When I started comparing automation platforms, I expected pricing to be fairly straightforward.
It wasn't.
Zapier, Make and n8n use different billing models, which makes direct comparisons surprisingly difficult.
Zapier primarily works with tasks.
Make uses credits.
n8n Cloud is based on workflow executions.
That means the same automation workload can result in very different usage depending on the platform.
The problem
Imagine a workflow that runs 1,000 times per month and contains several actions.
On one platform, individual actions may contribute to usage.
On another, the workflow execution itself may be the main billing unit.
And in some cases, specific operations can consume additional credits.
So comparing platforms only by their advertised monthly price doesn't always tell you much.
What I wanted to understand
I mainly wanted to answer a few simple questions:
- How much would a specific automation workload actually cost?
- At what point would I need to move to another plan?
- How do Zapier, Make and n8n compare for roughly the same workload?
- Which assumptions are being used in the calculation?
While working through this, I ended up building a small calculator around the problem.
AutomationCosts:
https://automationcosts.com
The goal isn't to perfectly predict every possible billing scenario.
Automation platforms have too many edge cases for that.
Instead, I tried to keep the logic simple and transparent by separating two things.
1. Usage estimation
First, the calculator estimates how a workload maps to the billing model of each provider.
The same workflow can be counted differently depending on whether the platform uses tasks, credits, or executions.
2. Plan selection
After estimating usage, the calculator matches it against the known pricing tiers.
One thing I deliberately avoided was extrapolating prices when a provider doesn't publish clear pricing for a tier.
If pricing is dynamic or unclear, it's better to treat it as something that needs to be checked rather than inventing an estimated number.
A few things I learned
The biggest lesson was that the billing unit matters almost as much as the price itself.
A workflow with many internal steps can have a very different cost profile depending on how the provider measures usage.
I also realized how quickly pricing calculators can become outdated.
Because of that, I try to keep pricing data tied to official provider sources and track when it was last verified.
The calculator is still evolving, so feedback from people who actively use Zapier, Make or n8n would be useful.
I'm especially interested in billing cases that are easy to misunderstand or difficult to estimate in advance.
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