Pick Zapier if your workflows run constantly but do little per run, you need an app Zapier connects and n8n does not, or you want a priceable overage and a published ladder that keeps climbing. Pick n8n if your workflows are elaborate, your team has more than one person, you need runs longer than 30 seconds, or you want EU hosting or self-hosting.
The decision is one ratio: billable actions divided by workflow runs. Zapier meters steps, n8n meters runs, so above roughly three actions per run n8n wins and below one it loses. Everything else — 9,000+ apps against self-hosting, a 1-seat plan against unlimited users, a priced overage against an unpriced one — follows from that split.
Prices verified 30 October 2026 against zapier.com/pricing and n8n.io/pricing.
The two meters, and the number that decides between them
Zapier counts one task per successful action step. n8n counts one execution per whole workflow run — its pricing FAQ says “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.”
So fix the run count and vary the shape. Below, 2,000 runs a month with a trigger plus N billable app actions:
| Billable actions per run | Zapier tasks/mo | Zapier Professional (annual) | n8n executions/mo | n8n Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,000 | $49.00 | 2,000 | 20EUR |
| 2 | 4,000 | $89.00 | 2,000 | 20EUR |
| 3 | 6,000 | $129.00 | 2,000 | 20EUR |
| 4 | 8,000 | $129.00 | 2,000 | 20EUR |
| 6 | 12,000 | $189.00 | 2,000 | 20EUR |
| 10 | 20,000 | $189.00 | 2,000 | 20EUR |
The n8n column never moves, because n8n is not metering the thing that changed. The full three-platform arithmetic, including Make, sets out why the two numbers are not comparable quantities at all.
Now fix the shape at four actions and vary the run count:
| Runs/mo | Zapier tasks | Zapier Professional | n8n executions | n8n Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 2,000 | $49.00 | 500 | Starter 20EUR |
| 1,000 | 4,000 | $89.00 | 1,000 | Starter 20EUR |
| 2,500 | 10,000 | $129.00 | 2,500 | Starter 20EUR (at cap) |
| 5,000 | 20,000 | $189.00 | 5,000 | Pro 50EUR |
| 10,000 | 40,000 | $289.00 | 10,000 | Pro 50EUR (at cap) |
| 25,000 | 100,000 | $489.00 | 25,000 | no Cloud plan |
That last row is the finding nobody advertises, and the next section is about it.
A currency caveat worth stating plainly, because neither vendor states it: Zapier publishes in US dollars and n8n in euros, so the gap between these columns moves with the exchange rate. The arithmetic above stays inside each currency on purpose.
n8n’s cloud ladder ends at 10,000 executions
n8n’s published cloud plans are Starter (2,500 executions, 20EUR/mo billed annually) and Pro (10,000, 50EUR/mo). The 40,000-execution Business plan at 667EUR/mo is labelled “Self-hosted only”, and n8n’s own FAQ answers “Is the Business plan available on n8n Cloud?” with “Not yet,” offering a waitlist. Above Pro the options are Enterprise by quote, or taking over hosting — which means running Docker and Postgres yourself and applying a licence key that, in n8n’s words, must ping its licence server daily to stay active.
Zapier has no equivalent cliff. Its self-serve ladder is published continuously from 750 tasks to 2,000,000, and the effective rate improves the whole way up:
| Zapier Professional tier | Annual (per mo) | Monthly-billed | Per 1,000 tasks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 750 | $19.99 | $29.99 | $26.65 |
| 2,000 | $49.00 | $73.50 | $24.50 |
| 10,000 | $129.00 | $193.50 | $12.90 |
| 50,000 | $289.00 | $433.50 | $5.78 |
| 200,000 | $769.00 | $1,149.00 | $3.85 |
| 2,000,000 | $3,389.00 | $5,099.00 | $1.69 |
n8n’s three-rung curve does the opposite at the top: 20EUR/2,500 is 8.00EUR per 1,000 executions, 50EUR/10,000 is 5.00EUR, and 667EUR/40,000 is 16.68EUR — more than three times Pro’s rate. Business is a features purchase (Git version control, SSO and LDAP, multiple environments, queue mode, six shared projects), not a volume one.
What this means for a buyer who expects to grow: Zapier’s price rises smoothly and predictably with volume. n8n’s is dramatically cheaper until roughly 10,000 runs a month and then asks you to change hosting model. Pick n8n Cloud knowing where its ceiling is.
The exemptions run on different axes — and this is where estimates go wrong
Both platforms give away a lot, but not the same kind of thing.
| Zapier doesn’t charge for | n8n doesn’t charge for | |
|---|---|---|
| Logic | Filter and Paths steps | n/a — step count is already free |
| Built-ins | Formatter, Delay, Looping, Sub-Zap, Digest, Storage, Tables, Forms, Zapier Manager | n/a |
| Triggers | Every trigger and every poll — a 2-minute interval is “over 20 thousand polls per month” and free | Polls that return no data |
| Failures | Any step that errors or does not run | Error-workflow runs |
| Testing | Testing in the editor | Manual executions |
| Nesting | — | Sub-workflow runs (only the parent top-level execution counts) |
Zapier’s exemptions are about step type. n8n’s are about run origin. That is the whole asymmetry, and it means the two platforms reward opposite optimisations: on Zapier you make a workflow cheaper by moving logic into free step types, on n8n you make it cheaper by firing it less often.
Which produces a result that inverts the usual advice. n8n’s docs are explicit that a schedule trigger counts every fire regardless of outcome, and a webhook trigger counts every inbound request that activates it, “including an empty body”. So take a workflow on a five-minute schedule that checks for something and usually finds nothing:
| Monthly billable units | Plan reached | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n8n — 8,640 schedule fires | 8,640 executions | Pro (10,000) | 50EUR |
| Zapier — 2-min polling, acts 100x, 4 actions | 400 tasks | Professional 750 | $19.99 |
Same job. n8n costs two and a half times as much, because the thing it meters is the thing this workflow does most. A filter on the first node does not help — the execution has already been counted.
Three Zapier step types run the other way and cost more than one task: MCP tool calls at 2 tasks per successful call, Lead Router at 5 tasks per lead, and AI by Zapier, whose Premium tier is the default for new steps and charges (1 × model rate) + (tool calls × model rate) at 5x. That one default is worth about $1,920 a year on a 2,000-run workflow — the full AI-step arithmetic is here.
Seats: one plan, one person
Zapier’s pricing page lists 1 seat on Free, 1 on Professional, 25 on Team, unlimited on Enterprise. A second person means Team, which begins at the 2,000-task rung:
| Tasks/mo | Professional (annual) | Team (annual) | Team premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | $49.00 | $69.00 | +$20.00 |
| 10,000 | $129.00 | $169.00 | +$40.00 |
| 50,000 | $289.00 | $399.00 | +$110.00 |
| 200,000 | $769.00 | $999.00 | +$230.00 |
n8n’s header claim is “All plans include unlimited users & workflows and every integration.” A five-person team on Cloud Starter pays 20EUR, the same as one person; what scales with the plan is shared projects (1 on Starter, 3 on Pro, 6 on Business) and roles — project editors and instance admins arrive on Pro, custom roles and audit logging only on Enterprise.
For a two- or three-person operation, this line alone can outweigh the metering argument.
Runtime, concurrency and the throughput numbers neither vendor lets you compare
n8n publishes a maximum execution duration — 5 minutes on Starter, 40 on Pro — and concurrent executions: 5 on Starter, up to 50 on Pro, 200+ on Enterprise.
Zapier publishes neither. What it publishes instead is polling time: 15 minutes on Free, 2 minutes on Professional, 1 minute on Team and Enterprise, with per-Zap custom intervals on paid plans. Its runtime figure covers Code steps only: 1 second included on Free, 30 seconds on Professional and Team, 2 minutes on Enterprise, with extended runtime up to 8 minutes opt-in, off by default, and billed in 30-second blocks at one task each.
So the two vendors publish different throughput primitives, and no arithmetic reconciles them. What you can conclude:
- A job that takes minutes belongs on n8n. Four minutes is inside Starter’s 5-minute cap at no extra cost; on Zapier Professional it exceeds the included 30 seconds and bills by the block.
- A job that must start within a minute belongs on Zapier Team, or on an n8n webhook rather than an n8n schedule.
- A burst of simultaneous runs is capped at 5 on n8n Starter. Zapier states no concurrency limit anywhere, which is not the same as not having one.
Overage: priceable against unpriceable
Zapier publishes the whole mechanism. With pay-per-task enabled, overage bills at 2.5x the base rate on monthly plans and 1.25x on annual, and usage hard-stops at 3x your task subscription until the next cycle. With pay-per-task off, usage stops at the limit. Allowances reset monthly even on annual billing; Enterprise uses an annual task limit instead.
n8n’s figure for the same row is the single word “Capped.” No rate, no multiplier, no ceiling. Its FAQ says workflows “will continue running without interruption, but overage charges may apply if you do not upgrade”, and that sales reaches out near 80% of an annual quota.
A traffic spike has a known worst case on Zapier and an unknown one on n8n. For anyone who has to forecast a bill, that is a real difference, and it runs against n8n’s cheaper sticker price.
Hosting, data residency and the parts that are not about money
- Self-hosting. n8n’s Community Edition is free and self-hosted, and Business and Enterprise can be self-hosted too. Zapier offers no self-hosted option at any price.
- Data residency. n8n Cloud stores data “within the EU, on servers located in Frankfurt, Germany” — the only region it names. Zapier’s pricing page names none. For teams assembling an EU-only stack, this sits alongside the EU data-residency options for AI APIs.
- Integration breadth. Zapier publishes 9,000+ apps, consistently across its pricing page; it is still the broadest catalogue in the category and the reason many teams keep a Zapier seat they barely use. n8n publishes no app count, only that every integration is included on every plan — see the n8n review for the native-node picture and the HTTP-node escape hatch.
- Code. Every n8n node exposes JavaScript or Python inline; bash scripts and custom nodes are self-hosted-only. Zapier’s Code step is a step, not a property of every step.
- Discounts. Zapier’s annual billing is 33% off monthly, plus 15% for non-profits and a 14-day Professional trial with no card. n8n’s annual saving is 17%, with 50% off Business for companies under 20 employees.
- Assistant credits. n8n includes 1,600 AI-assistant credits a month on Starter and up to 9,600 on Pro; self-hosted is bring-your-own-key with no credit limit. Zapier’s Agents bill against a separate activities quota — 400/month on Free, 1,500 on Professional — not against tasks.
One procurement oddity: Zapier now serves its pricing page as a machine-readable document self-described as “optimized for AI agents evaluating, comparing, or recommending Zapier plans,” while n8n serves no monthly-billed price in HTML at all — the monthly figures are swapped in client-side, so a crawler or an AI assistant reading n8n’s raw page sees only annual-commitment numbers. Zapier’s own “canonical rates page” at zapier.com/pricing/rates returns a 404 while the pricing page links to it. Anyone comparing these two platforms through an AI assistant is being told a lopsided story by construction.
Decision table
| If you… | Buy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Run multi-step workflows a few thousand times a month | n8n Cloud Starter, 20EUR | Step count is free; 4 actions or 10 costs the same |
| Have a second team member | n8n, any plan | Zapier Professional is one seat; Team starts at $69.00 |
| Poll frequently and act rarely | Zapier Professional | Polling and no-op runs are free; every n8n schedule fire bills |
| Need a job that runs for minutes | n8n | 5 min on Starter, 40 on Pro, against Zapier’s 30-second Code allowance |
| Need an app only one of them connects | Zapier, at 9,000+ apps | Check n8n’s node list and HTTP fallback first |
| Must forecast a spike | Zapier | 2.5x/1.25x overage and a 3x hard stop are published; n8n’s cap is not |
| Need EU hosting or self-hosting | n8n | Frankfurt on Cloud, anywhere self-hosted; Zapier is managed-only |
| Expect to pass 10,000 runs a month on managed hosting | Zapier, or plan the migration | n8n’s cloud ladder stops at Pro |
| Want high volume and can run a server | n8n Community, free | No published execution limit |
The verdict
For most teams building real automation, n8n Cloud Starter at 20EUR is the better default — it charges for frequency rather than complexity, includes unlimited users, and allows runs long enough to do actual work. The honest version of its advantage is narrower than the marketing: it holds when workflows have several steps and moderate run counts, and it reverses when workflows are one-step and constant.
Keep Zapier for the app it connects that n8n does not, for workflows that poll often and act rarely, and for any volume you need on managed hosting above 10,000 runs a month. Running both is a legitimate answer and a common one — Zapier Professional at $19.99 as a connector of last resort, n8n carrying the production load.
Neither tool is the one to pick first if the automation is AI-agent-shaped rather than app-to-app; Gumloop and Lindy meter that differently again, and Make cannot be priced at all because it publishes no list price on any readable page. For the surrounding stack see the productivity tools guide, the AI agents guide, and the small-business picks; technical readers choosing between self-hosting and managed will also want the developers guide. Current plan prices for both tools and the rest of the category are tracked on the pricing tracker.
Read the full Zapier review · Read the full n8n review
What changed
- 30 Oct 2026: First published. Zapier’s complete Professional and Team task ladders, 9,000+ app count, 33% annual discount, polling intervals, seat counts, Code-step runtime allowances, overage multipliers and Agents activity quotas verified against zapier.com/pricing; n8n’s plan prices, execution allowances, concurrency, duration caps, Frankfurt hosting, 17% annual saving and the “Self-hosted only” Business label against n8n.io/pricing, with the production-execution counting rules from n8n’s execution docs. Zapier’s own canonical rate card at zapier.com/pricing/rates returns 404; n8n serves no monthly-billed price in HTML.
Zapier vs n8n — frequently asked questions
Is Zapier or n8n cheaper?
It depends on one ratio: billable actions divided by workflow runs. Zapier charges one task per successful action step, n8n one execution per whole workflow run regardless of step count. At four actions per run and 2,000 runs a month, Zapier reaches 8,000 tasks and costs $129.00/mo on annual billing against n8n Starter at 20EUR. Invert the shape - a workflow that fires 8,640 times a month on a five-minute schedule but only does real work 100 times - and Zapier is the cheap one, because its polling and its no-op runs are free while every n8n schedule fire counts as an execution. Prices verified 30 October 2026.
Does n8n count a workflow run that does nothing?
Usually yes, and this is the detail that breaks most cost estimates. n8n's docs state that only production executions count - those started by triggers, schedules or polling - and that manual runs, sub-workflow runs, error-workflow runs, polls that return no data and malformed webhook requests do not. But a schedule trigger counts every fire regardless of outcome, and a webhook trigger counts every inbound request that activates it, including one with an empty body. So a workflow whose first node is a filter that rejects 99% of runs still bills 100% of them. On Zapier the same workflow is free until an action succeeds.
Can two people share one Zapier Professional plan?
No. Zapier's pricing page lists one seat on Free and one seat on Professional; 25 on Team and unlimited on Enterprise. A second user means moving to Team, which starts at 2,000 tasks for $69.00/mo on annual billing - a 3.5x jump from Professional's $19.99 entry rung. n8n publishes the opposite: 'All plans include unlimited users & workflows and every integration', so a five-person team on n8n Cloud Starter pays the same 20EUR as one person. If seat count rather than volume is what is growing, that single line is worth more than the whole task-versus-execution argument.
What happens when an n8n Cloud workflow needs more than 10,000 executions a month?
You leave Cloud. n8n's published cloud ladder stops at Pro's 10,000 executions; the 40,000-execution Business plan at 667EUR/mo is marked 'Self-hosted only', and n8n's own FAQ answers the question 'Is the Business plan available on n8n Cloud?' with 'Not yet.' So the next rung up from Pro is either Enterprise by quote or taking over hosting yourself, which also means applying a license key that must ping n8n's licence server daily. Zapier's self-serve ladder, by contrast, is published continuously to 2,000,000 tasks a month at $3,389.00. Buyers who expect to grow past 10,000 runs a month should price that wall before they start.
Which one can run a long job?
n8n, by a wide margin, and the gap is in the included allowance rather than the feature list. n8n publishes a maximum execution duration of 5 minutes on Starter and 40 minutes on Pro. Zapier's Code step includes 1 second of runtime on Free and 30 seconds on Professional and Team, with 2 minutes on Enterprise; extended runtime up to 8 minutes is opt-in, off by default, unavailable on Free, and billed by 'rounded up to the next 30-second block, with each block using 1 task'. A four-minute job is routine on n8n Starter at no extra cost and a metered exception on Zapier.
Which is better for an EU buyer?
n8n, on the published facts. n8n states that for its hosted plans 'data is stored within the EU, on servers located in Frankfurt, Germany', and self-hosting puts the data wherever you choose - the only two options it offers. Zapier is managed-only with no self-hosting tier at any price, and its pricing page names no hosting region. n8n also prices in euros, which removes the exchange-rate exposure in Zapier's dollar rate card. Against that, n8n's Business tier being self-hosted-only means an EU company wanting managed hosting above 10,000 executions a month has to go to Enterprise sales.