Two automation platforms, compared on pricing after Make's 2025 credits switch, integrations, and how far each one scales.
| Zapier | Make | |
|---|---|---|
| App integrations | 7,000+ | About 3,000 |
| Billing unit | Tasks (successful action steps) | Credits, which replaced operations on August 27, 2025 |
| Free plan | 100 tasks per month, two-step Zaps only | 1,000 credits per month |
| Entry paid plan | Professional: $19.99 per month billed annually ($29.99 monthly) for 750 tasks | Core: $12 per month for 10,000 credits, less on annual billing |
| Rough unit cost at entry | About 2.7 cents per task | About 0.12 cents per credit |
| What counts against quota | Actions only; trigger steps are free | Every module run, including triggers; AI modules cost variable credits |
| Branching logic | Filters and Paths on paid plans | Routers, iterators, and aggregators on all plans |
| Editor | Linear step list | Visual canvas showing the whole scenario |
| Team plans | Team from $69 per month billed annually: 2,000 tasks, 25 seats, SSO | Teams from $38 per month for 10,000 credits |
| Learning curve | Gentle; most Zaps ship in minutes | Steeper; pays off on complex scenarios |
Zapier's free plan gives you 100 tasks a month restricted to two-step Zaps, which is enough to test the product and not much else. Professional starts at $19.99 per month billed annually ($29.99 month to month) for 750 tasks and scales into thousands of dollars a month at the two-million-task end. Team starts at $69 per month billed annually with 2,000 tasks, 25 seats, shared connections, and SSO. The number that matters is cost per task, because Zapier bills every action step your Zaps successfully run.
Make's free plan includes 1,000 credits a month. Core is $12 per month for 10,000 credits billed monthly, Pro is $21, and Teams is $38 at the same credit allowance, with roughly 15 percent off on annual billing. On August 27, 2025, Make switched its billing unit from operations to credits, converting existing allowances one to one. Standard modules, triggers, filters, and HTTP calls still cost one credit each, but AI modules now bill at variable rates based on tokens, file size, or pages processed.
The raw math is lopsided: at entry tiers Make sells you 10,000 units for $12 while Zapier sells 750 for $19.99. The units are not identical, since Make counts every module run including triggers and iterations while Zapier only counts actions, so a complex Make scenario burns more units per run than the equivalent Zap. Even after accounting for that, Make usually comes out several times cheaper at equivalent volume.
Pick Zapier when the integration you need exists there and nowhere else. With over 7,000 connected apps, the long tail is Zapier's real moat: niche CRMs, regional tools, and small SaaS products often ship a Zapier integration first and a Make module much later, if ever. Checking both catalogs for your specific apps is the single most useful step before choosing.
It is also the right call when the people building automations are not technical and never will be. The linear editor reads top to bottom like a recipe, templates cover most common patterns, and a new hire can maintain a Zap without training. For an office where automation is a side activity rather than someone's job, that accessibility is worth paying for.
At low volume the cost difference barely matters. If your whole footprint is a few hundred tasks a month, the simpler tool at $20 is a fine trade.
Pick Make when your workflows have shape: branches, loops, error handling, data transformation between steps. Routers, iterators, and aggregators are core primitives on every plan, including free, where Zapier gates paths behind paid tiers and still cannot express some of what Make can. If you have ever tried to fake a loop in Zapier, you already know which side of this line you are on.
Pick it too when volume is real. At roughly 0.12 cents per credit against Zapier's 2.7 cents per task at entry tiers, automations that run hundreds of times a day stop being a rounding error on Zapier and stay one on Make. Agencies and ops teams running client workflows land here almost by default.
The price of admission is the learning curve. The canvas takes a few hours to click, and debugging a scenario means understanding bundles and mappings. It is not hard, but it is a real step up from Zapier, and someone on the team has to own it.
The August 2025 credits switch matters more than it looked. Plan prices and allowances did not change, and for classic scenarios nothing moved. But AI modules now consume credits at variable rates tied to tokens and file sizes, which means an AI-heavy scenario no longer has a predictable monthly cost the way an operations-based one did. If your automations call AI steps on every run, re-run your math before assuming Make is cheaper; it usually still is, but the margin narrows.
Unit counting also quietly distorts every price comparison, in both directions. Zapier does not charge for trigger steps; Make charges for every module execution, including the trigger check and each item an iterator processes. A scenario that loops over 50 rows costs 50-plus credits per run. Headline per-unit prices without this context are marketing, not math.
And the biggest real cost on either platform is maintenance, not the subscription. APIs change, connections expire, and automations fail silently until someone notices the data stopped flowing. Make's canvas and execution logs make deep debugging easier; Zapier's simplicity means there is less to break. Budget attention, not just dollars.
For a first automation, or a team where nobody wants to own a canvas tool, Zapier is the right call and the cost at low volume is fine. For anything with branching, loops, or real volume, I pick Make: the credit math favors it heavily and the canvas keeps complex scenarios maintainable. My honest playbook is to prove a workflow matters on Zapier's free plan, then rebuild it in Make once it runs daily and the task bill starts to sting. The rebuild is usually an afternoon and pays for itself within a couple of months.