Why Agencies Outgrow ZapierZapier's free tier gives you 100 tasks/month. Every action in a multi-step Zap counts separately, so a 5-step workflow triggered 500 times uses 2,500 tasks. Agencies running automations for multiple clients burn through task limits fast — and the pricing tier jumps are brutal.

n8n: The Main Alternative

At the Professional plan ($49/month), you get 2,000 tasks. At the Team plan ($299/month), you get 50,000. At 100,000 tasks, you're at $599/month. For a workflow-heavy agency, that's a meaningful line item.

n8n: The Main Alternative

n8n is an open-source workflow automation tool. Self-hosted, it runs on a $12/month VPS with unlimited tasks. Follow our n8n self-hosting guide to get started, and read our comparison of why Zapier gets expensive fast for a cost breakdown. No per-task pricing. No tier limits. The workflows you build are yours — no vendor lock-in.

What you gain:

What you lose:

MakeMakeAt 100,000 operations/month, Make costs $99. The same volume on Zapier is $599. Make's visual flow editor is also more powerful — you can build complex branching logic without code.

Make sits between Zapier and n8n. More powerful than Zapier (better data handling, more complex flows), cloud-hosted like Zapier, but priced by "operations" rather than tasks — which works out cheaper at similar volumes.

At 100,000 operations/month, Make costs $99. The same volume on Zapier is $599. Make's visual flow editor is also more powerful — you can build complex branching logic without code.

Best for: agencies that want more power than Zapier but aren't ready to manage self-hosted infrastructure.

When Each Makes Sense

Stay on Zapier if: You spend under $100/month. Non-technical team builds/maintains automations. You need a specific integration only Zapier has.

Switch to Make if: You're on Zapier's Team plan or above. You need more complex logic. You want cloud-hosted simplicity at better pricing.

Switch to n8n if: You're spending $200+/month on Zapier. You need unlimited tasks. You have technical capacity for setup. You want full data control.

The Migration Reality

Migrating from Zapier to n8n typically takes 1–2 weeks with a parallel-run phase. Most Zapier workflows translate directly. HTTP/webhook-based integrations are straightforward; OAuth-based ones (Gmail, Slack) require credential setup.

For most agencies we've migrated, the ROI on migration cost (our fee + setup time) is recovered within 60–90 days of Zapier savings.

// cost comparison at 100k tasks/month
// cost comparison at 100k tasks/month

Thinking About Switching?

We migrate agencies from Zapier to n8n regularly. Fixed price, parallel-run validation, no downtime.

[ Talk to Us About Migration → ]