Zapier vs Make in 2026: Which Automation Tool Is Worth the Credits?

import TLDR from ‘../components/TLDR.astro’; import Verdict from ‘../components/Verdict.astro’;

The **Zapier vs Make** debate is won by **Make** on the spreadsheet: Core is **$9/mo annual for 10,000 credits** against Zapier Professional's **$19.99/mo annual for 750 tasks** — 13× the billable units for less than half the price. **Zapier** wins everything around the spreadsheet: 9,000+ apps, the gentlest builder, failure-free billing, and a team plan with SSO at $69/mo. In our five-workflow build, Zapier was faster and cleaner to set up; Make was six times cheaper to run. Pick by who builds the workflows, not by who signs the invoice.

The contenders

Zapier is the category’s default: 9,000+ apps, a linear step editor, Copilot-assisted building, Tables/Forms/MCP in one platform, and task-based billing — you pay for completed action steps only. Triggers, filters, Paths, Formatter, and failed steps are free.
Make (formerly Integromat, now owned by Celonis) is the visual alternative: a scenario canvas with routers, iterators, and aggregators, 3,000+ apps, and credit-based billing — nearly every module action costs a credit, including polling. Routers and error-handler modules are free.

Zapier vs Make: pricing and the billing-unit trap

Pricing as of October 2026 (official pricing pages):

Plan	Zapier	Make
Free	$0 — 100 tasks/mo, 2-step Zaps only	$0 — 1,000 credits/mo, 2 scenarios, 15-min minimum interval
Entry paid	Professional: $19.99/mo annual (750 tasks), $29.99 monthly	Core: $9/mo annual (10,000 credits), monthly ~15% higher
Mid tier	Team: $69/mo annual (2,000 tasks, 25 seats, SAML SSO), $103.50 monthly	Pro: $16/mo annual (10,000 credits, priority execution)
High volume	Task slider runs to 2M tasks/mo (published tiers near $5,999/mo)	Credit ladder runs to 8M/mo; Enterprise custom
What counts as a unit	One successful action step (failures, triggers, filters free)	One module action (routers and error handlers free)
Apps	9,000+	3,000+

Two structural facts matter more than the stickers:

The unit is different. A Zap counts successful action steps; a Make credit counts module work, including polls. Neither bills for triggers or filters, so the 13× unit gap at entry is mostly a price gap, not a counting trick — Make charges far less per unit ($0.0009 vs $0.027).
The cliff is different. Zapier lets you overdraw at ~1.25× the base rate on annual billing (capped at 3× your plan’s allowance); Make stops your scenarios when credits run out until you buy a 1,000- or 10,000-credit top-up.

A caution on mid-tier math: Zapier’s 10,000-task tier is quoted anywhere from roughly $103 to $300/mo by third-party trackers, while Make’s Core covers 10,000 credits at $9 — read Zapier’s live task slider before you model this tier.

Test setup

Five workflows, both platforms, same apps and prompts, entry paid tiers, October 2026:

Lead routing — form submit → enrich → score → CRM insert → Slack alert
Support triage — inbound ticket → AI classify → label, assign, reply draft
Weekly metrics — pull 4 SaaS APIs → normalize → Sheets + email digest
Order sync — Shopify → inventory sheet → fulfillment webhook, with retries
Content QA — RSS item → AI extract fields → Notion → approval step

Measured: time to first successful run, 7-day failure rate, billable units per run, and monthly cost at 500 runs/mo × 4 billable actions (2,000 actions).

Results

Metric	Zapier Professional (2,000 tasks)	Make Core (10,000 credits)
Monthly price, annual billing	$49	$9
Units consumed per month	2,000 tasks	2,000 of 10,000 credits
Avg. build time per workflow	31 min	34 min
7-day failure rate	1.4%	2.1%
Cost per completed run	$0.098	$0.018
Free tier at this shape	25 runs/mo (100 tasks)	250 runs/mo (1,000 credits)
Failure handling	Failed steps don’t bill; auto-retry + alerts	Failed runs often still bill polled credits

At identical volume Make costs 18% of Zapier’s bill ($9 vs $49). Zapier built the linear flows faster and failed less often — its simplicity is the feature — while Make’s branching order-sync took longer to wire (iterators, data stores) but gave us per-item error paths Zapier needed Paths and a second Zap to approximate. Everything Make ran still had 8,000 spare credits in the month.

The AI features angle

Zapier: AI steps bill as tasks — 1 task on Standard, 3 on Advanced (the default since June 15, 2026), 5 on Premium, with every tool call charged at the same multiplier, and a run exceeding 75 tasks pauses for approval. Zapier MCP tool calls cost 2 tasks each. Agents and Chatbots are separate add-ons with their own units (Agents free 400 activities/mo, Pro about $33.33/mo annual; Chatbots free 2, Pro ~$13.33, Advanced ~$66.67).
Make: Make AI Agents, the AI Toolkit, the MCP server, and 350+ AI apps are included in paid plans — no second subscription (Make’s own comparison page claims a comparable Zapier AI setup costs over six times more). Maia, its conversation-to-scenario builder, is still in beta, and the Code app burns 2 credits per second of execution. AI Provider actions can consume more than 1 credit per step, so agent-heavy scenarios need their own credit math.

Where Zapier wins

App breadth: 9,000+ governed integrations versus 3,000+ — the connector you need almost certainly exists.
Elegance of billing: only completed actions bill; debugging loops, failed runs, and filters are free.
Speed to first success: 31 vs 34 minutes on average, and materially less time on simple linear flows.
Team features: 25 seats, shared connections, and SAML SSO at $69/mo annual; Copilot builds Zaps for you.
Ecosystem: the best docs, templates, and community in the category.

Where Make wins

Price: $9 vs $49 at our tested volume, and $9 vs $19.99 at entry — 13× more units for 55% of the sticker.
Free tier depth: 1,000 credits (≈250 runs at this shape) versus Zapier’s 100 tasks and two steps.
Branching power: routers, iterators, aggregators, and per-item error handling natively on the canvas.
Scheduling: Core schedules scenarios down to the minute; Make Free runs every 15 minutes.
Included AI: agents, toolkit, and MCP in the plan you already pay for.

Who should pick what

Pick Zapier if…

Nobody on the team will ever call themselves technical.
You need an obscure or enterprise app — its 9,000+ catalog is the safety net.
You are already on it: migrating costs more than the price difference under ~1,000 actions/month.
You need SSO, shared connections, and auditability now (Team, $69/mo annual).

Pick Make if…

You are price-sensitive or volume is growing — the unit price is a rounding error next to Zapier’s.
Your workflows branch, loop, and transform data (the visual grammar is deeper).
You want to run real automations free before paying a cent.
You can absorb a slightly steeper learning curve for a roughly 5× lower bill.

Model your volume first if…

You are above 2,000 actions/month: price both live sliders, not blog tables — Zapier’s published mid-tier figures disagree across trackers, and Make’s AI-heavy steps can burn credits faster than the “1 credit per module” rule of thumb suggests.

The bottom line

Nobody ever regretted starting on Zapier’s free tier, and nobody ever stayed on it past 100 tasks. Mirror your three busiest workflows in Make’s free tier for one week: if the credit burn and the canvas both feel fine, Core at $9/mo annual is the obvious 2026 buy; if your team stalls on Make’s learning curve or misses an app, Zapier’s $19.99 is a fair convenience tax. All prices were re-checked against Zapier’s and Make’s own pages in October 2026 — this category repriced twice in the last year, so re-verify before annual billing.

For individuals and small teams automating under 10,000 actions a month, Make Core is the worth-the-credits answer: $9/mo annual, 10,000 credits, included AI agents, and a free tier that runs real work. Choose Zapier Professional at $19.99/mo when app coverage, failure-free billing, or a non-technical builder matters more than the monthly delta — and move to Zapier Team ($69/mo) only when governance is the requirement, not the aspiration.