Zapier vs Make in 2026: which automation tool to pick

Why people end up comparing these two

At some point every small team hits the same wall: a task that two apps should handle between them, but don't. You go looking for a connector, and you land on either Zapier or Make. Both will get a webhook into a spreadsheet or a form submission into Slack. The difference shows up later, once your workflows stop being a single trigger and a single action and start branching, looping, or touching five services instead of two.

Zapier is the one almost everyone has heard of. It launched the category and still has the biggest app directory, over 9,000 integrations by recent counts, against roughly 1,600 to 1,800 for Make. Make, which used to be called Integromat before a 2022 rebrand, trades some of that breadth for a visual, left to right canvas that handles branching and error paths inside a single scenario instead of forcing you to stitch workflows together. We've built things in both, and the honest answer is that which one is "better" depends entirely on what you're automating and how much patience you have for a learning curve.

Capability and workflow complexity

Zapier's builder is linear: trigger, then a vertical list of action steps, with conditional paths available on paid plans. It's easy to read top to bottom, which is exactly why it's the faster tool to learn. The tradeoff is that once a workflow needs to branch three ways, merge results back together, or loop over an array of items, you're working against the tool's natural shape.

Make's canvas is built for that case. A scenario is a flowchart you build left to right, with native support for routers, iterators, aggregators, and dedicated error handlers, all visible in one view. Data transformation is also more exposed in Make. If you need to reshape a JSON payload, parse an array, or run custom API logic through an HTTP module, Make's modules tend to expose more of the underlying request than Zapier's equivalents. The cost is a steeper ramp. A Zapier Zap you can build in ten minutes might take you twice that in Make the first few times, because you're thinking in a different shape.

Speed to a working automation

If the job is "when a form is submitted, add a row and post a Slack message," Zapier is faster to ship. Its templates are the largest in the category and its app-first setup flow holds your hand well. Make assumes a bit more comfort with how APIs pass data around, so the first scenario you build takes longer even if the automation itself is simple. Where Make pulls ahead on speed is iteration: once you understand the canvas, making structural changes to a complex workflow is often quicker than rebuilding several multi-step Zaps.

Integrations and ecosystem

This is Zapier's clearest advantage. It connects to north of 9,000 apps, including a long tail of niche and vertical-specific tools that Make simply doesn't have native modules for. Make covers roughly 1,600 to 1,800 apps, which is still plenty for mainstream SaaS, but if you're automating around an obscure CRM or industry tool, Zapier is more likely to have a ready-made connector. Both support generic webhooks and HTTP requests, so almost anything with an API is reachable either way; it's just a question of whether you want a native module waiting for you or want to build the request yourself.

On the AI side, Zapier has pushed harder recently with Copilot (natural-language Zap building), AI Agents for autonomous multi-step tasks, and support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting AI assistants trigger Zaps directly. Make has its own AI tooling but Zapier's AI feature set is currently the more actively marketed of the two.

Pricing

This is where the gap is largest, and it isn't close. Zapier's Free plan gives 100 tasks a month and restricts you to two-step Zaps. Its Professional tier starts at 750 tasks for $29.99/month billed monthly, or $19.99/month billed annually, and prices scale up from there, for example 2,000 tasks runs $73.50/month monthly or $49/month annual, and by 50,000 tasks you're near $433.50/month monthly or $289/month annual. A Team plan adds seats, SSO, and admin controls on top, starting around $103.50/month monthly ($69 annual) for 2,000 tasks.

Make's Free plan gives 1,000 credits a month with two active scenarios, and its paid tiers are considerably cheaper for comparable volume: Core runs about $10.59/month billed monthly or $9/month annual for 10,000 operations, Pro is about $18.82/month monthly or $16/month annual for the same 10,000-operation base plus priority execution and two seats, and Teams runs about $34.12/month monthly or $29/month annual per user with unlimited scenarios and premium app access. Put side by side at roughly 10,000 units of usage, Zapier's Professional tier costs about $193.50/month monthly ($129 annual), while Make's Core or Pro tier covering the same volume costs under $20. That gap narrows somewhat because a "task" and an "operation" aren't identical units of work, Make's multi-step modules can sometimes burn more credits per action, but even accounting for that, independent cost comparisons consistently put Make at a fraction of Zapier's price for equivalent volume.

	Zapier	Make
Free tier	100 tasks/mo, 2-step Zaps	1,000 credits/mo, 2 active scenarios
Entry paid tier	750 tasks, $29.99/mo ($19.99 annual)	Core: 10,000 ops, $10.59/mo ($9 annual)
~10k units/mo cost	~$193.50/mo ($129 annual)	~$18.82/mo ($16 annual, Pro)
Integrations	9,000+	~1,600-1,800
Builder style	Linear, top-down, paths on paid plans	Visual canvas, branching/looping native
Best for	Fast setup, widest app coverage	Complex logic, high volume, lower cost

Which should you pick

A solo freelancer automating client onboarding, invoice reminders, and a handful of form-to-CRM handoffs is usually better off on Zapier. The task volume is low enough that pricing doesn't bite, and the time saved by Zapier's simpler interface and bigger template library outweighs Make's cost advantage at that scale.

An agency or ops team running workflows with branching logic, data transformation, or genuinely high monthly volume should look hard at Make. The learning curve costs you a week or two up front, but the pricing difference at volume is large enough to matter, and the canvas handles complexity that would otherwise require three or four separate Zaps wired together with filters.

A non-technical team that just needs "when X happens in app A, do Y in app B" with minimal fuss and the broadest possible app coverage should default to Zapier, accept the higher per-task cost, and treat it as the price of not having to think about API payloads.

Verdict

We'd pick Zapier when the job is simple, the app you need isn't in Make's smaller directory, or nobody on the team wants to learn a new mental model. We'd pick Make when the workflow has real branching logic, the volume is high enough that Zapier's per-task pricing starts to hurt, or you're already comfortable reading a flowchart. Neither tool is strictly better. They're built for different shaped problems, and the fastest way to waste a week is picking based on brand recognition instead of what your actual workflow looks like.

FAQ

Is Make actually cheaper than Zapier? At comparable usage volume, yes, often significantly. At around 10,000 units of monthly usage, Make's Pro plan runs under $20/month while Zapier's equivalent Professional tier runs close to $130 to $194/month depending on billing cycle, though the two platforms don't count a "task" and an "operation" identically.

Can I migrate a Zapier workflow to Make without starting from scratch? Not automatically. There's no one-click import between the two, so moving a Zap to Make means rebuilding the logic in Make's canvas by hand, which is straightforward for simple Zaps but time-consuming for anything with multiple conditional paths.

Which one has better customer support? Zapier offers email support on paid plans and live chat starting at higher task tiers, with priority support on Team plans. Make's support scales similarly by tier, with faster response times reserved for Teams and Enterprise customers; neither offers phone support outside Enterprise contracts.

Do I need to know how to code to use either tool? No, both are no-code by design. Make's HTTP and JSON modules reward some familiarity with how APIs structure data, but you can build functional scenarios without writing code in either platform.