n8n vs Zapier (2026): Executions vs Tasks, Self-Hosting & Cost

Choose n8n provisionally when the automation you need has several steps per run, runs often, or involves AI agents, code or branching, and your team has at least one person comfortable with webhooks, JSON and, if self-hosting, Docker. Choose Zapier provisionally when the deciding factor is a specific integration that exists in its directory and not in n8n's node list, when nobody will maintain infrastructure, and when the monthly count of successful actions is small enough to fit a priced tier. The two products measure usage differently, so a price-per-month comparison without a step count is meaningless.

The rest of this comparison follows the decisions a small team actually faces: how many billable units a realistic workflow generates on each platform, what the entry plans include and exclude, how concurrency and run duration limits behave, what the free options really permit, and what happens when a trial expires or a plan is cancelled. It also covers the Sustainable Use License, which allows free self-hosted n8n for internal business automation but not for letting clients build workflows, a distinction that matters for agencies.

Official pricing and documentation reviewed November 8, 2026 form the evidence for this comparison; no hands-on workflow, latency, reliability or migration tests were performed. Prices are reproduced in the currency each vendor displays, EUR for n8n Cloud and USD for Zapier, and are not converted. Use the n8n review and Zapier review for background, the Zapier vs Make comparison for the operations-based alternative, and the no-code automation shortlist for the wider decision.

n8n's pricing page states that pricing is based on monthly workflow executions regardless of complexity, that an execution is a single run of the entire workflow no matter how many steps it contains or how much data it processes, and that users and workflows are unlimited on every plan. Its FAQ adds that if a workflow does not run you do not pay, and that overage charges may apply above quota while workflows continue running. The concurrency documentation clarifies that concurrency limits apply only to production executions started by a trigger or webhook, not to manual runs, sub-workflow executions or error executions, which is a useful hint that those are treated differently from production runs.

Zapier's task measurement article defines a task as any successful action that runs, and only successful actions count. Each successful action step is one task, including each action inside a sub-Zap and the Call and Return steps that connect them. A search action set to proceed if nothing is found costs one task; one set to stop costs none. Trigger steps, Filter and Paths steps, editor testing, steps that error or halt, and steps skipped by a filter do not count. Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage, Zapier Manager, Tables and Forms steps are free, confirmed in Zapier's plan improvements announcement.

The practical consequence is that a Zap with a trigger, a filter and one action costs one task per run, while a Zap with a trigger and five actions costs five. On n8n both are one execution. Zapier also documents special rates: Code by Zapier is one task per run plus one task for each additional 30 seconds beyond the plan's standard runtime, Lead Router is five tasks per routed lead, Zapier MCP is two tasks per successful tool call, and AI by Zapier is priced by model tier. From December 1, 2026, Next Gen Zaps and the Zapier SDK use the same task rates with at least one task per completed run, so a run that only filters or formats will no longer be free in that mode.

Neither model is inherently cheaper. A team running thousands of one-action Zaps may pay less on Zapier's task tiers than on n8n's execution tiers, while a team running a few hundred ten-step workflows will almost always find n8n's unit cheaper. The worked examples later in this page quantify both cases with the vendor labels available; the software evaluation checklist explains how to record the step counts you will need.

n8n Cloud lists three self-serve plans with annual billing labels and a note that annual saves 17 percent against monthly. Starter is €20 per month for 2,500 workflow executions with unlimited steps, one shared project, five concurrent executions, a five-minute maximum execution duration, 2,500 saved executions, seven days of execution log retention and 1,600 Assistant credits. Pro is €50 per month for 10,000 executions, three shared projects, up to 50 concurrent executions, a 40-minute duration, 25,000 saved executions, 30 days of retention, admin roles, workflow history and up to 9,600 Assistant credits. Business is €667 per month for 40,000 executions and is marked self-hosted only, adding SSO and LDAP, six projects, environments, queue mode and Git version control. Enterprise is quoted and runs hosted or self-hosted with 200-plus concurrent executions. A Startup plan offers 50 percent off Business for companies under 20 employees, subject to qualification.

Zapier's pricing page lists Free at $0 with 100 tasks per month, two-step Zaps, unlimited Zaps, Tables and Forms, and 15-minute polling. Professional starts from $19.99 per month and adds multi-step Zaps, unlimited premium apps, webhooks, two-minute polling, email and live chat support, with live chat available from the 2,000-task tier. Team starts from $69 per month with 25 seats, shared Zaps, folders and app connections, SAML SSO, one-minute polling and priority support. Enterprise is quoted and adds unlimited users, annual task limits, observability and a technical account manager. The page shows a pay-yearly toggle labelled as a 33 percent saving and a task slider from 100 to 2 million tasks; the per-tier prices above 750 tasks and the month-to-month amounts render dynamically and were not independently verified for this comparison.

Two labelling differences matter. First, n8n displays EUR and Zapier displays USD by default with a currency selector, so a €20 Starter and a $19.99 Professional are not the same price and should not be compared without a checkout quote in your own currency. Second, both entry labels are annual-billing equivalents: n8n's page says billed annually and Zapier's toggle defaults to yearly. A team paying monthly should expect roughly 17 percent more on n8n and a larger uplift on Zapier, but the exact monthly figures must be read from each checkout rather than reverse-calculated here. Our SaaS spending guide covers why that discipline matters at renewal.

Seats are the other structural difference. Every n8n Cloud plan includes unlimited users, with role depth increasing from project admins on Starter to editors and instance admins on Pro and custom roles on Enterprise. Zapier's Free and Professional plans include one seat; collaboration requires Team, which jumps the starting price to $69 and includes 25 seats whether or not you use them. A three-person operations team therefore pays for a 25-seat plan on Zapier or shares one login, while on n8n the same three people are included on Starter.

Consider a lead-intake workflow with a form trigger and four actions: create a CRM contact, post a Slack message, append a spreadsheet row and send a confirmation email. On n8n that is one execution per lead. On Zapier it is four tasks per lead, because the trigger is free and each successful action counts. At 150 leads a month the workflow uses 150 executions on n8n, well inside Starter's 2,500, and 600 tasks on Zapier, inside Professional's 750-task tier. The vendor labels are €20 and $19.99 per month respectively on annual billing, so at this volume the platforms are close and the choice turns on integrations and maintenance rather than price.

At 600 leads a month the workflow uses 600 executions on n8n, still inside Starter at €20, and 2,400 tasks on Zapier, which exceeds the 750 tier and requires a higher task tier whose price was not verified for this comparison. At 2,000 leads a month it uses 2,000 executions on n8n, still inside Starter, and 8,000 tasks on Zapier, which requires at least the 10,000-task tier. The pattern is mechanical: each extra action step multiplies Zapier's unit count while n8n's stays flat, so the break-even moves toward n8n as workflows get longer.

The reverse case is a one-action Zap such as saving every new email attachment to cloud storage. At 2,000 attachments a month that is 2,000 tasks on Zapier and 2,000 executions on n8n, so both land in their entry tiers and n8n's unlimited-steps advantage is worth nothing. Add a filter that passes only 500 of them and Zapier bills 500 tasks because filtered-out runs are free, while n8n still records 2,000 executions because the trigger fired 2,000 times. For high-volume, mostly-filtered triggers Zapier's model can be the cheaper one.

Self-hosting changes the arithmetic again. The Community edition costs nothing in licence fees, so the 2,000-lead workflow costs the server and the time to maintain it. Using an illustrative internal rate of $40 per hour and two hours a month for updates, backups and monitoring, that is $80 a month in labour before hosting, more than either entry plan. The saving appears at volumes where n8n Cloud would need Pro or Business, or when the team already operates servers. Current small-server prices are compared in our Vultr vs Hetzner comparison; the labour figure here is an assumption, not a measured cost.

n8n Cloud publishes hard operational limits per plan. Starter allows five concurrent production executions and a five-minute maximum execution duration; Pro allows 20 or 50 concurrent executions depending on plan size and 40 minutes; Enterprise allows 200-plus and 40 minutes. The concurrency documentation states that executions beyond the limit queue and process in first-in, first-out order, that queued executions cannot be retried, and that cancelling a queued execution removes it from the queue. A workflow that waits on a slow external API or loops over a large dataset can exceed five minutes on Starter and fail, which is a plan-selection issue rather than a bug.

Zapier does not publish a concurrency figure. Instead it applies flood protection, which holds Zap runs when a trigger produces a burst above a configurable limit, and its held-run troubleshooting article explains how held runs are reviewed and replayed. Replaying a whole Zap run re-bills previously successful steps as new tasks. Polling frequency is also plan-gated at 15 minutes on Free, two on Professional and one on Team and Enterprise, which sets the minimum latency for polling triggers; instant triggers and webhooks are not subject to the polling interval.

Code steps have different ceilings. Zapier's Code by Zapier article lists a one-second standard runtime on Free, 30 seconds on Professional and Team and two minutes on Enterprise, with one task per run plus one task per additional 30-second block once extended runtimes are enabled, and Free plan code that exceeds one second fails. n8n includes JavaScript and Python Code nodes on every plan, bounded only by the execution duration limit, and self-hosted installs can also run bash scripts and custom nodes. For code-heavy automation n8n's limits are looser; for occasional transformations Zapier's Formatter is free and avoids code entirely.

AI steps are metered differently too. n8n includes AI Agent nodes, MCP server and client, human approval for tool calls and hosted chat on all Cloud plans, consuming executions like any other run, while its Assistant is metered by credits that are 1,600 on Starter and up to 9,600 on Pro. Zapier prices AI by Zapier by model tier, charges two tasks per successful MCP tool call, and includes Agents, Chatbots and Canvas as separate products with their own limits. A team planning agentic workflows should model the per-call task cost on Zapier against the per-run execution cost on n8n before choosing.

n8n's hosting documentation states that every self-hosted installation runs the same product, that without a license key it runs as the free Community edition, and that Business or Enterprise keys unlock those editions. Installation options include a one-line setup script, Docker Compose, npm, and guides for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Run and Kubernetes, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Heroku and OpenShift; npm installation is deprecated from n8n 3.0 in favour of Docker. You own the database, backups, TLS, updates and uptime.

The edition comparison lists what Community lacks: custom variables, environments, external secrets, external binary storage, log streaming, multi-main mode, projects, SSO via SAML or LDAP, sharing of workflows and credentials, and Git version control. Only the instance owner and the user who created a workflow or credential can access it, which is workable for one or two builders and awkward for a team. Registering the Community edition with an email adds folders, debug-in-editor and custom execution data at no cost. Queue mode and logging are included.

The license FAQ is explicit about commercial boundaries. Under the Sustainable Use License you may use n8n to help run your business, build automations for clients on your instance as long as clients cannot create or edit them, charge for workflow creation and consultancy, and use n8n behind the scenes in your own product where users trigger but do not configure workflows. You may not host n8n as a service that lets clients build workflows, let external users configure workflows through your product, UI, API, MCP or an agent acting for them, fork it to launch a competing product, white-label it, or use licence-gated enterprise features without a licence. Agencies that want clients editing automations need a commercial agreement or should use n8n Cloud seats; Zapier has no equivalent restriction because the client simply uses a seat in a paid account.

Self-hosting is therefore a trade of licence fees for responsibility. It suits teams that already run containers, need data to stay on their infrastructure, or run volumes that would cost hundreds of euros a month on Cloud. It does not suit a team whose only technical person is the owner on evenings, because the first failed update or full disk becomes an outage nobody is paid to fix. The employee IT offboarding checklist is worth reading alongside this decision, since a self-hosted instance owned by one departing employee is a single point of failure.

n8n's trial documentation describes a 14-day Cloud trial with Pro-level features, 1,000 executions, five concurrent executions, a 180-second timeout and one project, with no credit card required. If you do not upgrade, the trial expires and n8n deletes the instance, with 90 days to download your workflows afterwards. The Business plan trial requires a card. Above quota, the pricing FAQ says workflows continue running and capped overage charges may apply if you do not upgrade, with sales reaching out as you approach the limit; the exact overage rate is not printed on the page and should be requested before relying on it.

Zapier's cancellation article states that there is no cancel button; you cancel by selecting the Free plan, the change takes effect at the end of the billing cycle, and subscriptions are non-refundable. Pay-per-task charges from the final cycle can still arrive after cancellation, monthly for annual plans. Its pay-per-task article notes that the feature is enabled by default for accounts created after January 2024 and that the rate depends on plan and billing cycle, so a burst month can produce an unplanned charge unless the owner disables it. Zapier's new-user trial is 14 days without a payment method; a seven-day re-trial requires a card and converts to paid unless cancelled.

Both vendors keep workflows running past the allowance by default, which protects production but shifts the risk to the invoice. Set a usage alert on either platform, record who owns the billing email, and decide in advance whether an overage or a stopped workflow is the acceptable failure mode. Both trials end in a state that is easy to miss: n8n deletes the instance, Zapier moves to Free where multi-step Zaps stop working. Export workflow JSON from n8n and document Zap configurations before either date.

Zapier's directory of more than 9,000 apps remains its strongest argument, and the page notes that premium apps are available on paid plans. Where a long-tail SaaS tool has a Zapier integration and no n8n node, Zapier wins on day one. n8n counters with built-in HTTP Request, GraphQL and cURL-import nodes on every plan, so any documented API is reachable with more setup, plus a community of templates. For common tools such as Slack, Google Sheets, HubSpot and Notion both platforms have native integrations, and the decision reverts to pricing and limits.

Support differs by plan. n8n Starter and Pro list forum support only; email support and dedicated SLA support are Enterprise features. Zapier includes email support on Professional, live chat from the 2,000-task tier, priority support on Team and screen-sharing and a technical account manager on Enterprise. A non-technical team that expects to ask a human for help will find Zapier's paid tiers more forgiving; a technical team comfortable with forums and documentation will not miss it on n8n.

In summary, n8n suits a technically capable team, a high-step-count or AI-heavy workload, a need for unlimited editors, or a requirement to keep data on your own servers, with the Sustainable Use License read carefully if clients are involved. Zapier suits a business user who needs a specific integration, a short workflow at modest volume, a fully managed service with chat support, and a team that values shared connections and SSO on Team. For the broader landscape see our Zapier alternatives guide, the small-business automation guide and the no-code automation category.