Zapier vs Make: Which Automation Platform Wins for Business in 2026?

The iPaaS Category Explained

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) tools connect your business software stack without requiring custom code. Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat) are the two dominant players in 2026. They take fundamentally different approaches to workflow design, pricing, and complexity headroom — and the wrong choice can cost you months of rework.

Workflow Architecture: Zaps vs Scenarios

Zapier organizes automations as Zaps — linear trigger-to-action sequences. Non-technical team members can build useful automations in under 10 minutes. The AI-powered workflow assistant (added in late 2024) can generate a complete Zap from a plain-text description.

Make calls its automations Scenarios, and the architectural difference is significant. Scenarios support multiple branches, loops, iterators, aggregators, error handlers, and parallel execution paths — all visualized as a flow chart. Under the hood, Make can process data in arrays, transform it through routers, and retry failed steps automatically.

Complexity Headroom

• Zapier: Best for simple to moderate automations; multi-step Zaps work well up to 15 steps
• Make: Handles complex data flows, conditional branching, and bulk data operations that would require many Zaps in Zapier
• Learning curve: Zapier takes hours; Make takes days for non-technical users

Integration Coverage

Zapier connects to 7,000+ apps — the largest integration catalog in the category. If a SaaS tool has a public API, Zapier almost certainly supports it. Make's catalog includes approximately 1,500+ apps but includes HTTP and JSON modules that allow connection to any REST API without a pre-built connector.

Pricing Architecture

Zapier measures usage in Tasks (one task = one action execution). Free plan: 100 tasks/month. Starter: $19.99/month for 750 tasks. Professional: $49/month for 2,000 tasks. Costs scale steeply with volume.

Make measures usage in Operations. Free plan: 1,000 operations/month. Core: $9/month for 10,000 operations. Pro: $16/month for 10,000 operations with advanced features. The per-operation price is dramatically lower than Zapier — but high-frequency polling automations can consume operations faster than expected, making real-world costs less predictable.

Reliability and Error Handling

Both platforms maintain high uptime (99.9%+), but their error handling philosophies differ. Zapier restarts failed Zaps automatically and provides clear error logs. Make's error handler modules are more powerful — you can define specific recovery paths for different error types — but require upfront configuration.

• Workflow Automation Tools rankings
• Lindy AI (agent-based alternative)
• Monday.com (workflow + PM alternative)

Which Platform Wins for Your Business?

Choose Zapier if: Your team is non-technical, you use many niche tools from the 7,000-app catalog, and you need automations that non-developers can build and maintain independently.

Choose Make if: You need complex data transformation, parallel execution paths, or multi-branch logic that would require dozens of separate Zaps. Make's lower per-operation cost pays off significantly at high automation volumes.