Every automation shortlist ends at the same three names, but they have genuinely diverged in 2026. The right choice depends less on features than on where your data lives and who maintains the workflows.
Zapier – pay for speed
Zapier stays the fastest path from ‘I need this to happen’ to ‘it happens’: the largest integration library and templates for everything. The free plan covers 100 tasks a month, Pro is $19.99 billed annually and Team $69 – simple per-task pricing that gets expensive exactly when your automation succeeds. Choose Zapier when setup speed matters more than unit economics.
Make – visual power on a budget
Make charges by operations, not tasks, and its visual canvas handles branching and iteration that Zapier prices out of reach – the Core plan starts around $12 per month billed annually, keeping it the cheap workhorse for complex flows. The trade: operation math takes monitoring, and heavyweight AI-agent patterns fit awkwardly.
n8n – control, agents and self-hosting
n8n is the developer’s option: 400+ integrations, native AI-agent nodes, JavaScript/Python code steps, and a fair-code licence that lets you self-host the whole thing free on your own server. Managed Cloud Starter is $20 per month billed annually ($24 monthly, about 2,500 executions), Pro $50. If privacy rules out SaaS, or your agents need custom code, n8n is the only one of the three that can run entirely inside your infrastructure.
Our take
- First automation ever: Zapier free, then Pro $19.99 when it sticks.
- Complex flows on a budget: Make Core from $12 (annual).
- Sensitive data or AI agents: n8n – self-host free or Cloud Starter $20.
- Want an agent instead of workflows? Manus (from $20) or self-hosted OpenClaw at $0.