Zapier vs Make vs n8n: Which Automation Tool Suits a Small Business?

Every small business has a handful of jobs that are nothing but moving information from one place to another. A web enquiry lands and someone copies it into the CRM. An invoice is paid and someone updates the spreadsheet. A form comes in and someone sends the same welcome email they sent yesterday.

An automation tool does those jobs for you. It watches one app for an event, then does something in another. Three names come up every time: Zapier, Make and n8n. They all connect the apps you already use, they all now have AI steps and agents built in, and they all let you start free.

They are not the same product. They charge in different ways, they suit different people, and each has a catch we have checked. This guide draws on our own reviews of the three, the vendors' current plan pages, and the licence that governs running n8n yourself, with the sources linked at the end.

Quick answer: Zapier if nobody on your team is technical and you want the fastest start with the widest range of apps. Make if you are happy to spend an afternoon learning a visual canvas in exchange for more automation per dollar. n8n if someone on your team can look after a server, or you want your data to stay on infrastructure you control. Whichever you pick, count how often your automations will run before you choose a plan, because that is what you pay for.

How each one charges you

This is the difference that decides most small-business cases, and it is easy to miss on a pricing page.

Zapier bills by task. Every successful action step in an automation counts. A two-step Zap that fires a hundred times uses a hundred tasks. A six-step Zap that fires a hundred times uses five hundred. From our review: a long automation that runs often can use up your allowance quickly, and the free plan only allows two-step automations without premium apps.

Make bills by operation. Each module that runs is one credit, with routers and error handlers not counted. The same pattern applies: a long scenario running often costs more than a short one running rarely. From our review: the free plan runs on a slow schedule, so anything that needs to react within minutes needs a paid plan.

n8n bills by execution. One run of a workflow is one execution, however many steps it has. That is why teams with long, busy workflows tend to land on n8n, and why its cloud plans include unlimited users and workflows and gate the number of runs instead. From our review: the self-hosted version is free to run but not free to maintain, and some business features such as single sign-on sit on paid plans.

So the first question is not "which is cheapest" but "what shape are my automations". Many short ones that fire occasionally suit Zapier. A few long ones that fire constantly suit n8n. Make sits in between.

The three, in our words

Zapier

Zapier is the one to start with if nobody on the team writes code and you want the automation working this afternoon. It connects more apps than the other two, the editor is a form rather than a canvas, and the vendor's AI assistant will draft an automation from a chat message. Paid plans add multi-step automations, premium apps, filters and paths, faster checking for new events, and team features such as shared workspaces.

The catch: the per-task billing. It is the simplest model to understand and the easiest to blow through. Before you pay, count the steps in each automation and multiply by how often it will fire in a month. Zapier's plan page also does not say where your data is hosted, so ask if that matters to you.

Make

Make is a visual canvas. Each automation is a scenario drawn as modules joined by lines, with branches, filters and error handling you can see. For anyone who thinks in flowcharts it is the clearest of the three, and it generally gives you more automation for the same money than Zapier. The vendor hosts on AWS in Europe and North America, offers AI agents and an AI assistant that builds scenarios from a description, and sells paid plans that remove the limit on active scenarios and let you schedule runs down to the minute.

The catch: it takes longer to learn than Zapier, and the free plan's slow schedule and small monthly allowance run out quickly once a scenario is doing real work. Budget a few hours to get comfortable, and expect to move to a paid plan as soon as an automation matters.

n8n

n8n is the technical choice, and the one that changes the cost model. You can run it on your own server or in the vendor's cloud. It supports custom code inside a workflow, has the most developed AI agent features of the three, and the hosted version keeps data in the European Union, on servers in Frankfurt. Self-hosted, your data stays wherever you put it.

The catch: "free to self-host" means free to download, not free to run. Someone has to install it, keep it updated, back it up and notice when it stops. If that person is you, and you are also running the business, the hosted plans are the honest comparison. The vendor's licence also matters, so it gets its own section.

What "free to self-host" actually allows

n8n's self-hosted edition is released under its own licence, not a standard open-source one. The licence text says you may use or modify the software "only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use". For a small business automating its own work, that is a yes. What it does not allow is offering n8n to other people as a hosted service, or white-labelling it.

Where it gets grey is agencies. The licence does not say whether a consultancy building workflows on its own n8n server for clients counts as internal use. If an agency proposes to run your automations on their n8n, ask where the instance lives and who holds the licence. The clean answers are: on your server, or on n8n's cloud under your account. That is general information, not legal advice.

When to hand it to an agency instead

All three tools are sold as something you set up yourself, and for a two-step automation that is true. The point at which a business should stop building and start briefing is usually one of these:

• The automation touches money or customers. An invoice workflow or a lead-response flow that fails quietly costs more than an agency's day rate. We wrote about this in the hidden costs of AI automation.
• You need more than two apps to agree. Once a workflow needs data cleaned, matched and routed, the tool choice matters less than the design, and design is what you are paying an agency for.
• Nobody owns it. Automations need an owner who checks the error log. If that person does not exist, an agency with a maintenance retainer is cheaper than the quiet failure.

What drives the cost of AI automation walks through what an agency quote should contain. The agencies on Find AI Now list which tools they build on, so you can match the tool you want to someone who works in it.

What to check before you pay

• Your actual apps. Integration counts are marketing. Open each tool's app list and check the five apps your business lives in, including the Australian ones (your accounting package, your payment provider, your booking tool).
• Runs per month. Count the events that will trigger each automation. That number, times the steps, is your Zapier task bill. The number of runs alone is your n8n execution bill.
• How fast it needs to react. Free plans check for new events every several minutes. A lead-response automation needs faster than that, which means a paid plan on any of the three.
• Where the data goes. Make says Europe and North America. n8n's cloud says Frankfurt, or your own server. Zapier's plan page does not say. If you handle health, legal or financial records, this question comes before price.
• Who fixes it at 7am. Every automation breaks eventually, usually because an app changed something. Decide now whether that is you, a staff member or an agency.

Where to start

• See the three side by side on our compare page, with the catch for each.
• Browse the rest of the automation and workflow tools we review, including the ones built around AI agents.
• If the job is bigger than a two-step automation, the Concierge takes your situation and shortlists tools and agencies that build on them.

Sources checked on 12 October 2026: the plan pages for Zapier, Make and n8n; the n8n licence; and the vendors' own comparison pages, including Zapier on n8n and Make and n8n on Make and Zapier, read with the understanding that each favours its author.