n8n vs Zapier: pricing, hosting and AI agents compared

The short verdict

Both tools connect your apps and run steps when something happens. They are built for different situations:

• Choose Zapier when the people who own the process will build and maintain the automations themselves, the workflows are short, the volume is modest, and the apps you need are on its list of more than 9,000.
• Choose n8n when workflows have many steps or run thousands of times a month, when you want code steps and AI agents in the same place, or when data has to stay in the EU or on your own servers.
• Choose neither when the workflow is really a product feature, needs millisecond latency, or deserves the tests and code review of the rest of your software. Then it should be code.

How each one charges

The biggest practical difference is the unit you pay for.

Zapier charges per task. In its own words: “A task is any successful action that runs in Zapier.” Triggers, filters and paths don’t count; every action step that succeeds does. A workflow with one trigger and five actions uses five tasks each time it runs.

n8n charges per execution. Its pricing page puts it plainly: “An execution is a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn’t matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes.” The same six-step workflow uses one execution per run. Only production runs count; manual test runs and sub-workflows don’t.

What about Make? Make sits between the two. It bills in credits, where “an operation is a single module run to process data or check for new data”, and for ordinary modules one operation is one credit. Unlike Zapier, the trigger’s check counts too, so the same six-step workflow uses six credits per run.

What the same workflow costs on each

The workflow: one trigger and five ordinary actions (look up a record, update a CRM, post to a channel, create a task, send an email), each processing one item, all succeeding. We priced the cheapest plan whose included quota covers the volume, billed annually, from each vendor’s pricing page on 26 October 2026.

Prices are in different currencies and we haven’t converted them, but the shape is clear: Zapier’s bill grows with every action in every run, n8n’s only with the runs. At 3,000 runs a month this workflow needs five times as many Zapier tasks as n8n executions, and the gap widens with every step you add. Zapier’s per-task price does fall at higher tiers (its 100,000-task plan costs about 2.6 times its 20,000-task plan for five times the tasks), but the multiplier stays.

• AI steps change the maths on Zapier. An “AI by Zapier” step costs 1, 3 or 5 tasks depending on the model tier. Swap one action for an Advanced-model AI step and each run costs seven tasks instead of five. On n8n it is still one execution (the model provider bills you separately for tokens either way).
• Self-hosted n8n has no licence fee for internal use, at either volume. It isn’t free: you pay for a server and, more importantly, someone’s time to run it (below).
• Monthly billing costs more on both: €60 instead of €50 for n8n Pro 10K, and $283.50 instead of $189 for Zapier’s 20K tier, as listed today.

Self-hosting n8n: free, with conditions

n8n’s Community edition can be self-hosted at no cost. It is “fair-code” rather than open source: the Sustainable Use License lets you use it “only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use”. The licence FAQ spells out what that means in practice:

• Allowed: running your own automations, building automations for clients on your instance as long as they can’t create or edit them, charging for building and maintaining workflows, and using n8n behind the scenes in your own product.
• Not allowed: hosting n8n as a service where clients build their own workflows, letting your product’s end users build or configure workflows, forking it into your own automation product, or white-labelling it.

Running it yourself is real work. n8n’s documentation is candid: “n8n recommends self-hosting for expert users. Mistakes can lead to data loss, security issues, and downtime.” In practice you take on:

• A server. The Docker Compose setup asks for “at least 4 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs”.
• A proper database. SQLite is the default; PostgreSQL is supported and is what you want once it matters.
• Scaling. Queue mode passes executions to workers through Redis, and n8n advises against running it with SQLite.
• Security and upkeep. Encryption in transit through a reverse proxy, encryption at rest, backups, upgrades and monitoring are yours.

If you need single sign-on, multiple environments or Git-based version control on your own servers, those are in the paid self-hosted Business plan, listed at €667 a month billed annually for 40,000 executions.

AI agents, MCP and human approval

Both tools now treat AI as a first-class step, in different ways.

n8n

• An AI Agent node: “Connect a chat model and one or more tools, and the agent decides which tools to call to complete a task.” It is built on LangChain’s JavaScript framework.
• MCP in both directions: an MCP Server Trigger exposes n8n workflows as tools to other AI clients, and an MCP Client node lets workflows use tools from external MCP servers.
• Human approval for tool calls: the workflow pauses and waits for a person to approve or deny before the agent runs a chosen tool, through Slack, Telegram or n8n’s chat.

Zapier

• AI steps inside Zaps, billed at 1, 3 or 5 tasks per step by model tier.
• Zapier Agents, billed separately in “activities” rather than tasks: 400 a month free, or 1,500 on Agents Pro at $33.33 a month billed annually.
• Zapier MCP, which exposes Zapier’s app actions to AI tools; each successful tool call uses two tasks.

For agents that touch important systems, the ability to require approval before specific actions matters more than the number of features. Whichever tool you use, design the approval step first. Our guide to AI agent costs covers the model bill that sits on top of either tool.

Code steps and limits

Long-running or heavy work (large files, batch jobs, slow APIs) is where both tools strain. That is usually the first sign a workflow wants to become a service of its own.

Security, compliance and where your data lives

• Zapier holds SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports and states: “Zapier stores data on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States.” Its terms say regulated health data under HIPAA isn’t supported.
• n8n Cloud stores data “within the EU, on servers located in Frankfurt, Germany”, on Microsoft Azure; its SOC 2 report is available to enterprise customers and its SOC 3 report to others.
• Self-hosted n8n keeps data wherever you run it, which also makes its security your responsibility.

For UK and EU teams handling personal data, where it is processed can decide the question before price does. Check each vendor’s data processing terms against your own obligations.

When to skip both and write code

Workflow tools are excellent until the workflow becomes important enough to need what software has. Move it to code when:

• it is part of your product, and customers depend on it;
• it needs automated tests, code review and staged releases;
• volume or latency outgrows plan limits, or per-run pricing exceeds a small service’s hosting cost;
• the logic has become a tangle of branches nobody can follow on a canvas.

A common pattern is a mix: keep the glue (notifications, simple syncs) in the workflow tool, and move the core logic into a small service the tool calls. Our business process automation platform case study shows the far end of that road: a visual workflow builder with triggers, conditions, escalations and version history, built as software.

Sources

Every source below was read on 26 October 2026. Prices and product details change; check the current page before relying on a figure.

1. n8n: n8n Plans and Pricing
2. n8n Docs: Understand executions
3. n8n Docs: License FAQ
4. n8n: Sustainable Use License (LICENSE.md)
5. n8n Docs: Install using Docker Compose
6. n8n Docs: Enable queue mode
7. n8n Docs: AI Agent node
8. n8n Docs: Human-in-the-loop for tools
9. n8n Docs: Using the Code node
10. n8n: Security
11. Zapier: Plans & Pricing
12. Zapier Help Center: How is task usage measured in Zapier?
13. Zapier: Task usage rates
14. Zapier Help Center: How pay-per-task billing works in Zapier
15. Zapier Help Center: Use JavaScript code in Zap workflows
16. Zapier: Security & Compliance
17. Zapier: Data Privacy
18. Make Help Center: Operations