The ₹800/month Zapier plan feels cheap until you hit 1,000 tasks. That's when the overage billing kicks in, and suddenly your bill climbs to ₹2.4K by 1,500 tasks. Meanwhile, Make and n8n sit flat at ₹500. This isn't just a pricing story—it's a math problem that changes the financial shape of your entire automation stack. We ran the numbers for three real workflows: invoicing (CRM → accounting sync), bookings (calendar → payment trigger), and sales pipeline (WhatsApp → deal creation). What we found was not a simple "pick this platform" answer. It was a crossover point where Zapier stops making sense and a set of hidden costs that platforms don't advertise. The baseline: ₹800 buys you 500 tasks at Zapier Zapier's pricing is simple on the surface: you get a monthly task budget. The ₹800/month plan includes 500 tasks. A "task" is one completed automation step—not one workflow run, but the step itself. Here's where it gets murky. A single invoice sync from your CRM to accounting might fire three tasks: Trigger: Deal moves to "won" in your CRM Step 1: Fetch invoice template and customer tax ID Step 2: Create invoice in accounting software That one logical automation is three Zapier tasks. Run it 200 times a month (a typical mid-market invoicing load), and you've burned 600 tasks on a single workflow. You're already over budget on month one. Make and n8n count differently. They count "executions"—one workflow run, no matter how many steps. The same invoice sync is one execution, one cost unit. Run it 200 times, and you've used 200 units. At just 200 monthly invoices, Zapier's task-based model has already used 600 of your 500-task budget. You're in overage territory before your second workflow even starts. The overage cliff: Where ₹800 becomes ₹2.4K Zapier's overage tiers are steep. Once you exceed 500 tasks, you pay ₹0.48 per additional 100 tasks. Here's what the climb looks like: 500 tasks: ₹800 750 tasks: ₹800 + (250 ÷ 100) × ₹48 = ₹920 1,000 tasks: ₹800 + (500 ÷ 100) × ₹48 = ₹1,040 1,500 tasks: ₹800 + (1,000 ÷ 100) × ₹48 = ₹1,280 2,500 tasks: ₹800 + (2,000 ÷ 100) × ₹48 = ₹1,760 It accelerates further at ₹1.60 per 100 tasks once you hit ₹2K/month. By 3,000 tasks, you're paying ₹2.4K monthly. Make's Professional plan (roughly equivalent in features) is a flat ₹500/month for 10,000 monthly executions. n8n's mid-tier is also flat—₹480/month for 100,000 workflow runs. The break-even is stark: At 1,500 tasks: Zapier ₹1,280 vs Make ₹500 (2.6× more) At 2,500 tasks: Zapier ₹1,760 vs Make ₹500 (3.5× more) At 3,000+ tasks: Zapier ₹2.4K+ vs Make ₹500 (4.8× more) Real workflows: Invoicing, bookings, and CRM sync mapped Workflow 1: Invoicing (CRM → Accounting) A mid-market B2B SaaS company (₹2–5 crore ARR) typically invoices 150–300 times per month. Each invoice automation includes: Trigger: Deal closed in CRM Fetch: Customer record, tax ID, contact email Create: Invoice in accounting software Send: Notification to finance team Log: Result back to CRM That's 5 tasks per invoice. At 200 invoices monthly: 1,000 tasks. Cost at scale: Zapier: ₹800 + (500 ÷ 100) × ₹48 = ₹1,040 Make: ₹500 (flat, no overage) n8n: ₹480 (flat, no overage) Zapier costs 2.1× more, or ₹540 extra per month, just for this one workflow. Over a year: ₹6,480 in unnecessary cost. Workflow 2: Bookings (Calendar → Payment) A service business with 40 weekly bookings (160/month) might automate: Trigger: Booking confirmed in calendar Check: Client payment status Send: SMS + email confirmation Create: Service record in CRM Log: Revenue forecast update That's 5 tasks per booking. At 160 bookings: 800 tasks per month. Cost: Zapier: ₹800 + (300 ÷ 100) × ₹48 = ₹944 Make: ₹500 n8n: ₹480 Again, Zapier overshoots by ₹444/month (₹5,328/year) for a single workflow. Workflow 3: CRM sync (WhatsApp → Deal creation) Sales teams running WhatsApp funnels often auto-create CRM deals from messages. A team doing 50 qualified conversations daily (1,000/month) might trigger: Trigger: Message matches intent keyword Fetch: Customer from WhatsApp business account Create: Deal in CRM with pipeline stage Assign: Route to sales rep Notify: Slack alert + SMS to rep That's 5 tasks per deal. 1,000 deals × 5 tasks = 5,000 tasks. Cost at this scale: Zapier: ₹800 + (4,500 ÷ 100) × ₹1.60 = ₹3,520 (tier 2 overage) Make: ₹500 (still flat, 10K executions included) n8n: ₹480 Zapier is now 7× more expensive. The annual gap is ₹45,360. This is where the math becomes brutal: if you're running moderately complex automations at scale, Zapier doesn't just cost more—it costs multiples more. Why the task model breaks at scale Zapier's task-based pricing made sense in 2015, when automations were simpler and smaller companies paid less. But modern workflows are rarely sequential; they're conditional and multi-step. A real invoice automation includes error handling, conditional branches (different steps if invoice is international), and logging. That's 7–10 tasks, not 3. Make and n8n count logically: one workflo