Zapier vs Make: Which Automation Platform Is Right for You?

Introduction

Choosing between Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat) is one of the most common decisions facing businesses looking to automate their workflows in 2026. Both platforms connect your apps and automate repetitive tasks, but they take fundamentally different approaches to how they do it.

Zapier is the market leader with over 3 million users and 8,000+ app integrations, built around simplicity and speed. Make offers a visual workflow builder with advanced logic capabilities at a fraction of the cost. The right choice depends on your technical comfort level, workflow complexity, and budget.

In this comparison, we break down the key differences to help you decide which workflow automation platform fits your needs.

Quick Comparison

Pricing Breakdown

Pricing is where these two platforms diverge the most, and it is the single biggest factor driving users from one to the other.

Zapier uses task-based pricing. Every action step in a workflow counts as one task. A 5-step Zap running once consumes 5 tasks. Plans include:

• Free: 100 tasks/month, single-step Zaps only
• Professional: $19.99/month for 750 tasks
• Team: $69.99/month for 2,000 tasks
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Make uses operation-based pricing. Each module execution counts as one operation, but the volume you get per dollar is dramatically higher:

• Free: 1,000 operations/month, 2 active scenarios
• Core: $9/month for 10,000 operations
• Pro: $18.82/month for 10,000 operations (plus premium features)
• Teams: $34.12/month for 10,000 operations (with collaboration tools)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

The math speaks for itself. At the Professional tier, Zapier gives you 750 tasks for $19.99 while Make gives you 10,000 operations for $9. That is roughly a 13x cost advantage for Make at comparable volumes. For businesses processing thousands of automations monthly, the savings compound quickly.

New in 2026, Make also introduced rollover operations on paid plans, letting unused operations carry forward one month, which further improves value for teams with variable usage.

Ease of Use

Zapier wins on simplicity. Its linear, step-by-step workflow builder is intuitive enough that marketing teams and operations managers can build automations without any technical background. You pick a trigger app, select an event, connect an action app, and you are done. The massive template library means many common workflows are pre-built and ready to activate.

Zapier also launched Copilot, an AI assistant that suggests workflow improvements and helps troubleshoot issues. For someone who has never automated anything before, Zapier is the fastest path from zero to a working automation.

Make has a steeper learning curve but offers a far more powerful visual canvas. Workflows are built as flowcharts where you can see data flowing between modules in real time. This visualization becomes invaluable once your automations grow beyond simple two-step connections.

As one user described the transition: "I used Zapier for a while and it was solid, until it was not. As my workflows got more complex, I started hitting limits both in terms of pricing and how messy things got with too many Zaps stacked on top of each other."

Make counters with Maia, its own AI co-pilot for scenario building, though users report that Zapier's AI tools currently feel more polished.

Features and Workflow Complexity

For simple automations connecting two or three apps, both platforms perform well. The differences emerge as complexity increases.

Zapier strengths:

• Unmatched app library with 8,000+ integrations
• Zapier Tables for storing and managing data within workflows
• Zapier Interfaces for building custom forms and apps
• Zapier Agents for autonomous AI-powered multi-step tasks (launched November 2025)
• Free formatter actions that do not count toward task limits

Make strengths:

• Unlimited branching routes with sophisticated conditional logic
• Built-in iterators and data aggregation modules
• Real-time execution visualization for debugging
• Native JavaScript and Python code modules
• Native file manipulation including image resizing and format conversion
• JSON parsing capabilities built into the platform

Make is particularly strong for e-commerce workflows with variable fulfillment routing, multi-stage lead scoring with source-specific paths, and content syndication requiring format transformations. Its error handling is also superior, offering custom retry intervals, fallback routes when primary actions fail, and the ability to continue workflows despite partial failures.

Zapier limits path branching to 10 per Path step with a maximum of three nested levels. For most standard business automations, this is more than sufficient. But if you are building enterprise-grade workflow logic, Make's unlimited routing gives you more room to grow.

Integrations

Zapier holds a commanding lead with 8,000+ app integrations compared to Make's 2,000+. If you rely on niche or industry-specific tools, Zapier is more likely to have a native connector.

However, Make's integrations tend to offer deeper functionality per connector. Where Zapier might offer basic trigger and action options, Make often exposes more API endpoints and configuration options within each integration.

Both platforms support webhooks and custom API calls, so even without a native integration, you can connect to virtually any service that has an API.

Who Should Choose Zapier

Zapier is the right choice if you:

• Have a non-technical team that needs to build automations independently
• Require integrations with niche or specialized apps
• Need to get automations running quickly with minimal setup time
• Run fewer than 750 tasks per month and can stay within the Professional plan
• Want a unified platform with Tables, Interfaces, and Chatbots in one ecosystem
• Value customer support responsiveness and extensive documentation

Who Should Choose Make

Make is the better fit if you:

• Process high volumes of automations and need cost efficiency at scale
• Build complex, multi-branch workflows with sophisticated logic
• Want visual debugging with real-time execution monitoring
• Need native code execution (JavaScript/Python) within workflows
• Handle data transformation, file manipulation, or JSON parsing regularly
• Are comfortable with a moderate learning curve in exchange for more power

Final Verdict

For most small businesses and non-technical teams running simple automations, Zapier remains the safer and faster choice. Its ease of use, massive app library, and polished AI tools justify the premium for teams that value time over cost.

For growing businesses, technical teams, and anyone processing significant automation volume, Make delivers substantially more value. The 13x cost advantage at scale is hard to ignore, and its visual workflow builder with unlimited branching handles complexity that would quickly become unwieldy in Zapier.

The good news is both platforms offer free plans, so you can test each one with your actual workflows before committing. Start with the automations you need most and let the platforms prove themselves with your real use cases.

Explore more workflow automation tools to see how other platforms compare.