n8n vs Zapier
TL;DR
n8n and Zapier both build multi-step automations and differ on three checkable points. n8n is source-available and can be self-hosted; Zapier is hosted only. n8n meters whole workflow executions, while Zapier meters every successful action as a task, so long workflows cost far fewer units on n8n. n8n lists unlimited users on every paid plan; Zapier Professional includes one seat.
n8n vs Zapier at a glance
The short version: the two products meter different units, run in different places and count seats differently. A ten-action workflow run once is one execution on n8n and up to ten tasks on Zapier. n8n can run on your own servers; Zapier cannot. n8n's paid plans list unlimited users, while Zapier Professional lists a single seat.
Winner: n8n. for control and cost on multi-step work: it can be self-hosted, a whole run counts as one execution, and every paid plan lists unlimited users. Zapier wins only if you want a service you never host yourself.
| What you are comparing | n8n | Zapier |
|---|---|---|
| Licence and source model | Sustainable Use License, Version 1.0. Source is public; use is limited to "your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use", and redistribution only "free of charge for non-commercial purposes". Files containing ".ee." need an n8n Enterprise License. Not OSI-approved; n8n's term is fair-code | Proprietary hosted service. Zapier publishes no source repository and no self-hosted edition |
| Where it runs | n8n Cloud, which the docs call "fully-managed" with "no installation needed", or self-hosted through a one-line setup, Docker, Docker Compose, npm or a cloud provider | Zapier's hosted service only |
| What usage is metered | Executions. "An execution is a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn't matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes. It's still a single execution." | Tasks. "A task is any successful action that runs in Zapier. Only successful actions count toward your task usage." Trigger steps, Filter and Paths steps, failed actions, Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage, Tables and Forms do not count |
| Cost of a 10-action workflow, run once | 1 execution, by the definition above | Up to 10 tasks, one per successful action step |
| Seats at the entry paid tier | Unlimited users, listed on Starter, Pro, Business and Enterprise alike | 1 user on Free and Professional; 25 on Team; unlimited on Enterprise |
Pricing: n8n vs Zapier plan by plan
n8n Starter costs 20 EUR a month billed annually for 2,500 executions, while Zapier Professional starts at $19.99 a month billed annually for 750 tasks. Because one execution can equal many tasks, the plan price alone does not tell you which is cheaper. Both vendors scale the same plan up by usage, and they handle an exhausted quota in opposite ways.
Winner: n8n for multi-step workflows, Zapier for a free hosted start. because one n8n execution covers a whole run while Zapier bills each successful action, and n8n seats are unlimited. Zapier is the only one of the two with a permanently free hosted plan.
| Tier | n8n Cloud | Zapier |
|---|---|---|
| Free of charge | No permanently free Cloud plan. Starter and Pro trials need no credit card and include 800 AI Assistant credits; a Business trial requires a credit card for 14 days. Separately, the self-hosted Community edition carries no licence fee | Free plan at $0/mo: 100 tasks a month, 1 user, two-step Zaps, 15-minute polling. No multi-step Zaps, premium apps, webhooks, Filters or Paths |
| Entry paid | Starter, 20€/mo billed annually: 2,500 executions, 5 concurrent, 1 shared project, unlimited users, 2,300 AI credits a month | Professional, from $19.99/mo billed annually ($29.99 monthly): 750 tasks, 1 user, multi-step Zaps, premium apps, webhooks, Filters and Paths, 2-minute polling |
| Mid tier | Pro, 50€/mo billed annually: 10,000 executions, 20 concurrent, 3 shared projects, unlimited users, up to 13,700 AI credits a month | Team, from $69/mo billed annually ($103.50 monthly): 2,000 tasks, 25 users, shared workflows, SAML SSO, 1-minute polling |
| Upper self-serve tier | Business, 667€/mo billed annually: 40,000 executions, 6 shared projects, unlimited users, self-hosted deployment option | No fourth self-serve tier. Professional and Team instead scale on task volume, up to 2M tasks a month at $3,389/mo and $3,999/mo billed annually |
| Enterprise | Contact Sales: custom executions, "200+ concurrent executions", unlimited shared projects, unlimited users | Custom pricing via Sales: custom tasks, unlimited users, SAML SSO, 1-minute polling |
| When you hit the quota | The Business plan lists overage at 4,000 EUR for extra buckets of 300,000 executions | "Once exhausted, users can enable pay-per-task billing or wait for their billing cycle to reset" |
n8n publishes in EUR and Zapier in USD; nothing here is converted, so the columns are not directly addable. Both vendors show lower headline prices for annual billing, and both scale the same plan up by usage, so a plan name alone does not fix a price. Read 2026-09-02 from n8n.io/pricing and zapier.com/pricing.
Features: code, AI agents and speed
Both tools support custom code and AI agents, but they document them differently. n8n lists JavaScript, Python and npm packages and an AI Agent node built on LangChain. Zapier supports JavaScript and Python with runtime limits by plan and bills its MCP tool calls as tasks. n8n publishes concurrency caps per plan; Zapier publishes polling intervals per plan instead.
Winner: Depends. n8n publishes concurrency caps per plan, runs JavaScript, Python and npm packages, and lets you self-host its LangChain AI Agent node with your own keys. Zapier publishes faster polling (1 minute on Team and Enterprise) and code runtimes of up to 10 minutes on paid plans.
| What you are comparing | n8n | Zapier |
|---|---|---|
| Concurrency | Capped by Cloud plan: 5 on Starter, 20 on Pro, "200+" on Enterprise. Overflow executions "queue for later processing" in FIFO order, and only production executions count. Not sold as a limit when self-hosted | Not published as a plan limit on the pricing page as read |
| How soon a polled trigger fires | Not published as a plan limit on the pricing page as read | Polling interval by plan: 15 minutes on Free, 2 minutes on Professional, 1 minute on Team and Enterprise |
| Custom code | The README lists JavaScript, Python and npm packages alongside the visual canvas | Code by Zapier: "Only JavaScript (Node.js 22) and Python 3.13 are supported." Standard runtime is 1 second on Free, 30 seconds on Professional and Team, 2 minutes on Enterprise, with 512 MB memory; extended runtimes of up to 10 minutes are available on Professional, Team and Enterprise, for action steps only |
| AI agents | The AI Agent node: "Connect a chat model and one or more tools, and the agent decides which tools to call to complete a task." Built on LangChain, requires at least one tool sub-node; the agent type setting is deprecated from n8n 1.82.0 and the v1 node is due for removal in n8n 3.0 | Marketed on the homepage as "AI agents that take action across your apps". Zapier's task-usage page prices AI by Zapier by the model tier you select and bills Zapier MCP at "2 tasks per successful tool call" |
| Paying for model calls | Gateway credits on Cloud Starter and Pro route requests through "an n8n-managed gateway" and are billed per request, so you can use OpenAI, Anthropic or Google Gemini "without creating provider accounts or managing API keys". Not available on Cloud Enterprise or self-hosted, where you supply your own API key | AI by Zapier task cost "Depends on the model tier you select" |
Integrations: n8n vs Zapier
On published figures Zapier lists more integrations, but each vendor's own pages disagree with themselves. n8n's README claims 1500+ integrations while its GitHub description says 400+. Zapier's homepage says 9,000+ apps while its directory states 10045+. What matters is whether the specific systems in your stack are covered, which both vendors let you check in a searchable directory.
Winner: Zapier. on published counts: its app directory states 10045+ apps, against n8n's own claims of 400+ to 1500+ integrations. Check that the specific systems in your stack are covered either way.
| What you are comparing | n8n | Zapier |
|---|---|---|
| Integrations published | The README claims "1500+ integrations and 9,000+ workflow templates"; the repository's short GitHub description carries a different figure, "400+ integrations" | The homepage says "Connect any AI to 9,000+ apps"; the app directory page states "Zapier connects 10045+ apps" |
Read on 2026-09-02 from github.com/n8n-io/n8n (README and LICENSE.md), docs.n8n.io (choose-how-to-use-n8n, install options, gateway credits, concurrency, the AI Agent node), n8n.io/pricing, zapier.com, zapier.com/apps, zapier.com/pricing and Zapier's help centre articles on task usage and Code by Zapier. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, the cell says so rather than estimating.
n8n or Zapier: how to choose
Convert your workload into both billing units before comparing prices: monthly runs give your n8n execution count, and runs multiplied by action steps give roughly your Zapier task count. Then check how many people need to edit automations and whether your data may leave your own infrastructure. Those three answers usually settle the choice before any feature comparison does.
Convert your work into both units first
Count how many times your automations fire a month, and how many action steps each one contains. The first number is your n8n execution count. The two numbers multiplied is roughly your Zapier task count. A workflow of 10 actions running 500 times a month is 500 executions and up to 5,000 tasks — the same work, an order of magnitude apart in billing units.
Then count the seats
n8n lists unlimited users on Starter, Pro, Business and Enterprise. Zapier lists 1 user on Free and Professional and 25 on Team. If five people need to edit automations, that constraint lands before any usage figure does, and it moves you up Zapier's tiers for reasons unrelated to volume.
Decide where the data may sit
This is the one difference no pricing arithmetic can close. n8n can run on infrastructure you control, through Docker, npm or your own cloud account. Zapier publishes no self-hosted edition, so the data passes through Zapier's service. If a compliance rule forbids that, the comparison stops here.
Read the free tier's binding constraint
It is rarely the headline number. Zapier's Free plan is capped at two-step Zaps and 15-minute polling before its 100 tasks run out, and excludes webhooks, premium apps, Filters and Paths. n8n has no permanently free Cloud plan at all — the free route is self-hosting the Community edition, which costs servers and maintenance instead of subscription.
Check what happens past the quota
n8n's Business plan publishes an overage rate of 4,000 EUR per extra 300,000 executions. Zapier's documented behaviour is that once tasks are exhausted you either enable pay-per-task billing or wait for the cycle to reset. One failure mode is an unexpected invoice; the other is automations that quietly stop. Neither is worse in the abstract — it depends which one your business can absorb.
Compare licences, not slogans
Neither product is OSI open source. n8n's Sustainable Use License makes the source readable and self-hosting legal, but restricts commercial redistribution and gates ".ee." enterprise files behind a separate licence. Zapier is straightforwardly proprietary. "Open" is doing different work in each vendor's marketing than in either licence file.
Price the migration, not just the subscription
The two tools share no workflow interchange format. Moving between them is a rebuild — same triggers, same destinations, new implementation — so the switching cost is engineering time, not an export. That cost is why it is worth doing this arithmetic before you build rather than after.
n8n vs Zapier FAQ
These answers cover the questions people ask when choosing between n8n and Zapier: which is cheaper, how executions differ from tasks, whether Zapier can be self-hosted, which licence is open, how many integrations each has and how their AI agents compare. Every figure comes from the vendors' own pages, read on 2 September 2026.
Is n8n cheaper than Zapier?
It depends on the shape of your workflows, because the two meter different units. On published entry prices, n8n Starter is 20€ a month billed annually for 2,500 executions and Zapier Professional is $19.99 a month billed annually for 750 tasks. But an execution is one whole workflow run regardless of steps, while a task is one successful action — so a workflow with ten actions consumes 1 unit on n8n and up to 10 on Zapier for the same run. Long workflows favour n8n's unit; large numbers of one-action Zaps narrow the gap. Seats matter too: n8n lists unlimited users, Zapier Professional lists one.
How do n8n executions differ from Zapier tasks?
n8n's pricing page defines an execution as "a single run of your entire workflow. It doesn't matter how many steps are in the workflow or how much data it processes." Zapier's help centre defines a task as "any successful action that runs in Zapier" and states that "only successful actions count toward your task usage" — trigger steps, Filter and Paths steps, failed actions, and built-in tools like Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage, Tables and Forms are excluded. So the gap between the two units grows with workflow complexity, not with volume.
Can I self-host Zapier the way I can self-host n8n?
No. Zapier publishes no self-hosted edition and no source repository; it is a hosted service. n8n documents five self-hosting routes — a one-line setup, Docker, Docker Compose, npm and deployment on a cloud provider — and n8n's own docs say both Cloud and self-hosted "support production use". Note that self-hosting n8n removes the subscription but not the cost: you take on the servers, upgrades, backups and on-call.
Is n8n open source and Zapier not?
Neither is OSI open source, though only n8n publishes its source. n8n ships under the Sustainable Use License, Version 1.0, which permits use "for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use" and redistribution only "free of charge for non-commercial purposes", with ".ee." files requiring a separate n8n Enterprise License. n8n calls this fair-code. Zapier is a proprietary hosted service with no published source. More licence detail on n8n.
Which has more integrations, n8n or Zapier?
On published figures Zapier lists more, but the two vendors count differently and their own pages disagree with each other. n8n's README claims "1500+ integrations and 9,000+ workflow templates", while the repository's short GitHub description says "400+ integrations". Zapier's homepage says "9,000+ apps" while its app directory page states "Zapier connects 10045+ apps". The number that matters is whether the specific systems in your stack are covered, which both vendors let you check in a searchable directory.
Do both support AI agents?
Both publish agent features, built on different foundations. n8n's AI Agent node is documented as: "Connect a chat model and one or more tools, and the agent decides which tools to call to complete a task." It is built on LangChain, requires at least one tool sub-node, and its agent type setting was deprecated in n8n 1.82.0. Zapier markets "AI agents that take action across your apps" and prices the AI pieces through its task meter — AI by Zapier costs depend on the model tier you select, and Zapier MCP is billed at "2 tasks per successful tool call". See n8n MCP server and Zapier MCP server.
Sources: Read on 2026-09-02 from github.com/n8n-io/n8n (README and LICENSE.md), docs.n8n.io (choose-how-to-use-n8n, install options, gateway credits, concurrency, the AI Agent node), n8n.io/pricing, zapier.com, zapier.com/apps, zapier.com/pricing and Zapier's help centre articles on task usage and Code by Zapier. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, the cell says so rather than estimating.