Zapier connects your apps and automates repetitive tasks with multi-step workflows called Zaps. With 6,000+ integrations, it is the go-to no-code automation platform for business teams.
Starting at $19.99/mo
Visit ZapierMake
Make (formerly Integromat) offers a visual canvas for building complex multi-step automations with advanced data manipulation, error handling, and branching logic — at a fraction of Zapier's cost.
Starting at $9/mo
Visit MakeHow Do Zapier and Make Compare on Features?
| Feature | Zapier | Make |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | $19.99/mo | $9/mo |
| 6,000+ app integrations | ✓ | — |
| Multi-step Zaps | ✓ | — |
| Conditional logic (Filters/Paths) | ✓ | — |
| Built-in storage (Tables) | ✓ | — |
| AI actions | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduled triggers | ✓ | — |
| Visual workflow canvas | — | ✓ |
| 1,500+ integrations | — | ✓ |
| Complex data mapping | — | ✓ |
| Error handling routes | — | ✓ |
| HTTP module | — | ✓ |
| Scenario scheduling | — | ✓ |
Zapier Pros and Cons vs Make
Zapier
Make
Deep dive: Zapier
When to choose Zapier
Zapier is the right pick when the team needs to connect SaaS tools quickly without writing code, and the integration catalog matters more than cost efficiency. It dominates when the workflow involves linking mainstream apps like Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Gmail, and Shopify, because its 6,000-plus integration library is roughly four times the size of Make and fifteen times larger than n8n. Non-technical operations teams, marketing managers, and sales ops professionals who need to build workflows autonomously without filing engineering tickets will find Zapier the most accessible option. The natural-language AI builder introduced in 2025 further lowers the bar. It is also the safest choice when reliability is non-negotiable: Zapier has the most mature execution infrastructure, with clear retry logic, error alerting, and audit trails. Choose it when the cost of a failed automation, such as a missed CRM update or a dropped lead notification, exceeds the monthly platform fee. Avoid Zapier when the use case involves complex data transformations, branching logic across dozens of steps, or when the team runs tens of thousands of tasks per month, because the per-task pricing model becomes the dominant cost center. At that volume, Make or self-hosted n8n will be significantly cheaper.
Real-world use case
A 15-person B2B SaaS startup uses Zapier to connect their entire go-to-market stack without a dedicated ops engineer. New signups from the Next.js app hit a webhook Zap that creates a HubSpot contact, posts a Slack notification in the sales channel, adds the user to a Loops onboarding email sequence, and logs the event to a Google Sheet for the weekly board report. The multi-step Zap takes about 20 minutes to build using the visual editor. The tradeoff: at 2,000 new signups per month, each triggering a 4-step Zap, the team burns 8,000 tasks monthly. On the Starter plan at .99 per month with 750 tasks included, the overage charges push the real cost to roughly per month. The same workflow in Make would run for per month because Make counts operations differently and offers far more generous task quotas. The team stays on Zapier because the HubSpot integration works without any custom mapping, whereas in Make the same integration requires manual field mapping for every custom property.
Hidden gotchas
Task counting is the single biggest billing surprise. Zapier counts every action step as one task, so a 5-step Zap triggered once consumes 5 tasks. This is fundamentally different from Make, which counts operations but gives each plan many more of them, and from n8n, which charges per workflow execution regardless of step count. Teams that build multi-step Zaps without modeling the task consumption end up exceeding their plan limit within the first billing cycle. Filter steps do not consume tasks when they stop the workflow, but the trigger step that preceded the filter already consumed one. The 15-minute polling interval on the free and Starter plans means time-sensitive workflows can have up to a 14-minute delay. Instant triggers via webhooks are available on all plans for apps that support them, but not all integrations offer webhook triggers, and the fallback is always polling. Data transformation in Zapier is limited: there is a Formatter step and a Code step (JavaScript or Python), but the Code step has a 10-second execution timeout and no access to external packages. Teams that need to parse complex JSON, merge arrays, or run regex-heavy transformations hit this wall quickly and end up chaining multiple Formatter steps that each consume a task. Zapier Tables, introduced as a lightweight database, has a 50,000-row limit and does not support joins, making it a poor substitute for a real database despite how it is marketed.
Pricing breakdown
The free plan allows 100 tasks per month with single-step Zaps only. The Starter plan at .99 per month includes 750 tasks and multi-step Zaps. The Professional plan at per month includes 2,000 tasks with conditional logic (Paths and Filters). The Team plan at .50 per user per month includes 2,000 shared tasks. A realistic small-team workload of 5,000 tasks per month with Paths and Filters requires the Professional plan at per month base, plus roughly for the 3,000 task overage, totaling around per month. The same workload on Make would cost per month on the Core plan, which includes 10,000 operations. On self-hosted n8n, the only cost is the server, typically to per month on Railway or DigitalOcean.
Deep dive: Make
When to choose Make
Make is the right choice when the team needs Zapier-level integration breadth at a fraction of the cost, and when workflows involve non-trivial data transformations, branching, or error handling. Its visual canvas with drag-and-drop modules, routers, and iterators makes complex multi-path workflows significantly easier to build and debug than the equivalent in Zapier, which flattens everything into a linear step chain. Make is strongest for teams that sit between no-code users and full developers: comfortable enough to map JSON fields and write basic expressions, but not wanting to manage infrastructure. The built-in HTTP module and JSON parser mean most API integrations that lack a native module can still be wired up without external tools. Choose Make when the workflow complexity or task volume would make Zapier prohibitively expensive. Avoid it when the team is entirely non-technical and needs the simplest possible UX, or when the integration catalog must include niche vertical SaaS tools that only Zapier supports.
Real-world use case
An e-commerce team running a Shopify store uses Make to automate order fulfillment notifications, inventory sync, and customer feedback collection. A new order triggers a scenario that branches based on shipping destination: domestic orders route to a local 3PL API via HTTP module, international orders route to a different fulfillment partner. Both branches then update a Google Sheet inventory tracker, send a WhatsApp notification to the warehouse team via the Twilio module, and create a follow-up email in Brevo scheduled for 7 days post-delivery. The scenario has 12 modules across 3 branches and runs approximately 3,000 times per month. On Make Core at per month with 10,000 operations, this is comfortably within plan. The equivalent Zapier setup would consume roughly 36,000 tasks per month at 12 steps per trigger, pushing the cost past per month. The tradeoff: the initial build took the team about 4 hours compared to a likely 2 hours in Zapier, because Make requires explicit data mapping between modules where Zapier automatically surfaces fields from previous steps.
Hidden gotchas
Operations counting differs from Zapier tasks but is not always cheaper in edge cases. Each module execution counts as one operation, including filters that stop the flow. However, iterators that loop over an array count one operation per array element per downstream module, which can cause a single webhook trigger to consume hundreds of operations if it processes a list. Teams that automate batch events like processing all line items in an order must model the operation count as trigger_count multiplied by average_items multiplied by modules_after_iterator. The visual editor, while powerful, has a learning curve: routers, aggregators, and iterators are concepts that do not exist in Zapier and require understanding data flow rather than just connecting apps. Error handling routes are a major differentiator but must be explicitly configured per module. Without them, a module failure silently stops the scenario branch, and the team discovers missing data hours later. The built-in data store is limited to 10,000 rows on most plans and uses a proprietary query interface rather than SQL. Webhook response timing is tight: if a webhook trigger needs to return a response to the calling system, the entire scenario must complete within 40 seconds. Complex scenarios that exceed this window require an asynchronous pattern with a separate confirmation webhook, which the documentation mentions but does not walk through clearly.
Pricing breakdown
The free plan includes 1,000 operations per month and 2 active scenarios. The Core plan at per month includes 10,000 operations and unlimited active scenarios. The Pro plan at per month includes 10,000 operations plus priority execution and full-text log search. A team running 10 scenarios averaging 500 executions per month with 5 modules each consumes 25,000 operations monthly, requiring the Core plan with an add-on pack or the Teams plan at per month with 10,000 base operations plus purchased operation packs at per additional 10,000. Total cost would land around per month. The same workload on Zapier Professional would cost approximately per month in tasks.
Should You Use Zapier or Make?
For most teams, Zapier is the better default: it offers largest integration catalog and is freemium (from $19.99/mo). Choose Make instead if much cheaper than zapier matters more than expensive at scale. There is no universal winner — the right pick depends on your budget, team size, and whether you value largest integration catalog or much cheaper than zapier more.
Choose Zapier if…
- •Largest integration catalog
- •No-code friendly
- •Reliable execution
Choose Make if…
- •Much cheaper than Zapier
- •Powerful data transformation
- •Visual debugger