You have 500 automations running across your business: lead capture from your website, invoice sync to accounting, WhatsApp notifications to your team, calendar event scheduling, customer data enrichment. Every one of them works. Every one of them is cheap to build. And every one of them is costing you more than it should. Zapier charges per task. A task is one operation: send an email, create a contact, update a spreadsheet row. At scale, this pricing model explodes. Make and n8n charge per workflow instead. A workflow can contain dozens of tasks. For most teams running 500+ automations, this difference is worth ₹800–₹2,400 every month. Here's what actually happens when you scale. Zapier's per-task cost at 500 automations Zapier's standard plan costs ₹800/month and includes 100 tasks. Every task beyond that costs ₹0.50 (roughly ₹40 in rupees). At 500 automations running daily, you hit roughly 2,000 tasks per month. Zapier charges you ₹800 base plus ₹1,600 for the overages. Total: ₹2,400/month. But most teams don't run single-task automations. A lead capture workflow might have 5–8 tasks: receive form data, look up company info, create contact, tag by industry, add to list, send welcome email, notify sales team, log to Slack. That same workflow in Zapier costs ₹3.20 per run (8 tasks × ₹0.40). Run it 100 times a month, and one automation costs ₹320. Scale that across 500 automations—even if most are simple two-or-three-task workflows—and you're at 4,000+ tasks per month. Zapier's bill becomes ₹800 base plus ₹2,400 overages. That's ₹3,200/month minimum. In practice, we've seen teams with 300–400 automations paying ₹2,800–₹4,000/month on Zapier. The per-task model scales unpredictably, and every new automation is immediately expensive. Make's per-workflow pricing stays flat Make (formerly Integromat) charges per workflow, not per task. Their free tier allows 1,000 operations per month—roughly equivalent to Zapier's free plan. Their standard plan is roughly ₹400–₹600/month for unlimited workflows and up to 10,000 operations monthly. This is the key difference. You can have 500 workflows on Make's standard plan. Each workflow can have 10, 20, or 50 tasks. You pay for operations, not individual tasks. A complex 8-task workflow costs the same as a simple 2-task workflow. For a 500-automation setup running an average of 4 tasks per workflow, that's 2,000 operations per month—exactly within Make's monthly allowance on the standard tier. Your cost: ₹600/month. No overages. n8n's self-hosted model: Fixed infrastructure, unlimited automations n8n offers both cloud and self-hosted versions. Their cloud pricing starts at roughly ₹600–₹800/month for unlimited workflows and 10,000 executions. Self-hosted is free; you run it on your own server (AWS, DigitalOcean, your private infrastructure). Self-hosted n8n has no per-execution charges, no workflow limits. You pay once for infrastructure—typically ₹3,000–₹5,000/month for a reliable cloud server—and run as many automations as your hardware can handle. For 500 automations, a mid-tier server ($20/month) is sufficient. Total cost: ₹1,200–₹1,600/month for hosting plus your team's time to manage it. Feature parity: What you're not losing Zapier's reputation rests on two things: 7,000+ native integrations and reliability. Make and n8n have caught up on both. Integrations: Make has 1,000+. n8n has 400+ with custom HTTP nodes. Both cover the core 30–40 integrations most teams use (CRM, accounting, email, chat, forms). Zapier has more niche integrations, but for standard workflows, the difference is negligible. Reliability: Zapier's uptime is 99.9%. Make claims 99.95%. n8n's cloud tier matches Zapier. Self-hosted depends on your infrastructure. Error handling: All three let you set retry logic, webhooks, and conditional branches. Make and n8n are actually more granular here—you can code custom logic without paying per task. Monitoring: Make and n8n offer execution history, logs, and error alerts. Zapier's free tier limits history to 30 days; paid tiers extend it. Make and n8n's free and paid tiers both include full logs. Where Zapier wins: polish and customer support. Their UI is smoother, their docs are more abundant, and they have 24/7 support on paid plans. Make and n8n have community forums and slower response times. If you need hand-holding, Zapier is worth the premium. If you can troubleshoot, the alternative is cheaper. The 500-automation cost model Assume your setup has 500 automations averaging 4 tasks per workflow, running once per day. That's 2,000 tasks/operations per month. Platform Base Cost Overages/Operations Total Monthly Zapier ₹800 ₹1,600 (1,900 overage tasks) ₹2,400 Make ₹600 ₹0 (2,000 ops included) ₹600 n8n Cloud ₹800 ₹0 (10,000 ops included) ₹800 n8n Self-Hosted ₹1,200–₹1,600 (server) ₹0 (unlimited) ₹1,200–₹1,600 At 500 automations, Make saves ₹1,800/month versus Zapier. n8n cloud saves ₹1,600. Self-hosted n8n costs less than Zapier after month two. Annual savi