Zapier, Make or n8n: which one a small business should use.

The short answer

Zapier, Make and n8n do the same basic job. Something happens in one app, such as a form being sent, and the platform carries out the next steps in other apps: add a row, send an email, create a contact. For a small business, three things separate them: who can build and fix a workflow, how each platform counts what you use, and where it keeps your data.

• Zapier is the easiest to start with. Each step that does something counts as a task, so long workflows that run often use a lot of them.
• Make shows each workflow as a map of steps, with branches and loops you can see. It counts every module that runs, the trigger included, and lets you keep your data in an EU data centre.
• n8n counts one execution per run, however many steps the workflow has. It runs on n8n's own cloud in Germany or on a server you control, which gives you the most control and the most to look after.

If you have one simple job, such as a reminder the day before a booking, check the tool you already pay for first. Booking software, accounting software and CRMs often do the common jobs themselves, and a setting is cheaper to keep than a workflow. If you have not picked your first workflow yet, start with the first automations to set up.

How each one counts what you use

Each platform sells a monthly allowance and counts it in its own way. The counting rule decides your bill more than the plan name does.

• Zapier counts tasks. A task is an action that succeeds, such as a row added or an email sent. Triggers never count, and neither do its Filter, Paths, Formatter and Delay steps. Some actions, AI steps among them, can count as more than one task.
• Make counts credits. Every module that runs uses one credit, and the trigger counts too. A trigger that checks an app for new data uses a credit on each check, even when there is nothing new. Routers and filters use none, and an action that handles ten items uses ten.
• n8n counts executions on its cloud plans. One run of a workflow is one execution, whether it has three steps or thirty. Test runs from the editor do not count.

So Zapier suits short workflows, n8n suits long ones that run often, and Make sits between them, with one trap: a trigger that checks far more often than anything happens. These rules come from each platform's own help pages in October 2026. Check them again before you choose, because pricing rules change.

Five workflows, counted on each

Take a cleaning company that gets about 80 enquiries a month, does about 12 cleans on each of 20 working days and invoices every clean. Here are five ordinary workflows, with what one run uses on each platform:

• A new enquiry from the website form goes into the enquiry sheet, to the person who quotes that area and back to the customer as a confirmation. Zapier: 3 tasks. Make: 4 credits. n8n: 1 execution. Over a month: about 240 tasks, 320 credits or 80 executions.
• Every afternoon, a search finds tomorrow's cleans and texts each customer a reminder. Zapier: about 13 tasks a day, one for the search and one per text. Make: about 13 credits. n8n: 1 execution. Over a month: about 260 tasks, 260 credits or 20 executions.
• When an invoice is marked paid, a filter lets through only one-off cleans, such as end-of-tenancy cleans, and those customers get a review request, say 30 a month. Zapier: 30 tasks, because a run the filter stops uses none. Make: 270 credits with an instant trigger, one for each of the 240 paid invoices that start a run plus one per request. n8n: 240 executions, because every run counts.
• The same review request, with Make checking the accounting app every 15 minutes because the app cannot tell Make the moment an invoice is paid. Each check uses a credit, which makes 96 a day before a single request goes out, nearly 3,000 a month. Zapier does not count its checks.
• On Monday morning, the owner gets one email with last week's enquiries and the quotes still open. A few tasks or credits a week on Zapier and Make, one execution a week on n8n.

n8n's count is lowest wherever a workflow has several steps or handles many items in one run, because it counts runs rather than steps. Zapier's count is lowest wherever a filter stops most runs, because those runs use nothing. Make counts much like Zapier plus one credit for every trigger run, and a trigger that checks far more often than anything happens is where its count runs away. None of this tells you which is cheaper until you put the counts next to each plan's price and allowance. Workflows like the first two are the core of enquiry follow-up and booking automation.

Put your own monthly counts next to each platform's current pricing page. Then add the hours someone spends building and fixing the workflows, which is often the larger cost.

When a workflow breaks, and who fixes it

Every workflow breaks sooner or later: a password changes, an app changes how it sends data, someone renames a column. What matters is how soon you hear about it and who fixes it, and here the platforms differ as well:

• Zapier keeps a history of every run. On paid plans, autoreplay retries steps that failed for a temporary reason. A Zap that errors on almost every run over seven days turns itself off, and on Team and Enterprise plans the account owner gets an email and some time to fix it first.
• Make can keep a failed run as an incomplete execution, to retry by hand or automatically once the cause is fixed. A scheduled scenario switches itself off after a set number of errors in a row, and one started by an instant trigger switches off at the first error.
• n8n lets you name an error workflow that runs whenever another workflow fails, for example to email the person on duty with a link to the failed run. On a server of your own, you also fix the server.

None of the three vendors fixes your workflow for you. Their support covers the platform. The workflow, its logic and its connections are yours, or the job of whoever built it. Before you go live, write down who receives the alert, who has the logins and who covers while that person is on holiday.

Then switch one connection off on purpose and watch what happens. If nobody hears about it, the workflow is not ready.

Where your data goes

Every enquiry, booking and invoice in a workflow passes through the platform, and the run history keeps a copy. If your customers are in Europe, where that copy lives is a question for whoever advises you on data protection. These are the facts to bring them:

• Zapier hosts its data on servers in the United States and does not offer EU-only storage. It relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for data from Europe.
• Make asks you to choose a US or an EU data centre when you create your organisation, and you cannot change it later. Choose before you build anything.
• n8n's cloud stores data in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. A self-hosted n8n keeps it on whatever server you choose.

The platform is only one stop. A workflow that runs in Frankfurt and writes to a CRM hosted in the US still sends the data to the US. List every app a workflow touches, pass on only the fields each step needs and set how long the run history is kept, because logs hold customer details too.

Self-hosting n8n in the EU

n8n's Community Edition is free to download and run on your own server. Its licence, the Sustainable Use License, allows use for your own internal business purposes, which covers a business running its own workflows. n8n calls this fair-code rather than open source.

You get a server you pick, such as one at a hosting company in Germany, and no plan allowance: the limit on how much runs is the server. You take on the rest:

• Setting up the server, usually with Docker, plus a domain and a secure connection.
• Updates to n8n and to the server, tried on a copy first, because a new version can change how a step behaves.
• Backups of the workflows, the stored logins and the run history, and one restore you have actually tried.
• Security: who can reach the editor, strong logins, and the logins it stores for your other apps.
• Watching that it is up. If the server stops, every workflow on it stops, and no vendor will tell you.

The Community Edition also leaves out some team features. There are no projects or sharing, so only the owner and the person who made a workflow can open it and its logins. There is no single sign-on, no Git version control and no separate test and live environments.

Self-host only if someone is named to look after the server and has the time, or a supplier does it under a written maintenance agreement. Otherwise n8n's own cloud or Make's EU data centre keeps your data in the EU with no server to run.

Free plans and what they leave out

All three let you start without paying, with limits that matter once real customers depend on the workflow:

• Zapier's free plan runs two-step Zaps only: one trigger and one action. It leaves out Filters, Paths, Formatter, premium apps and autoreplay, checks for new data every 15 minutes and stops once the month's tasks are used up.
• Make's free plan has a small monthly credit allowance, and its scheduled scenarios can run at most once every 15 minutes.
• n8n's cloud has a free trial rather than a free plan. The free version is the Community Edition you host yourself.

Free plans are fine for trying one workflow on test data. Do not run a business process on one. The enquiry workflow above needs three actions, which Zapier's free plan cannot do, and when a free allowance runs out, the workflow waits for next month while enquiries keep arriving.

Alternatives to look at first

The best alternative to Zapier is often a setting you already pay for. Before you build, check:

• Your booking software, for confirmations and reminders.
• Your accounting software, for invoice reminders and reading supplier bills.
• Your CRM or job software, for follow-up tasks, quote reminders and web forms that create a record.
• Your email, for rules that sort and forward messages.

If your business runs on Microsoft 365, Power Automate comes with most business plans for flows between standard connectors, such as Outlook, Excel and SharePoint. Premium connectors need a separate Power Automate licence. It is a good fit for workflows that stay inside Microsoft's tools and harder going outside them.

Custom code is the other alternative. It suits a workflow that runs very often, needs logic no platform handles well or must not depend on a platform's plan. It takes longer to build, and a developer has to make every change.

How to choose, in five questions

• Who will build and fix it? If it is you, with no technical help, start with Zapier. If you like building and can follow a diagram, try Make. If a developer or a supplier will look after it, n8n is a fair choice.
• How many steps does it have, and how often does it run? Count one month, the way the five workflows above are counted.
• Does it carry personal data that should stay in the EU? Then compare Make's EU data centre and n8n's EU hosting with Zapier's US hosting, and ask your adviser.
• Do all your apps have a ready-made connection on that platform? Look each one up in the platform's app directory before you decide. A missing connection means building it through the app's API, which takes longer and needs more watching.
• Does it need branches, loops, waits of several days or an AI step? All three can do these, and Make and n8n show the logic more clearly once a workflow grows.

Then pick one platform for all your workflows. Two platforms mean two sets of logins, two bills and two places to look when something stops.

Mistakes that cost money or enquiries

• Building on one person's account. When they leave or change their password, every workflow stops. Use an account the business owns.
• Checking for new data every minute for something that happens twice a day. On Make it burns credits, and on any platform it adds runs nobody needs.
• No alert, or an alert that goes to someone who has left.
• No notes. Each workflow needs a few lines on what starts it, what it does, which accounts it uses and who to call.
• A plan that runs out halfway through the month, so enquiries wait unseen until it resets.
• An AI step that replies to customers with nobody reading the reply first. AI agents for a small business covers where a person has to check.
• Testing with one perfect example. Try a duplicate enquiry, a missing phone number and a customer who replies to the automatic email.

Moving from one platform to another

Moving usually means rebuilding each workflow by hand, so treat it as a rebuild and fix what annoyed you on the way:

• List every workflow: what starts it, each step, the apps and accounts it uses and who gets the alerts.
• Rebuild one workflow at a time on the new platform, starting with the simplest.
• Test it with test records while the old one keeps running.
• Switch the old one off at the moment the new one goes live, so no customer gets two messages.
• Watch the new run history closely at first, and cancel the old plan once every workflow has moved.

Move when you have a reason: the bill grows faster than the work, the data has to stay in the EU, or the workflows have outgrown what the platform does well. If your enquiries have outgrown the spreadsheet too, read spreadsheet or CRM before you rebuild, because the workflows will point at the new home.

How we choose for a client

We recommend the platform that fits your tools and runs reliably. Simple flows often run well on Zapier or Make, and larger or private ones may suit n8n or custom code. The written plan names the platform and why, the quote says which platform bills are yours, and in Zapier, Make or n8n your team can change a message or a timing without code. Every workflow keeps a log, and when a step fails, someone gets an alert and the record waits for review. See automation for how a project runs and the prices page for where custom automation starts.