Almost every automation project comes down to a platform choice, and three names dominate: Zapier, Make, and n8n. They overlap a lot, but they are built for different priorities. Here's how we think about the trade-offs.
Zapier: fastest to start
Zapier has the largest app ecosystem and the most polished experience. If you want a simple, reliable connection between popular apps and value speed of setup over control, it is hard to beat.
The catch is cost at scale: Zapier charges per task, so high-volume workflows get expensive quickly, and complex logic is harder to express than in the alternatives.
Make: visual and cost-effective at scale
Make sits in the middle: more powerful than Zapier, more approachable than code. Its visual canvas makes multi-step workflows with branching and conditions easy to see and reason about, and its operation-based pricing is usually cheaper than Zapier at equivalent volume.
It is our frequent default when a workflow has real logic but doesn't need custom code.
n8n: most powerful, and self-hostable
n8n is the most capable of the three. It supports JavaScript and Python, complex branching and loops, direct API access, and fine-grained error handling, and it can be self-hosted, which matters when data has to stay in your environment.
It charges per workflow execution rather than per task, which is very economical at scale. The trade-off is that it expects a little more technical comfort to get the most from it.
How we actually choose
There is no universally best tool, only the right fit for the job. We choose based on the volume you will run, how complex the logic is, whether you need custom code, and how sensitive the data is. For simple, low-volume connections we often reach for Zapier or Make; for high-volume, logic-heavy, or privacy-sensitive builds, n8n usually wins.
Whatever we choose, it runs in your accounts and you own it, so you're never trapped on one vendor's platform.