Zapier vs Make Pricing: Real Costs at 5, 20, 50 Workflows

The line-item that made me switch platforms

Last month I rebuilt a client's CRM sync—nothing fancy, just Airtable to HubSpot with a lookup step. On Zapier it ran 4 tasks per record. On Make it ran 2 operations.

Same workflow. Same outcome. Half the metered cost on Make.

That's the core of the zapier vs make pricing question: both platforms can do the job, but the way they count usage changes your bill by 40–100% depending on how you build. This post walks through three real scenarios—5 workflows, 20 workflows, 50 workflows—so you can see where each platform wins and where the monthly cost explodes.

How Zapier counts tasks (and why it adds up fast)

Zapier charges per task. A task is any action step that reads or writes data.

• Trigger: free.
• Each action (send Slack message, create row, update contact): 1 task.
• Each search or lookup: 1 task.
• Each filter or path that fires: still free, but the actions inside those paths count.

So a simple "new form → lookup contact → update HubSpot → post to Slack" workflow runs 3 tasks every time it fires.

If that workflow runs 200 times a month, you burn 600 tasks. Zapier's Starter plan (750 tasks, $19.99/mo) is already 80% full from one automation.

The Professional plan jumps to $69/mo for 2,000 tasks. Team is $299/mo for 50,000 tasks. Premium apps—HubSpot, Salesforce, anything with "CRM" in the name—lock you into Professional or higher, regardless of task count.

Zapier's task model punishes workflows that do lookups or multi-step logic.

How Make counts operations (and when it's cheaper)

Make charges per operation. An operation is any module execution—trigger, action, search, router, iterator, filter.

Critically: filters, routers, and iterators each cost 1 operation on Make, whereas Zapier's filters and paths are free structural elements.

But Make's base operation cost is lower, and its free tier is bigger. The free plan gives you 1,000 operations/month. The $9/mo Core plan bumps you to 10,000 operations. Pro is $16/mo for 10,000 operations plus premium apps.

For workflows that do a lot of branching or array processing, Make's operation count can balloon. But for straight-line multi-step zaps, Make usually comes out 30–50% cheaper because it doesn't charge extra for searches and you get more volume per dollar.

Scenario 1: Five simple workflows, 500 executions/month

You're automating:

1. New Typeform submission → create row in Google Sheets.
2. New Stripe payment → send Slack notification.
3. New Calendly booking → create Google Calendar event + send confirmation email.
4. New Airtable record in "Leads" → create contact in HubSpot.
5. Weekly digest: pull Airtable records → send summary email.

Each workflow averages 2–3 steps. Total monthly task/operation load: roughly 1,200 tasks on Zapier, 900 operations on Make (the difference comes from how Make counts the weekly scheduled trigger and any iterator loops).

Zapier cost

• Starter plan (750 tasks) won't cover you.
• Professional plan: $69/mo (2,000 tasks). HubSpot is a premium app, so you're locked into this tier even if you optimized task count.

Make cost

• Core plan: $9/mo (10,000 operations). You're using under 1,000 ops, so this is comfortable headroom.
• HubSpot is available on the free tier for Make, but the 1,000-op limit is tight. Bump to Core for safety.

Winner: Make saves you $60/month in this scenario.

If you want to see which of your existing processes would benefit most from automation, try the Automation Opportunity Scanner—paste your site and get three ranked automation ideas with ROI math baked in.

Scenario 2: Twenty workflows, 4,000 executions/month

You've scaled. Now you're running:

• Lead routing (form → CRM lookup → assign owner → Slack ping).
• Support ticket triage (new Intercom ticket → sentiment check → tag → route to specialist).
• E-commerce order fulfillment (new Shopify order → inventory check → create shipping label → email customer).
• Multiple Slack ↔ project-tool syncs.
• Weekly and daily reporting digests.

Average 3–4 steps per workflow. Monthly load: ~14,000 tasks on Zapier, ~10,000 operations on Make.

Zapier cost

• Professional (2,000 tasks) is too small.
• Team plan: $299/mo (50,000 tasks). You're only using 14k, but there's no plan between $69 and $299 that isn't a per-task overage minefield.

Make cost

• Core plan caps at 10,000 ops.
• Pro plan: $16/mo for 10,000 ops + premium apps. You're right at the limit; you might add another Pro "organization" slot or step up to Team ($29/mo for 10,000 ops + advanced features).
• Let's assume you stay on Pro: $16/mo.

Winner: Make by $283/month. That's $3,396/year.

At this stage, though, you should ask: are you spending more time fixing automations than running your business? If 20 workflows means 20 points of failure, a custom AI automation build might ship faster, cost less to maintain, and give you one throat to choke. We scope and ship in 2–3 weeks, fixed price, no middleware subscriptions.

Scenario 3: Fifty workflows, 15,000 executions/month

You're a 20–50 person team. Automations touch every department: sales, support, ops, finance. You have:

• Multi-step lead scoring and routing.
• CRM ↔ ERP syncs.
• Customer onboarding sequences (10+ steps each).
• Support ticket deflection and escalation.
• Data warehouse ETL jobs running hourly.

Monthly load: ~60,000 tasks on Zapier, ~35,000 operations on Make.

Zapier cost

• Team plan (50,000 tasks): $299/mo won't cover you.
• You'll either upgrade to the next tier (usually custom pricing) or pay per-task overages. Conservatively, you're looking at $400–600/mo once overages kick in.

Make cost

• Pro plan is 10,000 ops; you need 35k.
• Team plan ($29/mo base) gives 10,000 ops; extra operations cost $1.50 per 1,000.
• 35,000 ops = base 10k + 25k extra = $29 + $37.50 = $66.50/mo.

Alternatively, the Enterprise tier gives you 100,000 ops for $99/mo if you prepay annually. Amortized: $99/mo.

Winner: Make by $300–500/month, or $3,600–6,000/year.

But here's the kicker: at 50 workflows, your real cost isn't the subscription—it's maintenance. Every API change, every app deprecation, every edge case breaks a zap. You're paying someone $30–50/hour to babysit Zapier. Use the Repetitive Task Cost Calculator to see what that vigilance actually costs you annually.

Premium app trap: when Zapier forces an upgrade

Zapier gates dozens of apps behind the Professional ($69/mo) or Team ($299/mo) tiers. The premium list includes:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• NetSuite
• Marketo
• LinkedIn Ads
• Advanced Google Sheets actions

Make labels fewer apps as "premium." HubSpot, Salesforce, and most CRMs are available on Make's free and Core tiers. You only need Pro ($16/mo) if you want webhooks, scheduling, or multi-team workspaces.

If you're comparing zapier vs make pricing and you use HubSpot, you're forced into Zapier Professional ($69) vs. Make Core ($9). That $60/month delta is the single biggest cost driver for small teams.

When Zapier is actually cheaper

Zapier wins in two scenarios:

1. You run fewer than 500 tasks/month and don't touch premium apps. The Starter plan ($19.99 for 750 tasks) is a clean deal. Make's $9 Core plan is cheaper, but if you're already in the Zapier ecosystem and your task count is stable, the delta isn't worth migrating.

2. Your workflows are extremely branched or looped, and Make's operation count explodes. If you're iterating over 200-item arrays and filtering inside each iteration, Make charges an operation per item per module. A workflow that costs 10 tasks on Zapier might cost 400 operations on Make. This is rare, but it happens in bulk ETL or e-commerce inventory jobs.

For everything else—especially the 5–50 workflow range where most small-to-mid businesses live—Make's pricing is structurally better.

The hidden cost: your time

Neither Zapier nor Make bills you for the hours you spend debugging null values in step 7, or the evening you lose when Stripe changes its webhook payload.

The real cost of automation-by-middleware is context-switching tax. Every integration is a black box. Every failure is a scavenger hunt through changelog docs written by a different company's devs.

If you're running more than 15 workflows and you employ anyone at $25/hour or above, consider whether building once—on an open platform like n8n or a custom stack—would cost less over 12 months than subscription + maintenance + your operator's time.

We've built systems that replace 30-zap Zapier setups and pay for themselves in four months. Custom builds start at a fixed scope, ship in 2–3 weeks, and you own the code. No monthly SaaS tax, no premium-app surprise fees.

Which platform should you pick?

Use this decision tree:

• Under 750 tasks/month, no premium apps, comfortable with Zapier UX: stick with Zapier Starter.
• 5–30 workflows, any premium app (HubSpot, Salesforce), under 10k operations/month: Make Core or Pro is 70–85% cheaper.
• 30–50 workflows, high execution volume: Make Team tier with overage ops beats Zapier Team + overages by $300–500/month.
• 50+ workflows, or you're spending >4 hours/week on maintenance: stop renting, start owning. A custom build will cost less than 12 months of Team-tier subscriptions and won't break when Zapier sunsets an integration.

If you're unsure where your cost will land, export your current Zapier task history (Settings → Usage) and multiply average monthly tasks by your expected growth. Then map that to Make's operation model (assume 0.7× the task count as a rough conversion). The breakeven is almost always in Make's favor once you pass 1,500 tasks/month.

Ready to see what you're spending on repetitive work? Plug your hours into the Repetitive Task Cost Calculator and get an annual number. Then decide whether you want to rent automation forever or build it once and move on.