# Zapier, Make and n8n priced for one workflow at 10,000 runs

> One lead workflow at 10,000 runs a month, billed yearly: $289 on Zapier, $50 on n8n Cloud, about $29 on Make (unconfirmed on make.com). We also ran n8n.

- Published: 2026-10-20
- Author: 28creation Desk
- Format: Analysis
- URL: https://28creation.com/articles/zapier-make-n8n-cost-one-workflow/

## The short read

**At 10,000 runs a month, the same lead workflow costs $289 on Zapier and $50 on n8n Cloud, billed yearly.**

- Zapier bills every action, Make bills every module including the trigger, and n8n bills one execution per run however many steps it has.
- Self-hosted n8n has no run quota. On our large sandbox machine it peaked at 884 MiB, so we would pick a 2 GiB server.

### What you can do with this

> Count the action steps in your workflow and multiply by your monthly runs before you pick a plan. Add 25% headroom, because Make and n8n Cloud pause workflows when the allowance runs out.

---

Zapier, Make and n8n don't bill the same thing, so one workflow can cost ten times more on one than another. Zapier charges for every action and Make for every module, the trigger included, while n8n charges once per run. So we priced one real workflow on all three, from their pricing pages on October 20, 2026.

The workflow is a common one. A website form sends a lead, and a filter drops entries without an email. The name and phone get cleaned up, then the lead goes to a CRM, a Google Sheet and a Slack channel.

At 1,000 runs a month the cheapest yearly plans cost $9 on Make, $20 on n8n Cloud and $80 to $89 on Zapier. At 10,000 runs they cost about $29, $50 and $289.

We also built the workflow in n8n and ran it 1,000 times on our own machine, to see what self-hosting asks of a server. We did not build it in Zapier or Make, because we have no paid accounts there; those counts come from each vendor's documentation.

## Each tool counts a different unit

**Zapier counts tasks.** Zapier's help center says "[Zap triggers never use tasks](https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496196837261)", and neither do Filter, Paths or Formatter steps. Each successful action uses one task. Our workflow has three actions (CRM, sheet, Slack), so each lead costs 3 tasks, and a lead the filter stops costs nothing.

**Make counts credits.** Credits are Make's billing unit, and "[most actions consume 1 credit](https://www.make.com/en/pricing)". Make's operations guide counts the trigger as [one operation each time it runs](https://help.make.com/operations), whatever it returns. So our workflow costs 4 credits per lead: the trigger plus three modules. In Make a filter sits [on the line between two modules](https://help.make.com/filtering), not in a module, so we count it as free; the Make pages we read don't say so outright. A rejected lead still costs the trigger's credit.

**n8n counts executions.** "[An execution is a single run of your entire workflow](https://n8n.io/pricing/)", whatever the number of steps. A webhook trigger counts [one execution for every inbound request](https://docs.n8n.io/build/understand-workflows/understand-executions/), including requests with an empty body. So every lead costs 1 execution, and so does every spam entry the filter rejects.

That difference decides the result. The more steps your workflow has, the better n8n looks. The more runs end at a filter, the better Zapier looks.

## The bill at 1,000 and 10,000 runs a month

We put each vendor's price list into a 41-line script and asked it for the cheapest plan that covers each volume. Zapier prices come from [its pricing page](https://zapier.com/pricing), n8n prices from [its pricing page](https://n8n.io/pricing/). Every run is assumed to be a real lead: 3 tasks, 4 credits or 1 execution.

| Runs a month | Zapier Pro, yearly | Zapier Pro, monthly | Make Core, yearly | Make Core, monthly | n8n Cloud, yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | $19.99 | $29.99 | $9.00 | $10.59 | $20.00 |
| 1,000 | $79.63 to $89.00 | $133.50 | $9.00 | $10.59 | $20.00 |
| 2,500 | $129.00 | $193.50 | $9.00 | $10.59 | $20.00 |
| 5,000 | $189.00 | $283.50 | $16.00 | $18.82 | $50.00 |
| 10,000 | $289.00 | $433.50 | $29.00 | $34.12 | $50.00 |
| 20,000 | $361.25 | $650.25 | $55.00 | $64.71 | none listed |

Prices are in US dollars per month and read October 20, 2026.

## Three of those prices come with a caveat

**Make's prices are the weakest numbers in the table.** Make's pricing page loads its prices with a script, and Cloudflare's bot check blocked our browser, so we could not read them there. Make's own blog confirms the first tier: Core "[starts at $9/month (annual billing) for 10,000](https://www.make.com/blog/make-vs-zapier)" credits. The higher tiers and the monthly prices come from [an independent write-up](https://dev.to/stimlau/make-pricing-in-2026-free-core-pro-teams-and-credit-costs-lcm) that read the page on October 8, 2026, and that links to Make with an affiliate code. Check them on make.com before you buy.

**Zapier's 1,000-run price has two answers.** 3,000 tasks don't fit the 2,000-task tier ($49 a month yearly), so the clean choice is the 5,000-task tier at $89. The script found something cheaper: the 2,000 tier plus pay-per-task billing for the other 1,000 tasks. Zapier's pricing page says extra tasks cost 1.25 times your base task rate on yearly plans and 2.5 times on monthly ones, up to [3 times your plan's task limit](https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/15279018245901-How-pay-per-task-billing-works-in-Zapier). That makes $79.63. Zapier's help center adds that the rate "depends on your plan and billing cycle type", so confirm it in your billing settings.

**n8n Cloud's figures are yearly.** The page lists Starter at $20 a month for 2,500 executions and Pro at $50 for 10,000, both "billed annually". Yearly billing saves 17%, it says. It lists no Cloud plan with more than 10,000 executions except Enterprise, through sales. The Business plan, $800 a month for 40,000 executions, is self-hosted only.

## The limits matter more than the prices at 10,000 runs

Two of the three cheap options have no headroom at 10,000 runs, and the tools behave differently at the limit.

- **n8n Cloud Pro** includes exactly 10,000 executions. An n8n support answer on the [community forum](https://community.n8n.io/t/92273) says workflows are paused at 100% of the quota until the count resets on the 1st of the month. There is no per-execution overage charge. Ten rejected spam posts a day would push our workflow past the line.
- **Make Core at 40,000 credits** is also an exact fit. Make says that when you run out, "[your scenarios won't continue to run](https://www.make.com/en/pricing)" until credits are added. You can buy extra credits in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000, and since a November 2025 change they cost [25% more than credits in your plan](https://community.make.com/t/important-update-adjustment-to-plans-and-pricing/94578).
- **Zapier** keeps running past the limit if pay-per-task is on, at the higher rate, until 3 times the plan's tasks. With it off, "[your Zap workflows will pause](https://zapier.com/pricing)" until the next usage period.

So at 10,000 runs, plan on Make's next tier, reported at $55 a month yearly for 80,000 credits. For n8n, the step past Cloud Pro is Enterprise or self-hosting. Both Make prices stay far below Zapier's $289.

## Self-hosted n8n has no run quota, but it needs a real server

The free n8n Community Edition has no execution quota: per n8n's docs, only [paid plans](https://docs.n8n.io/build/understand-workflows/understand-executions/) have one. Its [Sustainable Use License](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/n8n-io/n8n/master/LICENSE.md) allows use "only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use". Running your own lead workflow fits; selling n8n as a hosted service to clients does not.

## Our test: 1,000 leads through a self-hosted n8n

To see what a server needs, we installed n8n 2.44.4 from npm on our Linux sandbox (4 vCPUs, 16 GB of memory) with Node.js 24 and the default SQLite database. We built the workflow above as seven nodes: Webhook, If, Edit Fields, three HTTP Request nodes and a webhook reply. A small local server stood in for the CRM, the sheet and Slack, because we have no test accounts there. A script then posted 1,000 made-up leads on `.example` addresses, five at a time, with every 20th lead missing its email.

What happened:

- **All 1,000 posts got an answer.** 950 leads reached all three stand-in services; 50 were rejected by the filter with a 422 reply. No errors.
- **Every post was an execution.** n8n's database logged 1,002 executions, the 1,000 plus our two manual checks, all marked successful, rejects included. On a paid plan the 50 rejects would count against the quota, as the docs say.
- **It took 49.7 seconds**, about 20 runs a second, with a median reply of 253 ms. A month of 10,000 leads is far below that pace.
- **Memory was the cost.** The main process used about 754 MiB right after start and about 470 MiB after the first requests. During the run, the main process and its task runner together peaked at 884 MiB. A second run, with the main process's JavaScript heap capped at 384 MB, finished the same way and peaked at 782 MiB.
- **The database files came to about 15 MB** after those 1,002 executions. n8n prunes by default after [14 days or 10,000 executions](https://docs.n8n.io/deploy/host-n8n/configure-n8n/scaling/manage-execution-data), so it won't grow forever.

## We would run it on a 2 GiB server

We ran this on a large machine, not on a small cloud server, so read the memory figures as what n8n used, not a proven minimum. n8n's own [sizing example](https://docs.n8n.io/deploy/host-n8n/deploy-as-an-oem-integration/prerequisites) gives 320 MB to 2 GB of memory and says memory needs usually outweigh CPU. On DigitalOcean, a [1 GiB droplet is $6 a month and a 2 GiB one is $12](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets). With our peak near 900 MiB, we would pick the 2 GiB server.

$12 a month beats every hosted option above 2,500 runs, on paper. The real price is the hours: updates, backups, an HTTPS front end and someone to call when it stops. n8n's [hosting docs](https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/) mark npm installs as deprecated from n8n 3.0 and point production users to Docker Compose.

## What this means for you

The decision turns on three numbers you can count today: steps per run, runs per month, and how many runs end at a filter.

- **Under about 250 runs a month,** use Make's free plan. It includes 1,000 credits, enough for 250 of our leads. Zapier's free plan allows only [two-step Zaps](https://zapier.com/pricing), so our three-action workflow needs Pro at $19.99 a month yearly.
- **Pick Zapier** when the apps you need only connect well there, or when most runs stop at a filter and cost nothing. Don't pick it for long workflows at high volume: at 10,000 runs ours costs ten times the reported Make price.
- **Pick Make** for the lowest hosted price on short-to-medium workflows, and set a credit alert. Every module and every trigger run counts, so a ten-module scenario costs ten times as much per run as a one-module one.
- **Pick n8n Cloud** for long workflows with many steps, where one execution covers them all. Avoid it when much of your traffic is spam or empty webhooks, since each one is billed.
- **Self-host n8n** only if someone on the team will own the server. Budget $12 a month for a 2 GiB server, plus regular time for updates and backups.

## Price your own workflow from a list of its steps

If you are not sure this workflow is the one to automate first, our [one-week tally](/articles/noticing-what-to-automate/) helps you find it. For a scheduled report, [the weekly report guide](/articles/automate-weekly-report/) covers the Zapier schedule step by step, and [our email-to-Excel test](/articles/email-data-into-excel/) shows a workflow that may not need any of these tools. More comparisons are under [automation](/topics/automation/).

Before you sign up, write your workflow as a list of steps and mark each as trigger, action or filter. Multiply by your runs and add 25%. That one line tells you which of the three bills you least.

## Sources

- Zapier, [Plans and pricing](https://zapier.com/pricing) (task tiers, plan limits, pay-per-task rates; read October 20, 2026)
- Zapier Help Center, [How is task usage measured in Zapier?](https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496196837261)
- Zapier Help Center, [How pay-per-task billing works in Zapier](https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/15279018245901-How-pay-per-task-billing-works-in-Zapier)
- Make, [Pricing and subscription packages](https://www.make.com/en/pricing) (credit rules and FAQ; prices did not load for us)
- Make, [Make vs Zapier](https://www.make.com/blog/make-vs-zapier) (Core at $9 a month yearly for 10,000 credits; April 2026)
- Make Help Center, [Operations](https://help.make.com/operations) and [Filtering](https://help.make.com/filtering)
- Make Community, [Important update: adjustment to plans and pricing](https://community.make.com/t/important-update-adjustment-to-plans-and-pricing/94578) (November 2025)
- dev.to, [Make pricing in 2026](https://dev.to/stimlau/make-pricing-in-2026-free-core-pro-teams-and-credit-costs-lcm) (Make tier prices read October 8, 2026; affiliate links)
- n8n, [Pricing](https://n8n.io/pricing/) (read October 20, 2026)
- n8n Docs, [Understand executions](https://docs.n8n.io/build/understand-workflows/understand-executions/), [Manage execution data](https://docs.n8n.io/deploy/host-n8n/configure-n8n/scaling/manage-execution-data), [Prerequisites](https://docs.n8n.io/deploy/host-n8n/deploy-as-an-oem-integration/prerequisites) and [Hosting](https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/)
- n8n, [Sustainable Use License](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/n8n-io/n8n/master/LICENSE.md)
- n8n Community, [Total execution limits](https://community.n8n.io/t/92273) (support answer on pausing at the quota)
- DigitalOcean, [Droplet pricing](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets)
- 28creation test, October 20, 2026: n8n 2.44.4 on Node.js 24.22.0, SQLite, a Linux sandbox with 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of memory; 1,000 sample webhook posts twice; local stand-ins for the CRM, sheet and Slack; price script run on Node.js 22