Zapier vs n8n 2026: Which Automation Tool Costs Less for Your Workflows

Short answer: pick Zapier if your team is non-technical and wants the widest app catalog with nothing to host; pick n8n if you run long or high-volume workflows. Zapier has a free plan (100 tasks a month) and Professional starts at $19.99/mo billed yearly, but it charges a task for every action step. n8n Cloud charges one execution per full run, from $20/mo billed yearly, and its self-hosted Community edition is free. Verified on both vendors' pages, October 2026.

Picture a lead-routing workflow: a form fills in, then five actions run (enrich the lead, score it, create the CRM record, ping sales in Slack, add a row to a sheet). Run it 1,000 times a month and Zapier counts 5,000 tasks, while n8n counts 1,000 executions. That gap is the whole pricing story, and it widens with every step you add.

Zapier vs n8n at a glance

Prices and limits read on Zapier pricing and n8n pricing on October 28, 2026. US list prices.

Dupple data: Toolradar, our software directory, tracks 1,033 workflow automation tools as of October 2026 (Toolradar's workflow automation ranking). In a field that crowded, Zapier and n8n stand out for sitting at opposite ends of the pricing debate: per step against per run. For the wider field, see our best workflow automation tools roundup.

What counts as a task in Zapier vs an execution in n8n?

A Zapier task is one successful action. Zapier's task usage guide says triggers never use tasks, and neither do Filter, Paths, Formatter, Delay, Looping, Tables or Forms steps. Failed actions do not count. So a Zap with a trigger and five real app actions uses five tasks per run, and a Zap that formats data and filters out junk leads uses fewer than its step count suggests.

Some Zapier products cost more than one task. A Zapier MCP tool call uses two tasks, Lead Router uses five tasks per lead routed, and AI by Zapier draws tasks according to the model tier you choose. Zapier now bills AI steps, code and its SDK from the same task pool as Zaps, which makes usage easier to read but means AI-heavy Zaps eat your allowance faster.

An n8n execution is one full run of a workflow. n8n's pricing page states it plainly: the number of steps and the amount of data do not matter, it is still one execution. A 2-step workflow and a 40-step workflow cost the same per run. The trade-off is that n8n limits other things instead: concurrent runs, how long a run may last, and how much run history it keeps.

Is n8n cheaper than Zapier?

For multi-step workflows, yes, by a wide margin. The table below runs the same workflow 1,000 times a month at three lengths, then once at 10,000 runs. Step counts are action steps; the trigger is free on both tools.

Our arithmetic: Zapier tasks = action steps x runs; n8n executions = runs. Plans and tiers read on both pricing pages, October 28, 2026.

The n8n column barely moves. One Starter plan covers every 1,000-run scenario, whatever the workflow length. Zapier's column climbs a task tier each time you add steps, and its page says the cost per task falls as the tier rises, so the bill grows with volume but not in a straight line. Zapier shows each tier's price only after you pick it in the tier selector, so check the figure for your tier on Zapier's pricing page before you budget.

Two caveats matter before you switch. First, a short two-step Zap that runs a few hundred times a month fits Zapier's free plan, which n8n Cloud cannot match. Second, Zapier's free utility steps (filters, formatters, paths) mean a real Zap often uses fewer tasks than its step count, so count only the steps that act in another app.

Pricing plan by plan

Zapier, read on zapier.com/pricing with the default yearly billing selected:

• Free: $0, 100 tasks a month, unlimited two-step Zaps, Tables and Forms, 15-minute polling.
• Professional: from $19.99/mo billed yearly. Multi-step Zaps, unlimited Premium apps, webhooks, 2-minute polling, one user.
• Team: from $69/mo billed yearly. 25 users, shared Zaps and app connections, SAML SSO, 1-minute polling, priority support.
• Enterprise: contact for pricing. Unlimited users, annual task limits, advanced admin controls.

Zapier says paying yearly saves 33% against monthly billing. New accounts get a 14-day Professional trial with no credit card.

n8n, read on n8n.io/pricing:

• Starter: $20/mo billed yearly ($240 a year, our arithmetic). 2,500 executions, 5 concurrent runs, 1 shared project, 1,600 Assistant credits a month.
• Pro: $50/mo billed yearly ($600 a year, our arithmetic) for 10,000 executions, with a larger 50,000-execution tier. Up to 50 concurrent runs, 3 shared projects, workflow history.
• Business: self-hosted only, $800/mo billed yearly for 40,000 executions. SSO, Git version control, multiple environments. Overage is $4,800 per extra 300,000 executions since October 26, 2026.
• Enterprise: contact sales, cloud or self-hosted.

Month-to-month billing costs more: n8n says paying yearly saves 17%. Every n8n plan includes unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration. The Cloud trial runs 14 days with 1,000 executions and needs no credit card. For the full n8n tier detail, the n8n pricing page is the reference.

Is n8n free if I self-host it?

The software is free; running it is not. n8n's hosting docs say that without a license key, a self-hosted install runs as the free Community edition, and n8n's own deployment guide calls it "free with almost the complete feature set." There is no execution limit to pay for on Community.

What you pay instead is a server and somebody's time. The same guide spells out the trade-off: technical expertise is required for installation and configuration, and maintenance is your responsibility. Updates, backups, security patches and uptime all land on your team. If nobody owns that job, n8n Cloud or Zapier is cheaper in practice, even with a monthly bill.

Self-hosting earns its keep in two cases: very high volume, where execution-based cloud tiers start to add up, and data rules that keep customer data off a third-party cloud. For n8n Cloud, n8n stores hosted data in Frankfurt, Germany.

Which is easier for non-developers?

Zapier wins this round. Its whole pitch is that you do not need to code, even the Free plan includes Zapier Copilot, its automation assistant, and its catalog of 9,000+ apps means the tool your sales or HR team uses almost certainly has a ready connector.

n8n is approachable for simple flows, but its strengths (code steps in JavaScript or Python, custom HTTP requests, cURL imports, queue mode) reward people who think in data structures. Its app catalog is smaller, so connecting a niche tool may mean configuring an HTTP request against that tool's API yourself. n8n's AI Assistant helps here, with 1,600 credits a month on Starter, but it does not remove the need to understand what each node is doing.

Which is better for AI agents?

n8n wins for builders; Zapier wins for teams that want agents without plumbing. Every n8n Cloud plan includes the AI Agent node, MCP server and client support, human approval for tool calls and hosted chat. n8n also offers AI models without your own API keys on Starter and Pro, paid from a prepaid credit balance. Because an agent loop is still one execution, long reasoning chains do not multiply your bill on the n8n side (model costs aside).

If agents are the main job, our best AI agent platforms ranking covers dedicated builders beyond these two.

Zapier sells Zapier Agents as a separate product with its own quota: Agents Free covers 400 activities a month, and Agents Pro is $33.33/mo ($400 billed yearly) for 1,500 activities. Agent usage does not draw on Zap tasks. AI steps inside Zaps and MCP calls do, at the rates covered above, which is where heavy AI automation gets expensive on Zapier.

What happens when I go over my limit?

Zapier keeps running and bills you more; n8n's smaller plans stop at the cap. Zapier's pay-per-task billing guide explains that past your plan's limit you switch to pay-per-task billing, charged at a higher per-task rate than your subscription tasks, up to 3x your plan's task limit. On a 750-task plan, that ceiling is 2,250 tasks; after it, Zaps hold until the next period. Turn pay-per-task off and Zaps pause at the plan limit instead.

n8n lists Starter and Pro as capped, with no overage fees, so a spike means upgrading a tier rather than a surprise invoice. On Business and Enterprise, workflows keep running past quota and overage charges may apply. Watch two other n8n limits as well: Starter caps a single run at 5 minutes and Pro at 40, and n8n's cloud data docs give Starter instances 640MiB of RAM, so data-heavy workflows need splitting into smaller batches.

Round by round

Strengths and weaknesses

Zapier

• 9,000+ app connectors and a free plan with 100 tasks a month: the fastest route from idea to working automation for a non-technical team.
• Filters, paths, formatters, Tables and Forms cost no tasks, which softens the per-step model.
• Weakness: every action step is a task, so a 10-step Zap uses ten times the allowance of a one-action Zap at the same run count.
• Weakness: Free and Professional are single-user plans; sharing Zaps across a team means the $69/mo Team tier.

n8n

• One execution per run and unlimited users on every plan make costs predictable for long workflows and growing teams.
• A free, self-hosted Community edition and EU-hosted Cloud suit teams with data rules.
• Weakness: n8n Cloud has no free plan, and Starter limits you to 5 concurrent runs and 5 minutes per run.
• Weakness: 500+ native integrations against Zapier's 9,000+, so niche apps often need hand-built HTTP requests.

Who should pick which

Pick Zapier if the people building automations are in marketing, sales, HR or ops, your Zaps are short (one to three actions), and you value connectors for every tool over the lowest bill. Start on Free, move to Professional when you need multi-step Zaps.

Pick n8n Cloud if your workflows have five or more steps, run thousands of times a month, or include AI agents. Starter covers most small teams; Pro is the step up for volume and concurrency.

Pick self-hosted n8n if someone on your team already runs servers and either volume or data rules make a cloud bill hard to justify.

Still undecided? Our best Zapier alternatives covers Make, Pabbly and others, best AI workflow automation tools ranks AI-first options, and best free AI automation tools covers zero-budget setups. Building automations for clients? Read how to start an AI automation agency. Developers can find a code-first take in Devshot's n8n vs Zapier breakdown.

Frequently asked questions

How we compared them

We read Zapier pricing, Zapier's help articles on task usage and pay-per-task billing, n8n pricing, and n8n's docs on hosting, choosing a deployment and cloud data limits on October 28, 2026. The cost scenario runs one workflow at 2, 5 and 10 action steps, 1,000 times a month, plus a 10,000-run case; task and execution counts are our arithmetic. Prices are US list prices.

Cite this: Dupple, "Zapier vs n8n 2026: Which Automation Tool Costs Less for Your Workflows", November 2026.

Related

• Best workflow automation tools: the full category roundup.
• Best Zapier alternatives: Make, n8n, Pabbly and more.
• Best automation tools: automation beyond workflow builders.
• Zapier on Toolradar, n8n on Toolradar and the n8n vs Zapier comparison: listing details for both.
• Dupple learning hub: more guides on AI tools for work.

Zapier is the easy default for short Zaps; n8n is the cheaper engine once workflows get long. Want weekly picks like this for AI at work? Try Dupple X →