Zapier costs $0.99 per task. A task is a single operation—one API call, one data transformation, one conditional branch. At ten tasks per workflow, twenty workflows, across a team, that math starts to scare your CFO. The moment you hit 100–150 automation steps per month, the conversation shifts. Not whether automation is worth it—it always is—but whether you're paying the right vendor. Zapier, n8n, Make, and building native integrations each win under different conditions. Your job is to find yours. Zapier's per-task math hits the ceiling at scale Zapier's pricing is transparent and predictable up to a point. Their paid plans start at $19.99/month for 100 tasks, then jump to $49/month for 750 tasks, then $99/month for 1,500 tasks. At first, this feels reasonable. But the definition of a task matters. In Zapier: A trigger counts as one task. Each action counts as one task. Conditional logic (if this, then that) counts as one task. A data formatter counts as one task. A simple workflow—trigger on form submission, check a condition, look up a record, update three fields, send a notification—is five tasks. Multiply that by twenty workflows across your team, and you're already at 100 tasks per month. Add a second wave of automations, and you're at 500. A third, and you're pushing 1,500. Suddenly that $99/month plan is the baseline, and you're eyeing the $155/month option for 3,000 tasks. At 3,000 tasks/month, you're spending roughly $155. At 6,000 tasks/month (six months later, after your team scales), Zapier doesn't have a plan. You need to custom-negotiate or switch. n8n and Make: charging per workflow, not per step n8n and Make both flip the pricing model. You pay per workflow, not per task. A workflow can have 50 steps, 100 steps, or 500 steps—the cost is the same. n8n (self-hosted or cloud): Self-hosted: free software, you pay for your own infrastructure. Cloud starter: $20/month for ten workflows and up to 1,000 executions/month per workflow. Cloud pro: $200/month for unlimited workflows and 100,000 executions/month per workflow. Make (formerly Integromat): Free: up to 1,000 operations/month (comparable to Zapier's task, but looser counting). Standard: $10/month for 10,000 operations/month. Pro: $25/month for 100,000 operations/month. Business: $60/month for 500,000 operations/month. For a team with five moderately complex workflows running daily, Make's Pro plan at $25/month is one-fifth the cost of Zapier's $99/month plan. For a team with 20 workflows, n8n's cloud pro at $200/month is cheaper than Zapier if those workflows touch more than 30–40 tasks each. The crossover point: If your average workflow has 25+ steps, n8n or Make will cost less. If your average workflow has 5–10 steps, Zapier is probably fine until you hit 50+ workflows. Native integrations: when building your own costs less Every mid-market platform now ships with APIs and native integrations. Pipedrive, HubSpot, Xero, Stripe, Shopify—they all have webhooks, built-in automation, and (increasingly) native no-code workflow builders inside the platform. Orin's CRM , for example, includes native automations that trigger on record changes, run conditional logic, and update related records—all free, with no per-task tax. If your workflow lives entirely within one platform, this eliminates the middleman entirely. The cost calculation: Zapier cost: workflow lives in Zapier, costs $0.99 per task, needs developer time to maintain. Native automation cost: workflow lives in your CRM, costs $0 in execution fees, and is built by your ops team (no developer needed). Example: A lead scoring automation that triggers on form submission, checks five criteria, applies a score, and sends a Slack notification. In Zapier, that's eight tasks at $0.99 each, plus ongoing maintenance. In Orin's native automation , it's free and built in the UI. Over a year, that's one workflow saving you roughly $100 in Zapier costs, plus five hours of troubleshooting. Native integrations win when: The workflow never leaves your primary platform (CRM to accounting, CRM to email, etc.). Your team owns the workflow (sales ops, not engineering). The workflow runs frequently (daily or more). You need it deployed this week, not tested next month. Building custom logic: when you need a developer Some workflows need bespoke logic that no platform automation builder can handle. A tiered commission calculator. A multi-currency reconciliation. A custom tax calculation that changes by region and date. These need a developer and a code environment. At this point, you're choosing between: Zapier + code step: Zapier runs the orchestration, but one step is a webhook to your own backend, which executes custom logic and returns data. Cost: $0.99 for the Zapier orchestration, plus your server costs. n8n + code node: n8n runs the orchestration, one node executes custom code (JavaScript or Python). Cost: $200/month n8n subscription, plus your server costs if needed. Dedicated API: You build a REST API