Zapier built the workflow automation market on a simple promise: pay per task, scale as you grow. At 100 tasks a month, that math is clean. At 2,000 tasks a month, it breaks. At ₹24,000 a year—roughly Zapier's Pro plan ceiling—you've hit the wall where Make's flat ₹12,000/month model starts winning, not losing. The question isn't whether Make or n8n are cheaper at 3,000 tasks. They are. The question is whether you can migrate without losing the workflows that actually run your business, and whether the reliability holds at your task volume. That's where the real cost lives. The math that breaks at 2,000 tasks Zapier's pricing curve looks like this: Free: 100 tasks/month Starter (₹9,750/year): 750 tasks/month Professional (₹24,000/year): 2,000 tasks/month Team (₹50,000+/year): 5,000+ tasks/month, plus admin overhead The moment you exceed 2,000 tasks—which happens faster than most businesses expect—you move to Team, where a single overage is invisible but your per-task cost skyrockets. A manufacturing firm processing 3,000 CRM syncs, lead enrichments, and invoice triggers monthly pays ₹50,000+ for Zapier. The same workflow on Make costs ₹12,000/month flat. That's not marginal savings. That's ₹1.44 lakh a year at 3,000 tasks alone. But here's the trap: that math only works if Make handles your stack the way Zapier does. And often, it doesn't—not yet. Feature parity is where migrations fail Make and n8n both outperform Zapier in raw capability: conditional logic, looping, error handling, multi-step branching. Both have stronger community integrations. n8n is self-hosted, which matters if you have data residency rules. Make is cloud-only but integrates faster. Where they stumble: App coverage. Zapier has 6,000+ integrations. Make has 1,300+. n8n has fewer pre-built connectors but lets you code REST calls directly. If your workflow leans on niche B2B apps—industry-specific accounting software, regional ERPs, custom APIs—Zapier's breadth wins. Error handling and retries. Zapier's webhook retry logic is industry-standard. Make's is good but less forgiving on timing edge cases. n8n's requires more configuration upfront. Admin UI and auditability. Zapier logs every single task execution, searchable by date, status, and input data. Make's logs are readable but less granular. If you audit workflows for compliance or troubleshoot silent failures, Zapier's visibility costs money but saves time. Scheduled triggers. Zapier's Scheduled by Zapier trigger is simple and reliable. Make and n8n both offer scheduling, but n8n's depends on where it's hosted. Cloud instances have latency. Self-hosted ones depend on your infrastructure. The real migration cost isn't in switching platforms—it's in rebuilding workflows that exploit Zapier's quirks. Any workflow using Zapier's Formatter, Code by Zapier with JavaScript, or multi-step filter-and-act patterns will require careful re-architecture on Make or n8n. For a business with 50+ active automations, that's 40–100 hours of testing, not including the risk that one workflow breaks silently for a week. Reliability and support at scale Zapier's service-level agreement is explicit: 99.5% uptime, published status page, accountable escalations. If a task fails, it lands in your task history and you can manually retry it. That's valuable if your workflow processes time-sensitive transactions. Make publishes 99.9% uptime but doesn't guarantee it in an SLA. When Make goes down (rare, but it happens), you lose visibility on which tasks failed and need manual retry tooling. n8n's reliability depends entirely on your hosting. Cloud instance? You inherit their uptime. Self-hosted? You own it—good for control, bad for peace of mind if your ops team is small. For a service business processing 3,000 tasks monthly—mostly low-stakes (lead routing, CRM syncs, invoice QA)—this is acceptable risk. For one processing payment confirmations, refund triggers, or compliance notifications? You pay Zapier's premium for peace of mind. Real cost of migration: the hidden ₹80K–₹2L burden Switching automation platforms looks cheap on the spreadsheet. It's expensive in reality. Workflow re-architecture: 40–100 hours of engineering time at ₹1,000–₹2,500/hour = ₹40,000–₹2,50,000 Testing and validation: 20–40 hours per environment = ₹20,000–₹1,00,000 Documentation and rollback planning: 10–20 hours = ₹10,000–₹50,000 Risk buffer (silent failures, edge cases): 20% contingency = ₹15,600–₹80,000 A typical SMB with 30 active Zapier workflows, 2,500 tasks/month, and one part-time operations person spends ₹80,000–₹1.5 lakh on migration. The ₹26,000/year Zapier-to-Make savings breaks even in 3–7 years, assuming zero rework and no new failures. If you're three years from retirement or your ops person leaves, that payback window disappears. When Make and n8n actually win The switch makes sense only if all three conditions hold: Task volume exceeds 2,500/month consistently. One-time spikes don't count; you need baseline sustained vo