Zapier starts lean: ₹800/month gets you 100 tasks. That looks reasonable until you hit production. Run 20 multi-step automations across CRM, invoicing, and messaging—exactly what a 10-person team needs—and you're at 2,000 tasks monthly. Your bill just jumped to ₹4,000. Make's flat tier covers 10x that volume for the same ₹800. n8n self-hosted covers unlimited tasks for the cost of a second coffee. The pricing model, not the feature set, is the trap. How Zapier's task counting works—and where it compounds One Zapier task = one step in one trigger. A CRM sync that (1) listens for new leads, (2) looks up the contact in your email, (3) posts to WhatsApp, and (4) creates an invoice is four tasks. A basic lead-to-invoice workflow hits six to eight tasks per trigger alone. Multiply that by 20-30 active workflows, and you're already at 200-300 tasks monthly—and you've barely scaled. Here's the compounding problem: you don't pay for task runs linearly. Zapier charges per task per run. If a workflow runs 100 times monthly, that's 100 × (number of steps) = your bill. Invoice routing workflow: Trigger on new invoice → check GL code → route to team member → log in CRM → send confirmation email = 5 tasks. At 200 invoices monthly: 200 × 5 = 1,000 tasks. Cost: ₹800. WhatsApp lead capture: Trigger on form submission → send WhatsApp to salesperson → log in CRM → create deal = 4 tasks. At 500 leads monthly: 500 × 4 = 2,000 tasks. Cost: ₹1,600. CRM-to-accounting sync: Trigger on deal won → create invoice → sync GL account → update contact with confirmation = 4 tasks. At 200 deals monthly: 200 × 4 = 800 tasks. Cost: ₹640. Total: 3,800 tasks. Total cost: ₹3,040 before you add any error-handling, conditional logic, or retry paths. Add those (which you need in production), and you're at ₹4,000+. The per-task model punishes workflow complexity. A single conditional branch doubles your task count. Error handlers and retries triple it. Make's flat-tier model: 200K tasks for the same price Make's Standard plan costs ₹800/month and includes 200,000 operations (their term for tasks). That's a 250x difference in volume ceiling. The same three workflows above run on Make: Invoice routing: 200 × 5 operations = 1,000 operations. WhatsApp lead capture: 500 × 4 operations = 2,000 operations. CRM-to-accounting sync: 200 × 4 operations = 800 operations. Total: 3,800 operations on Make's ₹800/month plan. You have 196,200 operations left before you hit the ceiling. If you add conditional branches, error handling, and retry logic, you're still well under 50,000 operations monthly—still on the ₹800 tier. Make's pricing only escalates when you hit 200K operations. At 500K operations monthly, you move to the Pro tier (₹1,600/month). Zapier's ₹4,000 plan only covers 300,000 tasks, so Make Pro still undercuts you by 67% at the same volume. n8n self-hosted: ₹0 per operation, fixed infrastructure cost n8n's self-hosted model flips the equation entirely. You run the platform on your own server—AWS, DigitalOcean, or on-premise infrastructure—and pay only for compute, not per automation. DigitalOcean App Platform: ₹2,500–₹5,000/month for the base tier (covers thousands of workflows). AWS EC2 (t3.medium): ₹3,000–₹4,000/month. On-premise: initial setup + your team's time, then ₹0 per workflow. If you run those three workflows on n8n for ₹3,500/month infrastructure, you've paid once. Add 50 more workflows, 100 more, 1,000 more—the cost doesn't move. Zapier at that scale would be ₹15,000–₹20,000/month. Make would hit ₹3,200/month (Pro tier, 500K operations). The trade-off: n8n requires a developer or engineer to set up, maintain, and troubleshoot. Zapier and Make are no-code. If your team is non-technical, the support cost of n8n can erase its infrastructure savings. If you have an engineer already, n8n wins decisively. Real-world TCO: 10-person SaaS team, three core workflows Assume your team runs exactly those three automations: invoice routing (200/month), lead capture (500/month), and CRM-accounting sync (200/month), plus error handling, retries, and conditional branches that add 30% overhead. Platform Task/Operation Count Monthly Tier Monthly Cost Annual Cost Zapier 4,940 (3,800 + 30%) ₹3,200 (Starter → Premium) ₹3,200 ₹38,400 Make 4,940 ₹800 (Standard, 200K ceiling) ₹800 ₹9,600 n8n Self-Hosted Unlimited DigitalOcean App Platform (₹3,500) ₹3,500 ₹42,000 Zapier costs 4x Make over 12 months. But here's the hidden factor: at ₹3,200/month on Zapier, you're spending 40% of the cost of a junior engineer. That engineer could build integrations once and let them run freely on n8n. The ROI flips at 10 months of Zapier's premium tier. When Zapier still makes sense Zapier's no-code simplicity wins in three scenarios: Tiny operations: Fewer than 500 tasks monthly. Zapier's ₹800/month starter is genuinely unbeatable for five to ten simple automations. Zero technical depth: If your team has no engineers and no budget for one, Zapier's ease of use justifies the overhead.