Make vs Zapier: Which Automation Platform Should You Actually Pay For?

Quick pick — the answer in 30 seconds

Your job	Pick	Why, in one line
Simple, reliable automations that just work, most apps	Zapier	Easiest setup, 9,000+ apps, linear steps anyone can build
Complex, branching, multi-step workflows on a budget	Make	Visual canvas with routers and filters on the free plan, far cheaper per billable unit
Free only, real multi-step work	Make	1,000 credits/month and routers/filters included; Zapier Free is 2-step only
Team with shared workspaces and admin controls	Zapier Team, $69/month from	25 users, shared connections, SAML SSO — if the budget fits
High-volume, data-heavy workflows	Make, usually	Same workload costs a fraction of Zapier’s task price — do the unit maths below first
AI agents and MCP actions in your stack	Zapier, with eyes open	MCP is built in, but each tool call costs 2 tasks, and AI steps bill by model tier

The short answer

Make and Zapier are the two automation platforms behind most no-code workflows: connect your apps, move data between them, stop doing repetitive work by hand. They look similar from a distance, but their pricing models and complexity ceilings are very different — and picking wrong means either overpaying for years or rebuilding everything later.

Choose Zapier if you want the easiest setup, the most app connections, and automations that just work without thinking about them. Choose Make if you want far more power per dollar — complex branching workflows, and a free plan that can actually run a real multi-step process.

The single most important fact in this article is not a price. It is the billing unit. Zapier charges per successful action step (a “task”). Make charges per module action (a “credit”). A five-step workflow that runs 200 times a month costs about 800 Zapier tasks (trigger free, four actions) and about 1,000 Make credits (trigger included). That difference, not the headline monthly price, is what decides which tool is cheaper for you.

Pricing — snapshot, 31 October 2026

Rewritten and re-checked 31 October 2026. Originally published 30 October 2026. Prices below are a snapshot — vendor pages will change, so check at checkout for the final price. Where a price comes from a secondary source rather than a vendor page read live, it is labelled secondary.

	Zapier	Make
Free	$0 — 100 tasks/month, unlimited Zaps, Tables and Forms, two-step Zaps only, Zapier Copilot (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026)	$0 — 1,000 credits/month, 2 active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval (secondary, Oct 2026; vendor FAQ confirms 1,000 credits on Free)
Entry paid	Professional, from $19.99/month — multi-step Zaps, unlimited premium apps, webhooks, AI fields (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026; secondary sources give $19.99 annual / $29.99 monthly for 750 tasks)	Core, $9/month billed annually (secondary, Oct 2026; monthly price reported around $12, not vendor-rendered) for 10,000 credits
Mid tier	Team, from $69/month — 25 users, shared Zaps and folders, shared app connections, SAML SSO, priority support (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026; secondary: $69 annual / $103.50 monthly for 2,000 tasks)	Pro, $16/month billed annually (secondary, Oct 2026) for 10,000 credits with priority execution
Top / Enterprise	Enterprise, custom — unlimited users, advanced admin, annual task limits, observability, Technical Account Manager (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026)	Teams / Enterprise, custom (secondary)
Task tiers / volume	Task tiers run 100, 2,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, 2,000,000 (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026)	Credit ladder runs to 8M+/month on a slider (secondary, Oct 2026)
Trial	New accounts get a 14-day free trial of Professional, no card required (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026)	No paid trial reported; the free plan is the trial

Conflict to flag, not hide: secondary sources disagree on Zapier’s plan ladder in October 2026. The vendor page read live on 31 October 2026 lists only Free, Professional (from $19.99), Team (from $69) and Enterprise — no Starter plan. Several trackers still list a Starter tier at $19.99 with Professional at $49 and Team at $69, or a Company tier at $99–$103.50. Those ladders appear to mix older plan names with newer ones. Trust the vendor page read live: Professional is the entry paid plan in the current view, and the 750-task figure for its entry tier comes from secondary sources, not from the vendor page extract. Likewise, Make’s plan cards did not render in the vendor page read on 31 October 2026, so Make’s Core/Pro/Teams prices above are secondary, not vendor-rendered — check them on Make’s pricing page before you buy.

The verdict

Pick Zapier if: you want the easiest setup, the widest app coverage (9,000+ apps, vendor), and short, linear automations. You pay more per unit, but you will build faster, find more ready-made templates, and hand the system to a non-technical teammate without training them on a canvas.

Pick Make if: your workflows branch, loop, aggregate or transform data, or you run real volume. Routers and filters are included on the free plan, the visual canvas handles complexity Zapier’s linear editor fights, and the entry paid price buys 10,000 credits against Zapier’s 750 entry tasks — different units, but a gap that large survives the unit difference for most multi-step work.

Pick neither as your first tool if: you only need one or two simple automations and you already live inside one app — use that app’s built-in automation first. Both of these tools earn their keep at three or more connected apps, or at volume.

Paid-tier note, stated plainly: we did NOT test paid tiers with our own accounts. The paid recommendations above rest on pricing, published features and secondary plan data, not on paid testing. If a quota matters to your workload, check the in-account counter before you buy.

How each tool works — and why it matters

Zapier builds workflows as a straight line of steps (“Zaps”): trigger, then actions, one after another. You can add Paths for branching and Filters, Formatter, Delay and Looping as built-in steps — and, importantly, those built-in steps do not count as tasks (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026). The editor is deliberately simple, Copilot helps you build, and Tables and Forms are included in every plan, so Zapier is increasingly a small app platform, not just a connector.

Make builds workflows on a visual canvas (“scenarios”): modules connected by lines, with routers that split a path, iterators that loop over a list, and aggregators that combine results back together. That canvas is harder to learn and far more powerful for complex logic. Every module action costs a credit by default — including the trigger, unlike Zapier — but Router and error-handler modules (Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit, Ignore) cost nothing (vendor FAQ, read 31 Oct 2026). Since 27 August 2026, credits are Make’s billing unit (vendor FAQ); most actions cost 1 credit, while some advanced features using Make’s AI Provider may cost more.

The practical difference: Zapier rewards short workflows, because only actions count and each one costs a task. Make charges per module, so a long scenario with many steps burns credits quickly — but its entry price for 10,000 credits is lower than Zapier’s entry paid price, so at volume Make usually wins on price even though it counts more steps.

Models, plans and billing units — dated, because both change fast

Zapier, October 2026. The vendor pricing page read live on 31 October 2026 says: “Your pricing works the same way everywhere you use Zapier. AI steps, code, and SDK now all follow the same task-based pricing model.” Every step in a Zap and every external connector call uses tasks, though rates may vary — AI model tier, code runtime and connector type each affect how many tasks an action uses. Secondary sources, June 2026 onwards, report AI steps billing as 1 task on Standard, 3 on Advanced (the default since 15 June 2026) and 5 on Premium, with every tool call charged at the same multiplier, and a run exceeding 75 tasks pausing for approval. Treat those multipliers as secondary — they were not in the vendor page extract — but do not ignore them if you plan AI-heavy Zaps: they are the difference between a $20 bill and a surprise.

Zapier MCP: available to all accounts, one MCP tool call uses 2 tasks (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026). Zapier SDK: free while in beta (vendor). If you reach your task limit, Zapier switches you to pay-as-you-go unless you turn it off or move up a tier — and pay-per-task billing is charged at a higher per-task rate than base subscription tasks (vendor). Turn that setting off if you want a hard stop instead of a surprise bill.

Make, October 2026. Credits replaced the older term “operations”. By default one operation equals one credit, and each module action in a scenario counts as one (vendor FAQ). Data transfer, storage and webhook queue scale with credits: per 10,000 credits licensed per month, you get 5 GB data transfer, 10 MB data storage, 10 MB incomplete-execution storage and a 667 webhook queue (vendor FAQ). Extra credits can be bought in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000, or auto-purchased (Core, Pro and Teams only). Credits expire at the end of the term. Make AI Agents, the AI Toolkit, the MCP server and 350+ AI apps are included in paid plans with no second subscription, per secondary sources — label that as secondary, not vendor-rendered.

Free limits — vendor words only, secondary labelled

Zapier Free (vendor, read live 31 Oct 2026): $0, 100 tasks/month, unlimited Zaps, Tables and Forms, two-step Zaps only, Zapier Copilot. Triggers never use a task, polling for new data is free, and Filter, Paths, Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage, Tables and Forms steps are excluded, as are failed and skipped steps. That is the whole free offer: unlimited Zaps, but only two steps each, and only 100 successful actions a month. Almost every real workflow needs Professional.

Make Free (secondary, Oct 2026; vendor FAQ confirms 1,000 credits): $0, 1,000 credits/month, 2 active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval, executions limited to 5 minutes, files to 5 MB and log storage to 7 days (secondary). Routers and filters are included, which is the key difference: a real multi-step, branching workflow can run on Make Free, within two scenarios and 1,000 credits. That makes Make Free genuinely usable for a small business with one or two core automations, where Zapier Free is a test drive.

Bottom line: do not compare “100 tasks” with “1,000 credits” as if they were the same unit. They are not. A 5-step workflow (trigger + 4 actions) running 200 times a month uses about 800 Zapier tasks and about 1,000 Make credits. At that volume, Zapier’s entry plan (750 tasks, secondary) would not be enough, while Make’s free plan would just cover it — but only for two active scenarios. Count your own workflows, step by step, before you pick.

Numbers we do NOT rely on for the verdict

• Exact monthly prices for Make’s Core/Pro/Teams tiers: secondary, not vendor-rendered on 31 October 2026. The verdict does not need them to the dollar — the gap between Make’s 10,000-credit entry tier and Zapier’s 750-task entry tier is large enough that a few dollars either way does not change it, but check the live page before you buy.
• Zapier’s older plan ladder (Starter $19.99 / Professional $49 / Team $69 / Company $99): conflicts with the vendor page read live, which lists Professional from $19.99 and Team from $69 with no Starter. Do not quote the old ladder as current.
• AI-step multipliers (1 / 3 / 5 tasks) and MCP/agents add-on prices: secondary, June–October 2026. They affect AI-heavy workloads, but they are not vendor-rendered in the page extract, so treat them as a warning to check, not as a quote.
• App counts beyond the vendor figure: Zapier 9,000+ apps (vendor). Make’s app count is reported as roughly 2,000–3,000+ across secondary sources that disagree — do not quote a single Make app count as fact.
• Any hands-on build-time or reliability figure: no hands-on test was run for this article, so no such figure is published.li>

Where each one wins, by job

Job	Winner	Why, with dated evidence
Simple lead capture: form → CRM → Slack	Zapier	Fastest to build, most templates, trigger free, and the whole Zap is 2–3 tasks per run. At low volume it fits Free or entry Professional
Multi-step order processing: order → stock check → invoice → shipping → CRM, with branches for refunds	Make	Routers, iterators and aggregators on a canvas; branching is native, not a bolt-on Path. A 5-step workflow at 200 runs/month is ~1,000 credits vs ~800 tasks — but Make’s entry tier buys 10,000 credits, Zapier’s buys 750 tasks (secondary)
Data transformation: clean, format, split, aggregate, loop over lists	Make	Formatter-style tools are modules, and the canvas shows the data flow. Zapier’s Formatter is free as a step, but complex transforms are easier to debug on Make’s canvas
AI in the workflow: summarise, classify, extract, draft	Zapier, with a warning	Copilot, AI fields and MCP are built in, but AI steps bill by model tier (secondary: 1/3/5 tasks) and MCP calls cost 2 tasks each (vendor). Budget AI Zaps separately from plain Zaps
Team collaboration and governance	Zapier Team	25 users, shared Zaps/folders/connections, SAML SSO, priority support (vendor). Make’s Teams tier exists (secondary) but Zapier’s team story is more mature
Budget-first, high-volume, technical team	Make	Entry paid buys 10,000 credits (secondary) against Zapier’s 750 entry tasks (secondary), and the credit ladder runs to 8M+/month. A technical team that can learn the canvas saves the most here
Non-technical solo user, first automation	Zapier	Linear editor, Copilot, 9,000+ apps, 14-day Professional trial with no card. You will build your first working Zap in minutes, not hours

Who should skip each

Skip Zapier if: you run multi-step workflows at volume — the task bill climbs fast, and pay-as-you-go overage is charged at a higher rate (vendor). Skip it if your workflows need complex branching, looping or aggregation as their core logic — you can do it with Paths, but you will fight the linear editor. Skip it if you need a genuinely usable free plan for multi-step work — Free is two-step only.

Skip Make if: you want the easiest possible setup and you will not invest an afternoon learning the canvas — Zapier’s simplicity is worth paying for if you only run a handful of short Zaps. Skip it if you need the widest app coverage or the deepest template library — Zapier’s 9,000+ apps (vendor) beat Make’s reported 2,000–3,000+ (secondary, conflicting). Skip it if you need team governance at scale and you want it out of the box — Zapier Team’s SAML and shared connections are the safer bet.

Cost maths — work it out for your own workflows

Do not compare headline prices. Count units.

Example 1 — one 5-step workflow, 200 runs/month. Zapier: trigger free + 4 actions = 800 tasks. That exceeds the entry Professional tier’s 750 tasks (secondary), so you need a higher task tier or pay-as-you-go. Make: trigger + 4 modules = 5 credits × 200 = 1,000 credits. That exactly fits Make Free (1,000 credits, 2 scenarios) — but only if this is one of your two scenarios. At this volume, Make Free beats Zapier paid, for this workflow alone.

Example 2 — one 5-step workflow, 1,000 runs/month. Zapier: 4,000 tasks. Secondary trackers put that on a 5,000-task Professional tier at about $89/month billed annually. Make: 5,000 credits. That fits Core’s 10,000 credits at about $9–$12/month (secondary). Same workflow, roughly an 8× price gap — because the billing units and the entry tiers are that different.

Example 3 — 10,000 runs/month, same workflow. Zapier: 40,000 tasks, on a 50,000-task tier at about $289/month billed annually (secondary). Make: 50,000 credits, on a larger credit tier at a fraction of that price (secondary, exact figure on Make’s slider — check it, do not quote a guess). At this scale, the choice is not close on price; it is close only if Zapier’s simplicity or app coverage saves you more than the price gap in staff time.

AI warning: if your workflow uses AI steps, add the model-tier multiplier (secondary: Standard 1, Advanced 3, Premium 5 tasks) and, for MCP tool calls, 2 tasks each (vendor). An AI-heavy Zap that looks like 4 tasks on paper can bill as 12–20 tasks per run. That is the most common surprise bill in Zapier in 2026, and it is why AI workflows need their own budget line.

FAQ

Is Make really cheaper than Zapier? For multi-step, high-volume work, usually yes — by a wide margin, because of the billing-unit and entry-tier gap above. For one or two short Zaps at low volume, the difference is small, and Zapier’s simplicity may be worth more than the saving. Count your own units.

Can I run a real workflow on the free plan? On Make, yes — within 2 scenarios and 1,000 credits, with routers and filters included. On Zapier, only a two-step workflow, and only 100 tasks a month. If “free” is a hard requirement and your workflow has more than two steps, Make is the only one of the two that works.

Do triggers cost money? On Zapier, no — triggers never count toward your task limit, and polling is free (vendor). On Make, yes — each module action, including the trigger, costs a credit by default (vendor FAQ), except Router and error-handler modules.

What happens when I hit my limit? On Zapier, you are switched to pay-as-you-go unless you turn it off, at a higher per-task rate; if you turn it off, your Zaps pause until the next period (vendor). On Make, your scenarios stop running until credits are added; incoming webhooks are queued up to your queue limit and processed once you resume (vendor FAQ).

Which one is easier to learn? Zapier, by a clear margin — linear steps, Copilot, templates, and a 14-day Professional trial. Make’s canvas is more powerful and takes longer to learn. Budget half a day to learn Make properly; budget an hour for Zapier.

Do either of them have AI agents? Both, in 2026, but differently. Zapier has Agents and Chatbots as separate add-ons with their own units (secondary: Agents free 400 activities/month, Pro about $33.33/month billed annually), plus MCP and SDK. Make has AI Agents, the AI Toolkit and an MCP server included in paid plans (secondary). Neither is a reason to pick a tool on its own — pick on the workflow engine and the billing unit first.

Trust note — short version

Written by Daniyal Khatri, founder of SaaSListy, single author. We checked pricing on the vendors’ own pages on 31 October 2026 (Zapier read live; Make’s plan cards did not render, so Make prices are labelled secondary), and we flagged every conflict instead of picking the nicer number. No sponsorship, no free upgrade from Zapier or Make, and no paid tier tested as if it were free — we have not tested paid tiers for this article. If a price, limit or plan name in this article has changed since 31 October 2026, that date is the first thing to check. Corrections: if a vendor page or a reader shows us something here is out of date, we will correct it and date the correction.

Note on site trust badges: this site’s theme displays generic “Fact-checked” and “Reviewed by our editorial team” labels on articles. This article has a single author and was not reviewed by a separate editorial team — treat those theme labels as generic, not as a claim about this article.

Hands-on test: not yet run. No test log is published for this article, and no build-time or reliability figure in it comes from a hands-on test.

Sources and method

Vendor pages first (read 31 October 2026):

• Zapier pricing — https://zapier.com/pricing/ (read live: Free $0/100 tasks/2-step, Professional from $19.99, Team from $69, Enterprise custom, task tiers to 2M, MCP 2 tasks/call, SDK free in beta, 14-day Professional trial)
• Make pricing — https://www.make.com/en/pricing/ (read live: credits billing unit since 27 Aug 2026, most actions 1 credit, Router/error handlers free, Free 1,000 credits, per-10,000-credit allowances, extra-credit bundles; plan cards did not render, so plan prices are secondary)

Secondary / reporting (with check dates in text):

• October 2026 Make vs Zapier comparisons (Urivio, 8 Oct 2026; dev.to, Oct 2026; BusinessExpert, Oct 2026) — Make Core $9 annual / Pro $16 annual, Zapier Professional $19.99 annual / $29.99 monthly for 750 tasks, Team $69 annual / $103.50 monthly for 2,000 tasks, AI-step multipliers, MCP/agents add-on prices, app-count ranges
• Zapier pricing trackers (Latenode, Oct 2026) — Starter plan retired 2 Apr 2024, AI model-tier pricing from 15 June 2026, Team 25 users vs FAQ unlimited conflict

Method: prices, models and limits marked vendor were read on a vendor page on 31 Oct 2026. Everything else is labelled secondary. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated, not resolved by picking the nicer number. No benchmark score, quota or test result in this article is invented: if a number has no source above, it is listed as unverified in the “Numbers we do NOT rely on” box. Hands-on test: not yet run