Zapier's pricing is transparent—and it punishes scale. You pay per task (a task = one action in one workflow step), and that compounds fast. At the start, it's fine: their Professional plan ($99/month) includes 750 tasks. Run 8–10 workflows with loops or multi-step branches, and you'll blow past that cap in weeks. Suddenly you're paying $299/month for 7,500 tasks, then $599/month for 20,000. Meanwhile, n8n and Make offer fixed monthly costs that let you build dozens of workflows without extra per-unit charges. If you're running more than a handful of automations, you're almost certainly overpaying Zapier. The Zapier cost curve: where it breaks Zapier charges per task execution . A task is not a workflow—it's one step. If you build a Slack notification that fires when a new lead lands in Salesforce, checks a HubSpot field, and updates a Google Sheet, that's three tasks per execution. Run that workflow once a day, and you've burned 3,600 tasks per month. Add another workflow of similar complexity, and you're at 7,200. That's half your monthly allowance for two automations. Here's the math at different scales: 5 simple workflows (2–3 tasks each, 50 executions/month): ~750 tasks. Zapier Professional ($99): covered. 10 moderate workflows (3–4 tasks, 100 executions/month): ~3,600 tasks. Zapier Professional overages: $100–150/month extra. Total: ~$200–250. 20 complex workflows (4–6 tasks, 200+ executions/month): ~15,000–20,000 tasks. Zapier: $299–599/month. At 8+ active workflows, most teams start noticing the bill spike and begin asking if there's a better way. There is. n8n self-hosted: $0/month (after setup), unlimited workflows n8n is open-source and free to run on your own infrastructure. Host it on a $10/month VPS, and you get unlimited workflows, unlimited executions, no per-task fees. The trade-off is operational: you own the infrastructure, the updates, the backups, the uptime. For technical teams, that's a win. For non-technical teams, it's a risk—downtime is your problem, and debugging a failed workflow means SSH access or hiring a DevOps person. n8n also offers a cloud version: the "Teams" plan at $20/user/month (minimum 2 users = $40/month for 1,000 monthly executions) and $480/month for unlimited executions. Even their premium tier costs 80% less than Zapier at high execution counts. What transfers cleanly: n8n has connectors for 400+ services (Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Xero, more). If your Zapier workflows use mainstream SaaS tools, migration is straightforward—rebuild the workflow logic in n8n's visual builder, test, and cut over. Most teams spend 2–5 hours per workflow rebuilding and testing. What doesn't: Zapier's "Zap" is not portable as code. You'll rebuild each workflow's logic from scratch in n8n, but the connector list is nearly identical. Make (formerly Integromat): cloud-only, $10–60/month Make is a commercial alternative to Zapier with a simpler pricing model: you pay per month for a tier, not per task. The Core plan ($10/month) includes 1,000 operations per month. The Team plan ($60/month) gives 100,000 operations per month—and that's operations , which align more closely with workflow steps than Zapier's "tasks." For 20 complex workflows at 200 executions/month, Make's Team plan ($60) would cover you entirely. Zapier would cost $299–599. What transfers: Make has 1,000+ integrations. If your Zapier workflows use common tools, a visual migration is fast—about 1–2 hours per workflow. Make's UI is similar to Zapier, so teams often find the transition intuitive. What doesn't: Like n8n, Make doesn't import Zapier workflows as code. You rebuild the logic, but the connectors are there. Migration checklist: what moves, what rebuilds Before you switch, audit your Zapier account: Count your workflows. Export your Zapier task history (Settings → Data Management). This tells you actual task burn and helps you forecast n8n/Make costs. Map your integrations. List every SaaS tool in your Zaps. Check n8n and Make's connector libraries to confirm support. (99% of mainstream tools are covered.) Categorize workflow complexity. Simple (2–3 steps): ~1 hour to rebuild. Moderate (4–5 steps, some branching): ~2 hours. Complex (6+ steps, loops, error handling): ~4 hours. Test in parallel. Stand up your new automation platform (n8n or Make), rebuild 1–2 workflows, run them for a week alongside Zapier. Confirm data integrity, error handling, and latency before killing your Zaps. Plan cutover by workflow family. If you have 15 workflows, group them: CRM, billing, messaging, etc. Migrate one family at a time so errors don't cascade. Most teams finish a full migration in 2–4 weeks, running both platforms in parallel for 1–2 weeks to catch edge cases. When to stay on Zapier (and when to leave) Stay on Zapier if: You run fewer than 5 workflows and don't expect to grow. Your team has zero technical depth and needs UI simplicity above all else. You use niche Zapier integrations with no equivalent in n8n or Make