Most n8n vs Zapier comparisons are feature lists. Features are not what decides this. The billing unit is.
Zapier charges per task — one task per successfully completed action step. n8n charges per execution — one execution per full workflow run, no matter how many steps are inside it.
For a two-step automation, nobody notices. For an AI agent that loops, that single difference can be a 6x gap in billable units on identical work.
This post uses prices taken directly from both vendors' pricing pages in August 2026. Both change often, so verify before you commit.
What each platform actually costs
n8n Cloud
n8n bills on monthly workflow executions. All plans include unlimited users, unlimited workflows, and every integration.
| Plan | Price (billed annually) | Executions/month | Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | €20/mo | 2,500 | n8n Cloud |
| Pro | €50/mo | 10,000 | n8n Cloud |
| Business | €667/mo | 40,000 | Self-hosted |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Either |
| Community Edition | Free | Unlimited | Your own server |
Annual billing saves 17% over monthly. Starter includes 1 shared project and 5 concurrent executions; Pro raises that to 3 projects and 20 concurrent. Business adds SSO, SAML, LDAP, Git version control and separate environments. Companies under 20 employees can apply for a start-up discount of 50% off Business.
Cloud data sits on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. Self-hosted, it sits wherever you put it.
Zapier
Zapier bills on monthly tasks, chosen from a slider that runs from 100 up to 2 million.
| Plan | Starting price | Seats | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | 100 tasks, two-step Zaps only, 15-min polling |
| Professional | from $19.99/mo | 1 | Multi-step Zaps, webhooks, unlimited premium apps, 2-min polling |
| Team | from $69/mo | 25 | Shared workflows and connections, SAML SSO, 1-min polling |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Advanced admin controls, observability, annual task limits |
Annual billing saves 33%. The headline price is the base task tier — moving up the slider raises the monthly cost, though the cost per task falls as you scale.
One detail worth knowing before you build agents on it: Zapier now applies task-based pricing across AI steps, code and the SDK, and the rate varies. AI model tier, code runtime, and connector type all affect how many tasks a single action consumes. An MCP tool call costs two tasks.
What counts as a billable unit
This is where the real difference lives.
On Zapier, these are free
Triggers never count. Neither does polling — Zapier only charges when an action completes successfully. And a useful set of built-in tools are free: Filter, Formatter, Paths, Delay, Looping, Sub-Zap, Digest, Storage, Tables and Forms.
On Zapier, these cost you
Every action step that touches an external app. Every AI step. Every code step. Every MCP call, at two tasks each. All drawn from one shared pool across your whole account.
On n8n, one run is one unit
An execution is a single run of a workflow from start to finish. Fifteen steps or two, one record or a thousand — one execution.
The agent example, worked through
Take a support agent handling an inbound query. A typical run: pull customer context, call the model, call a lookup tool, hit an error and retry, update the CRM, send the reply. That is roughly six action steps.
At 1,000 runs per month:
- Zapier: 6 × 1,000 = 6,000 tasks. That needs the 10,000-task tier, not the base 750. - n8n: 1,000 executions. Comfortably inside Starter at €20/month. Now scale it to 5,000 runs. Zapier needs 30,000 tasks — well up the slider. n8n needs 5,000 executions, which still fits Pro at €50/month.
The gap widens with every step you add to the agent, because on n8n adding steps is free and on Zapier it is not. This is the entire argument for n8n on agent workloads, and the numbers are not close.
Where Zapier is genuinely cheaper
Now the part most comparison posts leave out, because it is inconvenient for the affiliate link.
Polling workflows are free on Zapier and billed on n8n.
n8n counts every scheduled run as an execution, whether it finds new data or not. Zapier charges nothing for checking.
A workflow polling an inbox every five minutes runs about 8,640 times a month. On n8n that is 8,640 executions — it exhausts Starter in under nine days and eats most of Pro, from a single workflow that mostly finds nothing. On Zapier, those same checks cost zero tasks; you only pay when something is actually found and acted on.
If your automation is mostly scheduled checks with occasional hits, Zapier is cheaper and it is not close. The fix on n8n is to convert polling triggers to webhooks wherever the source supports it. That is the single biggest lever on an n8n bill, and it is worth doing before you compare prices at all.
Side by side
| Zapier | n8n | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per action step | Per workflow run |
| Cost with multi-step agents | Rises with every step | Flat per run |
| Polling / scheduled checks | Free | Billed as executions |
| Entry price | From $19.99/mo (750 tasks) | €20/mo (2,500 executions) |
| Self-hosting | Not available | Yes, including free Community Edition |
| Custom code | Metered runtime per step | JS and Python nodes on all tiers |
| Integrations | 9,000+ | Large, smaller library |
| Users included | 1 on Professional, 25 on Team | Unlimited on every plan |
| Best operator | Ops or marketing team | Technical team or agency |
Which one should you choose?
Choose Zapier if your workflows are short, your team is non-technical, you rely on long-tail app integrations, or your automations are mostly scheduled checks. The integration library is the largest available and the setup effort is genuinely lower. If this is you, stay where you are — migrating would be a downgrade.
Choose n8n if you are running AI agents with loops and retries, your workflows have five or more steps, you need many seats without paying per seat, or your data cannot leave your own infrastructure. Self-hosting is the deciding factor for healthcare, fintech and anything under data-residency rules — Zapier has no equivalent.
Run both if your stack genuinely splits that way. We do this for clients: Zapier for the simple ops connections that a non-technical team maintains, n8n for the agent and data-heavy workflows. Nothing requires you to pick one for everything.
If you migrate, what it actually involves
It is a rebuild, not an export
There is no clean converter. You rebuild each workflow. The logic transfers; the configuration does not.
Consolidate while you rebuild
This is the real prize. Zapier setups that have grown over two or three years usually contain five or six Zaps that should be one workflow with branches. Rebuilding is your chance to collapse them into something your own team can read and explain.
Convert polling to webhooks first
Per the section above, this is what determines whether the migration saves money at all. Do it during the rebuild, not after.
Reconnect every credential
Every integration needs fresh authentication. It is boring and it always takes longer than estimated.
Run both in parallel for a week
Do not cut over on a Friday. Run the n8n version alongside the live Zapier version and compare outputs before you switch anything off.
Decide hosting deliberately
n8n Cloud is the low-friction option. Self-hosting the Community Edition is free software on a small server, which is dramatically cheaper at volume — but it is infrastructure you now own, including updates, backups and monitoring. Choose it on purpose, not by default.
Work out your own number in ten minutes
Take one workflow you already run. Count the action steps that execute in an average run, including retries — that is your Zapier task count per run. The run itself is one n8n execution. Multiply both by your monthly volume.
Then separately count your scheduled checks. Those are free on Zapier and billed on n8n. Add them to the n8n side only.
Compare the two totals against the tables above. That ratio is your answer, and no vendor page will give it to you.
One thing neither platform fixes
Both n8n and Zapier are the routing layer underneath a set of agents. If those agents have no manager, no evaluator and no shared context, switching platforms changes your invoice and nothing else. The architecture problem sits above the tool.
If you want the migration or the architecture costed, ZAC Estimator gives a cost band in about two minutes with the assumptions written out so you can argue with them. Or describe your current stack to ZAC Consultant and it will map what should be connected and what the work involves.
More on how we implement this work: AI automation, business process automation, and systems we have shipped.