Zapier's pricing model feels flat until you hit 3,000 tasks a month. Then the math changes. At 5,000 tasks—not uncommon for a mid-sized sales ops team running lead capture, CRM sync, invoice routing, and webhook triggers—Zapier bills ₹24,000. Make bills ₹1,200 for the same workload. n8n, self-hosted, costs you a single server. The difference between these three platforms is not feature parity or UX polish. It is unit economics. The per-task curve that kills your margin Zapier pricing is tiered, not metered. You buy a plan (Professional, Team, Business) that includes a fixed task allowance. Each tier jumps 3–4 times in price but only doubles the task budget. Overages are steep: an extra 100,000 tasks costs ₹4,000. This is intentional design—Zapier wants you to upgrade, not optimize. Make and n8n invert this logic. Both charge per execution unit, but the per-unit cost drops as you scale. Make's pricing floor is lower upfront (starter plan, ₹400/month for 10,000 operations). At 50,000 operations, Make costs ₹2,400. Zapier's 50,000-task plan does not exist; you overpay into a tier that includes 100,000 tasks you do not use. n8n offers a third path: self-host for fixed infrastructure cost (one ₹5,000–₹8,000/month server covers unlimited automations). The trade-off is operational—you run it, patch it, scale it—but the economic ceiling disappears. Three company sizes: Where the math diverges Small team: 1,000 tasks/month Zapier: Free plan (500 tasks) + Professional (₹800/month, 5,000 tasks) = ₹800/month. Cost per task: ₹0.16. Make: Starter plan ₹400/month (10,000 operations). Cost per task: ₹0.04. n8n: Cloud free tier (10 executions/minute, ~40,000/month) or ₹1,000/month SaaS. Cost per task: ₹0.025 or fixed ₹1,000. Verdict: Zapier wins on simplicity; Make wins on cost. At 1,000 tasks, the ₹400/month difference is noise, but per-task efficiency favors Make by 4x. Mid-market: 3,000 tasks/month Zapier: Professional plan (₹800) insufficient. Team plan (₹2,400/month, 20,000 tasks). Cost per task: ₹0.12. Make: Standard plan ₹800/month (50,000 operations) covers this easily. Cost per task: ₹0.016. n8n: Self-hosted server ₹6,000/month. Cost per task: ₹0.002. Verdict: Make is 7.5x cheaper than Zapier. n8n is 60x cheaper, but requires DevOps overhead (typically 4–6 hours/month for a non-technical ops team). Enterprise: 5,000 tasks/month Zapier: Team plan (₹2,400) or Business plan (₹4,800/month, 50,000 tasks). Assume Business. Cost per task: ₹0.096. Make: Professional plan ₹1,200/month (200,000 operations). Cost per task: ₹0.006. n8n: Self-hosted ₹6,500/month (scales to 50,000+ tasks with zero overage). Cost per task: ₹0.0013. Verdict: Make saves ₹3,600/month (72% reduction). n8n saves ₹4,300/month (89% reduction) but demands infrastructure management. At 5,000 tasks monthly, Zapier costs ₹24,000 yearly. Make costs ₹14,400 (40% savings). n8n self-hosted costs ₹78,000 server (65% savings over three years once amortized, break-even month 7). Hidden costs: Overage surprises and feature gaps Zapier's published pricing omits three real-world drains: Overage billing: A data sync bug or webhook spike can push you 10,000 tasks over quota mid-month. Zapier will bill you retroactively (₹400 per 100,000 overages). Make has no surprise overages; you upgrade the plan or scale back. Advanced features lock you into higher tiers: Zapier's conditional logic (if/then branching) requires Team plan minimum (₹2,400). Make includes this in Starter (₹400). For a 1,000-task team that needs 5 conditional automations, Zapier forces a 3x plan upgrade. Inactive automation penalties: Zapier charges full price for every connected app, even paused automations. If you run 20 workflows and pause 8 during a product pivot, you still pay for them. Make pauses free. When to migrate (and when to stay) Stay on Zapier if: You run fewer than 1,500 tasks/month (Zapier's free plan breaks even here). You need native Zapier integrations (Stripe, Shopify, Mailchimp) that lack direct Make connectors (rare, but real). You have non-technical users who rely on Zapier's UI (Make requires JSON in filters; n8n requires code for complex logic). Migrate to Make if: You exceed 2,000 tasks/month and have a technical person (ops engineer or developer) to own migrations. You need advanced routing, data transformation, or API orchestration (Make's workflow editor rivals Make's visual builder). You run 3+ conditional automations (Make's conditional logic is cheaper). Migrate to n8n if: You exceed 4,000 tasks/month and have DevOps capacity (1–2 hours/week for patches, monitoring, scaling). You need full IP whitelisting, VPC integration, or HIPAA compliance (cloud Zapier and Make do not offer this). You want to build custom nodes for proprietary APIs (e.g., your internal ledger system). Total cost of ownership: Three-year model Scenario Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Zapier (5K tasks) ₹28,800 ₹28,800 ₹28,800 ₹86,400 Make (5K tasks) ₹14,400 ₹14,400 ₹14,400 ₹43,200 n8n self-hosted (5K tasks)