Most comparisons of these two argue about the interface. That is the least important difference. The thing that will actually determine what you pay is how each product counts the work it does for you, and the two answers are not comparable in the way the pricing pages imply.
Zapier meters tasks. n8n meters executions. Those words sound like synonyms and are not: one counts every step inside a workflow, the other counts the workflow. Until you know which of your automations are long, you cannot know which tool is cheaper — and the gap between them is not a few percent.
Choose Zapier if your automations are short, if you need a connector that only Zapier has, or if nobody in the business wants to think about infrastructure. Choose n8n if your workflows run to many steps, if volume is growing, or if you are technical enough to self-host — the per-execution model means a ten-step workflow costs the same as a two-step one, which is precisely where Zapier's bill accelerates. The honest rule: start on Zapier, and revisit the moment a single workflow grows past a handful of steps and runs often.
The picks that stand out
Zapier
The largest connector catalogue of any automation tool. If an obscure app is in your stack, this is where it is supported.
n8n
Billed per workflow run rather than per step, and offers a self-hosted edition, so complexity does not multiply the bill.
The billing unit is the whole decision
Zapier counts a task for each step a workflow performs. A workflow with five actions that fires a hundred times has consumed five hundred tasks. n8n counts one execution for that same workflow run regardless of how many nodes it contains, so the same hundred runs consume a hundred executions. This is why headline prices mislead here: the two products are not selling the same unit, and comparing the numbers directly tells you nothing. Before you choose, count the steps in your three busiest automations and multiply by how often they fire. That arithmetic, not the feature list, is the comparison.
Zapier's free tier is a demonstration; its trial is the real evaluation
Zapier's free plan allows a small monthly task allowance, which is enough to prove that a connection works and not enough to run a business process. New accounts also get a time-limited Professional trial with no card required, and that is the part worth using deliberately: it is the only way to observe your actual task consumption at a realistic volume before you are billed for it. Set up your genuine workflows during the trial rather than toy examples, and read the task counter at the end. Zapier's own documented weakness is that task limits arrive faster than people expect, and premium apps add cost per task on top.
Self-hosting n8n is free software, not free infrastructure
n8n offers a self-hosted Community Edition at no licence cost, and this is genuinely the cheapest way to run high-volume automation. It is not, however, free. You are taking on a server, updates, backups and uptime — and an automation platform is exactly the kind of thing whose failure is silent until someone notices an order was never processed. If your business has somebody who already maintains infrastructure, the saving is real and large. If it does not, price the cloud tier instead and treat the self-hosted option as unavailable, because a broken automation nobody is on call for costs more than the subscription.
What you give up by leaving Zapier
Zapier's catalogue is the largest in the category, and that is the thing you are actually buying. n8n's own documentation is straightforward about having a smaller integration catalogue and a steeper learning curve than the mainstream no-code tools. For a common stack the difference rarely bites; for one niche application it can end the discussion outright. Check that every app you depend on is supported before you migrate anything, and check it against the vendor's current list rather than a comparison article — connector coverage is the fastest-moving fact in this category.
Pricing side by side
| Tool | Verified price | Billing condition | Free | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier | $29.99/mo · Professional | $19.99/month for 750 tasks with yearly billing; $29.99/month with monthly billing | Yes | 12.09.2026 |
| n8n | €24.00/mo · Starter | €24/month billed monthly; €20/month billed annually. The self-hosted community edition stays free | Yes | 13.09.2026 |
Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether I am a heavy user before I have started?
Estimate rather than guess. List the automations you intend to build, count the steps in each, and multiply by how often the trigger will realistically fire in a month. If the total steps per month is comfortably inside a low allowance, the billing model does not matter and you should pick on convenience. If it is not, the model is the only thing that matters.
Where does Make fit between these two?
Make sits between them on both price structure and complexity, which is why it appears in two other comparisons on this site. If you have read this far and neither answer feels right, Make is genuinely the middle option rather than a compromise — our Make versus Zapier and Make versus n8n pages cover each pairing directly.
Is n8n only for developers?
No, but it rewards technical comfort. The visual editor is usable without writing code, and the moment a workflow needs a transformation the interface does not offer, the escape hatch is code. Non-technical users can build in n8n; they will hit a wall sooner and be less able to get past it themselves.
Can I move workflows from one to the other later?
Not automatically. There is no meaningful migration path between automation platforms — workflows are rebuilt by hand. That makes the initial choice stickier than it looks, and it is the best argument for doing the step arithmetic properly at the start rather than switching after the first surprising invoice.
Is n8n better than Zapier for a small business?
It is cheaper and it is not the same trade. n8n is free forever if you self-host, €20 a month if you do not; Zapier is $29.99 month-to-month and meters tasks that run out quickly. The catch our record records plainly: self-hosting means you own the maintenance and the uptime. If nobody on the team wants that job, Zapier's task limit is the cheaper problem.