Zapier charges ₹800 a month for 100 tasks. Most people don't hit that. But the moment you build 20–30 workflows in a mid-market business—intake automation, invoice routing, contact sync, team alerts—you're bumping into the ceiling. By 2000 tasks, Zapier's bill climbs to ₹4,000. Make and n8n offer flatter structures that stay under ₹1,200 at the same scale. The difference is not a spreadsheet fiction; it's real, and it decides which platform lives in your tech stack. This is not a 'Zapier is bad' argument. Zapier is the fastest to connect two systems without code. But at scale, per-task pricing creates a cost cliff that catches most growing teams by surprise. How Zapier's per-task model actually scales Zapier's free tier gives you 100 tasks per month. Upgrade to Starter (₹800/month), and you get 750 tasks. Professional (₹2,400) unlocks 3,000 tasks. Business (₹4,000) adds 5,000 tasks. A 'task' in Zapier's math is one successful operation—a record created, an email sent, a Slack message posted. Retry attempts and error paths count, too. The math looks straightforward until you map a real workflow. Example: Lead intake + CRM sync + Slack notification Lead lands on a form (1 trigger) Lead created in CRM (1 task) Slack alert sent to team (1 task) If 1,000 leads/month, that's 3,000 tasks Add three more lightweight workflows (email routing, invoice logging, team reminders), and you're at 6,000–8,000 tasks At 6,000 tasks/month, you're already past Starter (750 limit) and past Professional (3,000 limit). You need the Business plan: ₹4,000/month. Most mid-market teams never plan task count in advance. They build workflows one by one, then hit the ceiling and scramble to upgrade—or they architect around limits and slow down their automation. Make's flat tier: Where the math flips Make (formerly Integromat) charges flat tiers based on operations, not tasks. A Standard plan (around ₹400–600/month) includes 10,000 operations, and every workflow runs on that same pool. Unlike Zapier, Make counts one operation per trigger + action, not per task. A Zapier 'task' that creates a record and sends a notification counts as two tasks in Zapier; it counts as two operations in Make, too. But Make's definition is more predictable because there's no retry penalty baked in. Same example (lead intake + CRM sync + Slack) under Make Lead form trigger (1 operation) CRM create (1 operation) Slack message (1 operation) For 1,000 leads/month: 3,000 operations Three more workflows: ~6,000 operations total At 6,000 operations/month, you stay on Make's Standard plan (10,000 operations included). Cost: ₹400–600/month. Zapier cost at the same scale: ₹4,000. The difference compounds if you're heavy on retry logic, error handling, or conditional branches. Zapier charges per execution; Make charges per operation in a single flat tier. n8n's open-source escape hatch n8n is different. It's a self-hosted or cloud-hosted workflow engine. The open-source version is free; the managed cloud version (n8n Cloud) costs roughly ₹600–1,200/month depending on execution volume. n8n doesn't have task limits. You pay for workflow executions, but scaling is linear and transparent. At 10,000 executions/month, you're on their Standard tier (around ₹700/month). No surprises. The catch: n8n has a smaller integration library than Zapier or Make. If your workflow stack sits on Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and Stripe, n8n covers you. If you need obscure accounting software or a legacy business system, Zapier's 6,000+ integrations win. n8n has ~400 nodes out of the box, and the community fills gaps. For teams that can self-host or don't mind managing cloud infrastructure, n8n offers the deepest customization and no per-task tax. For everyone else, it's overkill. Integration breadth and setup time—the hidden cost Zapier's dominance rests on speed. You can connect two systems without writing a line of code. Most integrations work in minutes. Make and n8n require more configuration. If your CRM's webhook is non-standard, or your data transformation requires a multi-step conditional, Make and n8n demand more hands-on time. For teams with engineering talent, that's fine. For teams without, Zapier's simplicity is worth paying for—up to a point. A fair comparison accounts for setup effort: Zapier: Setup time ≈ 5 minutes per workflow. Ongoing cost at scale: high. Make: Setup time ≈ 15–20 minutes per workflow (more config, more logic). Ongoing cost at scale: 80% cheaper than Zapier. n8n: Setup time ≈ 30+ minutes per workflow (or more if self-hosted). Ongoing cost: lowest, but only if infrastructure is already managed. If you're building five workflows and staying small forever, Zapier's ₹400/month tier is unbeatable per-minute-of-setup. If you're building 30+ workflows and your team is growing, Make's flat ₹600/month beats Zapier's ₹4,000 by ₹3,400 every month. The 15-minute extra setup per workflow pays for itself in week one. When Zapier still makes sense Zapier wins in three scenar