Verdict: Zapier Agents is the best AI agent builder for most small teams — start free with 400 activities a month and go live for $33.33/month billed annually, on the largest integration catalogue in the category (Zapier pricing). Pay for Lindy instead if the job is your team's daily operations — inbox triage, scheduling, meeting follow-ups, CRM upkeep — and accept per-user billing at $49.99 per user per month (Lindy pricing). Gumloop fits structured marketing pipelines, n8n wins self-hosting and volume, Botpress handles support conversations, and Relevance AI coordinates multi-stage agent teams. One name is missing on purpose: OpenAI's Agent Builder shuts down on 30 November 2026, so do not shortlist a platform that has 32 days left (OpenAI docs). Every price below was verified 29 October 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page.
At a glance
| Builder | Entry price | Usage model | Free plan reality | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier Agents | $0 free; $33.33/mo annual ($400/yr) | Activities (agent actions) + tasks | 400 activities/mo, permanent | Small teams in many SaaS apps (Zapier) |
| Lindy | $49.99/user/mo ($29.99 version also served) | Per-user credits, pooled workspace | $50 credits for 7 days only | Daily ops: inbox, calendar, CRM (Lindy) |
| Gumloop | $37/mo Pro | Flat credits + 8% orchestration fee | None since July 2026 — 14-day trial | Marketing/ops pipelines, by chat (Gumloop) |
| n8n | €20/mo annual (€24 monthly), 2,500 executions | Per workflow execution | Free self-hosted Community Edition | Data control, high volume, code escape (n8n) |
| Relevance AI | $19/mo annual ($29 monthly) | Actions + model credits (two meters) | Retired for new signups | Multi-stage agent "workforces" (Relevance) |
| Botpress | $150/mo annual ($189 monthly) | Per conversation, AI bundled | Capped at 25 conversations | Customer-support agents (Botpress) |
TL;DR
- Start on Zapier's Agents Free plan — 400 activities a month costs nothing and reaches 9,000+ apps; Agents Pro is $400 billed annually, shown as $33.33/month (Zapier pricing).
- Lindy's team plan now bills per active user from $49.99/month for 5,000 pooled credits — five seats run $249.95/month, and anyone who merely @mentions it in Slack takes a seat (Lindy pricing).
- Gumloop's Pro plan is $37/month for 20,000 credits plus an 8% orchestration fee — and its permanent free plan was discontinued in July 2026 (Gumloop pricing; UsagePricing).
- Self-host n8n free for data sovereignty, or run its cloud from €20/month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions (n8n pricing).
Why this pick, this week
Two things changed recently enough that most listicles have not caught up. First, OpenAI put a shutdown date on its Agent Builder: the deprecation was announced on 3 June 2026 and the product stops on 30 November 2026, with OpenAI itself pointing no-code users to Workspace Agents in ChatGPT and developers to the Agents SDK (OpenAI's AgentKit post). A buyer acting on a 2025-era "best agent builder" list could spend a month learning a canvas that has 32 days left. Second, the pricing models across this category have reset within the last six months: Lindy collapsed its old Plus/Pro/Max ladder into one per-user Team plan in October 2026 (CostKite), Botpress switched from per-message to per-conversation billing on 14 May 2026 (Botpress blog), Gumloop killed its free plan in July 2026 (UsagePricing), and Relevance AI retired its free tier for new signups (Relevance AI docs). If a review still lists "Lindy Plus from $19.99" or a free Relevance tier, it is describing a plan that no longer exists.
The demand behind this decision is real even beyond our own keyword data: in Zapier's own survey of more than 500 enterprise leaders, 72% report they are using or testing AI agents (Zapier survey) — treat that as a vendor survey, but it matches the pricing resets documented below.
The billing model is the real decision
These six builders do not sell the same unit, so headline prices mislead. Match your usage shape to the unit each vendor meters:
| Builder | What a unit is | The usage shape this punishes |
|---|---|---|
| Zapier Agents | An "activity" — one agent action inside a connected app | Very high-frequency agent loops |
| Lindy | One credit varies: 2–250 per everyday ask, 250–1,000 per deep task | Teams billing seats that barely use the tool |
| Gumloop | A credit per step/run, plus 8% of agent runs as an orchestration fee | Unpredictable heavy run days |
| n8n | One execution = a full workflow run, steps free | Nothing — but self-hosting shifts ops burden |
| Relevance AI | An Action per tool run + separate Vendor Credits for model calls | Anyone who forgets the second meter |
| Botpress | A conversation = an exchange of two-plus user messages | Support volume with short two-message chats |
(Credit bands and meter definitions: Lindy, Relevance AI, n8n.)
The six builders, honestly
Zapier Agents — best for most small teams
Zapier wraps natural-language agents around its decade-old automation catalogue: the free tier includes 400 activities per month, Agents Pro costs $400 billed annually (shown as $33.33/month) for 1,500 activities, and Agents Enterprise is custom (Zapier pricing). The integration catalogue is the widest in this comparison at 9,000+ apps, which matters more than agent depth when your work spans a dozen smaller tools. The tradeoff is reasoning depth: Zapier's own comparison pages position it as governed automation with agents layered on, not an agent-first platform (Zapier vs Lindy).
Lindy — best for daily operations, at a per-user price
Lindy sells an AI teammate that triages inboxes, schedules meetings, drafts replies in your voice and keeps CRM records current — for the CRM stack itself, our best AI CRM for small business comparison covers the buyer side; the paid team plan bills every active user from $49.99/month for 5,000 credits each, credits pool across the workspace, and top-ups cost $10 per 1,000 (Lindy pricing). Watch three things: the pricing page also served an entry version at $29.99 for 3,000 credits in October, so confirm at signup (CostKite); every seat adds to one bill — five seats at the entry price run $249.95/month; and one deep task consumes 250–1,000 credits while a big build can eat 1,000–2,500 (Lindy pricing). It lists 1,500+ integrations with MCP support, computer use included, and SOC 2/GDPR compliance with HIPAA available on Enterprise (same pricing page).
Gumloop — best for structured marketing and ops pipelines
Gumloop builds agents from a chat window on a visual canvas, with 35+ models, unlimited seats and self-improving agent instructions; Pro starts at $37/month with 20,000 included credits, 5 concurrent workflow runs and 25 concurrent agent chats (Gumloop pricing). The fee most reviews miss: an 8% orchestration fee applies on agent runs, and BYOK reduces model costs but not that fee (same pricing table); overage credits run $0.005 each per the credit docs. There is no permanent free plan — it was discontinued in July 2026 and replaced by a 14-day trial (UsagePricing) — so trial it on a real workflow before the clock runs out. On credibility: Gumloop raised a $50 million Series B led by Benchmark in March 2026 (Concourse).
n8n — best for data control and volume
n8n is the open-source option: the Community Edition is free and self-hosted under a fair-code license, cloud Starter runs €20/month billed annually (€24 monthly) for 2,500 executions, Pro €50 (€60) for 10,000, and the self-hosted Business plan starts at €667/month annually for 40,000 (n8n pricing; plans mirror). Executions are charged per workflow run, so complex 40-step agents cost the same as single-step ones — the cheapest model here once volume climbs (same pricing page). The price of that control is operations: self-hosting is real infrastructure work, and the canvas expects technical comfort. How it stacks against other builders: n8n beats Make in our workflow showdown, and the Creao AI vs n8n vs Zapier three-way compares the agent angles directly.
Relevance AI — best for multi-stage agent teams
Relevance AI coordinates specialized agents that hand work across stages — research, qualify, update CRM — and its Workforce canvas makes each hand-off explicit; Pro is $19/month billed annually ($29 monthly) with 2,500 Actions and $20 of Vendor Credits, and Team is $234 annual ($349 monthly) with 7,000 Actions (Relevance AI docs). Two meters bill here: Actions for what agents do and Vendor Credits for model calls, with credits rolling over while subscribed and top-ups at $80 per 1,000 Actions (same docs). The free tier is retired for new signups — budget from $29/month (same docs). Start with one agent before orchestrating many; multi-agent setups add real coordination overhead.
Botpress — best for support conversations
Botpress rebuilt for support teams in May 2026: it now bills per conversation with AI usage bundled, Plus at $150/month billed annually ($189 monthly) for 250 conversations, Team at $750 annual ($939 monthly) for 1,500, with conversation packs at $65 and $50 per 100 (Botpress pricing; Botpress blog). The free plan is capped hard — the page showed 25 conversations in recent checks versus 100 in the launch post (stewie.io). Two fine-print rules matter: auto-recharge cannot be turned off, and unused pack conversations expire at month end, so one busy month can raise the following month's bill (same stewie.io analysis).
Pick by usage shape, not by feature list
- Many SaaS apps, low budget, learning what agents can do: Zapier Agents — start on the free 400 activities (Zapier).
- The agent must run inside email, Slack, calendars every day: Lindy, budgeted per seat (Lindy).
- Marketing/content pipelines a non-technical team maintains: Gumloop, with the 8% fee priced in (Gumloop).
- Customer data cannot leave your servers, or volume is high: n8n self-hosted or its cloud (n8n).
- A process with clear stages and specialists: Relevance AI Workforce (Relevance).
- Customer-facing support volume: Botpress, Team past roughly 1,150 conversations a month where it beats Plus (stewie.io).
The foundation layer these builders call is covered in our ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini comparison; the best AI project management tools comparison covers where agent output feeds a tracker. If you would rather build agents in code, our agentic AI roadmap covers when the no-code ceiling forces a code-first rebuild.
Alternatives worth knowing
- Microsoft Copilot Studio is the natural pick if the whole company lives in Microsoft 365; credit-pack pricing commonly runs $200/month for 25,000 credits (Simular's October 2026 table), and its computer-using agents reached general availability in May 2026 (Microsoft docs).
- Workspace Agents in ChatGPT are OpenAI's own recommended path for natural-language agent work after the November shutdown (OpenAI's post).
- LangGraph or CrewAI for engineering teams who want code ownership — our agentic AI roadmap covers the build-vs-buy line.
FAQ
Q: What is an AI agent builder?
A: A platform where you describe a goal and the tools an agent may use, and the platform handles the model calls, integrations and run logic — no orchestration code of your own (overview of the category).
Q: Can I build an AI agent for free?
A: Yes: Zapier Agents includes 400 activities/month free (Zapier pricing), and n8n's self-hosted Community Edition is free if you run the server yourself (n8n pricing) — Gumloop, Relevance AI and paid Lindy trials end after 7–14 days.
Q: What do credits, activities, actions and conversations actually mean?
A: They are four different meters: Zapier counts agent actions, Lindy pools credits that scale with task depth (2–2,500 per task), Relevance AI bills tool runs separately from model calls (its docs), and Botpress counts a chat once two messages have been exchanged (Botpress pricing).
Q: Is per-user pricing going to get expensive as my team grows?
A: For Lindy, multiply: five seats at $49.99 plus its pooled credits is $249.95/month, billed for every active user including occasional Slack mentions (Lindy pricing) — seat-free options include Gumloop and n8n, which bill usage instead (Gumloop pricing).
Q: What happened to OpenAI Agent Builder?
A: OpenAI deprecated it on 3 June 2026 and it shuts down on 30 November 2026; OpenAI recommends its Agents SDK for code workflows and Workspace Agents in ChatGPT for prompt-built ones (OpenAI docs).
Q: Which agent builder is best for a small business on a budget?
A: Zapier Agents, because the credible live tier is $33.33/month and the free tier has no end date (Zapier pricing) — add Lindy later if the daily-operations workload outweighs automation breadth (Lindy pricing).
Updates
- 29 October 2026: Published after a same-day price check of every vendor's own pricing page. OpenAI Agent Builder is excluded from the shortlist: OpenAI deprecated it on 3 June 2026 and it shuts down 30 November 2026 (OpenAI docs).
- Pricing verified 29 October 2026: Zapier, Lindy, Gumloop, Relevance AI, n8n, Botpress. Plan structure — not just prices — changed for Lindy, Gumloop, Relevance AI and Botpress within the last 6 months.
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