n8n vs. Make: Which is greatest? [2026]

As anybody is aware of who’s been on the receiving finish of considered one of my alarmingly detailed journey itineraries, I strongly consider in doing my homework. So although I believe Zapier is one of the best automation platform on the market (I used it years earlier than I even labored right here), I nonetheless need you to have all of the info earlier than making a call on the fitting automation platform for you.

It is necessary to look past characteristic lists and touchdown web page guarantees when selecting an automation instrument. It is advisable know what it is truly wish to construct and scale on these platforms. Who’re they for? The place do they shine? And the place do they make you mutter to your self, “There must be a greater method”?

On this information, I will stroll via the important thing variations between Make and n8n—together with integrations, scalability, pricing, and safety—so you’ll be able to resolve what’s proper to your crew, and if, ultimately, Zapier is definitely what you are on the lookout for.

Desk of contents:

n8n vs. Make at a look

Make is plug-and-play; n8n is build-and-maintain

One of many greatest issues when selecting between Make and n8n is who’s truly going to be constructing your workflows—and what number of favors you may have to name in from engineering.

Let’s begin with Make. It is a cloud-based, drag-and-drop visible automation builder that is mainly able to roll out of the field.

The interface is a bit of busy, with numerous colourful icons and spaghetti-looking branches, however should you’ve dabbled in instruments like Lucidchart or Figma, it will not really feel completely overseas. Positive, there is a studying curve—particularly should you’re coming from one thing like Zapier—nevertheless it’s nonetheless very doable for non-developers. People in ops, advertising, and assist may have a a lot simpler time constructing automated workflows for his or her groups in Make than n8n.

As a result of n8n is open supply and self-hosted, you get a ton of flexibility but in addition inherit the fun of infrastructure: patching, staging, permission fashions, the entire DevOps buffet. The UI is sleeker than Make’s and appears deceptively easy—till you notice it expects you to know what you are doing. It tosses you into variables and expressions fairly rapidly, which may be highly effective should you’re a developer, or terrifying should you simply need to automate a lead handoff.

If you happen to’ve received a strong dev crew and need full management, n8n can ship. However you may want somebody who can handle servers and write JavaScript of their sleep. It is nice for engineering-led orgs, however not so nice for advertising groups that simply need to cease copy-pasting spreadsheet rows at 5 PM on a Friday.

Zapier, in the meantime, is simpler to make use of than Make, with the ability and adaptability of n8n.

Make has extra integrations; n8n has higher AI options

One other huge issue to think about is how properly n8n and Make discuss to different instruments—particularly should you’re constructing for a number of departments or making an attempt to scale automations throughout a rising group.

Make has integrations for over 2,500 apps proper out of the gate, together with all the standard suspects—CRMs, electronic mail platforms, challenge trackers, HR instruments, finance software program—and a number of these obscure apps that solely your accounting crew makes use of. The mixing checklist pales compared to Zapier’s 8,000+ integrations, however nonetheless: odds are good you will not have to wrangle APIs or webhooks simply to get began.

n8n has fewer integrations (round 1,100). You continue to get the core apps like Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, and GitHub, but when your workflow depends on extra area of interest instruments, be able to bust out the HTTP Request node or construct a customized one. It is doable for builders, however undoubtedly overwhelming for the typical ops or advertising individual.

The place n8n pulls forward of Make, although, is with AI. It comes with native nodes for OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Stability AI—and you may chain these along with logic, filters, variables, and all of the nerdy bells and whistles. If you happen to’re constructing assist bots, inner brokers, or any form of AI-driven automation, n8n offers you extra management than Make out of the field. You’ll be able to even host your personal fashions or wire in your personal vector databases.

n8n additionally helps LangChain, self-hosted LLMs, and retrieval-augmented technology (RAG) setups. So in case your crew is dabbling in multi-agent workflows or constructing inner AI techniques with sandboxed environments and mannequin orchestration, that is your playground.

Simply know that not like Zapier, which boasts extra integrations and higher AI assist, the worth of admission for n8n is technical chops.

Learn extra: Zapier vs. n8n: Which is greatest to your group?

Make has enterprise-level safety; n8n’s safety is DIY

Relating to safety, n8n offers you full management—however as Uncle Ben as soon as mentioned, with nice energy comes nice duty. n8n is open supply and self-hosted (until you pay for his or her cloud model), which implies you get to resolve the place your knowledge lives, the way it’s encrypted, who has entry, and when it is up to date.

If your organization already has infrastructure, safety protocols, and a crew that eats YAML information for breakfast, n8n could possibly be an incredible match. However should you’re working with a leaner crew—otherwise you’re making an attempt to keep away from changing into the DevSecOps individual accidentally—then Make might be the easier, safer wager.

Make is a completely hosted platform, which implies a lot of the heavy lifting round infrastructure, safety patches, encryption, and compliance is dealt with behind the scenes. You log in, construct your workflows, and belief that the SOC 2 Sort II fairy has already sprinkled the mandatory mud.

In fact, it is not fairly as much as the extent of Zapier’s managed safety mannequin, the place IT groups can set detailed role-based privileges and have granular entry over their group’s person exercise. Whereas Zapier’s enterprise customers are robotically opted out of AI mannequin coaching and their compliance is dealt with robotically, Make’s governance depends extra on person self-discipline. Which means in giant orgs, there’s extra threat of inconsistent practices throughout groups.

Learn extra: Zapier vs. Make: Which is greatest?

n8n is way tougher to scale

Most platforms really feel the identical once you’re simply automating a number of issues right here and there. However when you begin rolling out automation throughout a number of groups, the behind-the-scenes structure actually begins to matter.

As a result of n8n is self-hosted (until you are utilizing their paid cloud model), it is way more difficult to scale, particularly in case your crew would not have already got the infrastructure in place. You are in control of provisioning servers, optimizing efficiency, managing backups, monitoring uptime, and ensuring your infrastructure can deal with no matter you throw at it. It’s very doable, however provided that you’ve got received the technical know-how and time to take care of it.

Make, then again, is a completely managed, cloud-based platform, like Zapier. Which means it handles scaling for you. As you add workflows, site visitors, and customers, simply improve your plan and hold constructing.

n8n’s pricing is best for complicated workflows, whereas Make’s is best for easy automations

If you happen to’re self-hosting n8n, the license itself is technically free to make use of. Simply keep in mind that should you’re self-hosting, you are additionally signing up for every little thing that comes with it: infrastructure, backups, monitoring, safety, patching, updates—all of the issues that do not present up on the bill however undoubtedly present up in your calendar.

n8n may be cost-effective should you’ve received the engineering muscle to assist it. In any other case, you are doubtless buying and selling SaaS pricing for hidden ops prices.

Even the hosted model begins at a comparatively low price. The massive distinction is within the billing mannequin: n8n costs by execution—which means you pay for every full workflow run, not each particular person step inside it. So should you’ve received a gnarly 10-step automation that runs 1,000 instances a month, you are paying for 1,000 executions, not 10,000 actions. That is a win for groups constructing complicated, multi-step workflows that run steadily.

Make’s pricing mannequin, then again, is extra conventional SaaS: decide a plan, get a set variety of “operations” (AKA particular person steps in your workflows), and go. That is nice for smaller, simple automations. You at all times know what you are working with, and it is simple to clarify to non-technical stakeholders.

However not like Zapier’s task-based mannequin, which solely costs you for “work” actions, Make makes use of an operation credit score for every particular person step. Platform options like filtering, formatting, looping, and error dealing with do not rely in opposition to your credit score utilization in Zapier, however that is not the case with Make. As your workflows get extra complicated—with branching logic, loops, polling triggers, and even errors—your plan’s operation credit can disappear quick. So a 10-step workflow in Make that runs 5,000 instances per thirty days may probably use 50,000+ operations per billing cycle.

In brief, n8n’s execution-based pricing encourages constructing huge, complicated workflows, which sounds environment friendly till you notice you’ve got created a monster that is onerous to take care of or hand off. In the meantime, Make’s pricing nudges you towards smaller, low-volume workflows, which may rack up in price as your utilization balloons. If you’d like predictable pricing that is each accessible and scalable, Zapier is your greatest wager.

Which automation platform is best for you?

The selection between n8n and Make largely comes down as to if you desire a plug-and-play resolution like Make, or if self-hosting n8n outweighs the large technical and infrastructure prices for you. However should you’re wanting past the fundamentals to construct not simply automations, however techniques that join instruments, groups, and AI, Zapier offers you one of the best of each worlds—and extra.

Zapier is an orchestration platform that lets your organization flip disconnected apps and processes into streamlined, AI-powered techniques. Do every little thing from automating your gross sales pipeline to syncing databases and coordinating initiatives throughout groups, all from a single, scalable platform.

With Zapier, you’ll be able to:

• Orchestrate whole processes, not simply single duties—automate dozens of steps throughout 8,000+ instruments, and not using a line of code.

• Embed AI into your workflows, utilizing integrations with practically 500 AI instruments, in addition to AI Brokers that may take motion in your behalf based mostly in your specs.

• Unify groups throughout departments, so Gross sales, Advertising, Assist, and Operations can construct their very own automations with out ready on Engineering.

• Scale with out the overhead, rising your automation footprint with out spinning up servers or managing safety—it is all inbuilt.

And since Zapier is designed to be approachable and extensible, it is simply as helpful for a solo marketer as it’s for an enterprise IT crew managing hundreds of workflows. In different phrases, Zapier offers you the ability of n8n with out the complexity, the convenience of Make with out the restrictions, and a future-ready platform constructed for AI-powered orchestration at scale.

Study extra about Zapier’s AI orchestration, or get began with considered one of these enterprise automation templates.

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