n8n vs Zapier 2026: What Each Costs at 10,000 Tasks a Month

Short answer: it depends on how many steps each run has. n8n bills one execution per full workflow run, so a four-step workflow that runs 2,500 times a month fits its EUR 20 Starter plan on annual billing. The same work is 10,000 Zapier tasks, which needs the $129 Professional 10K plan on yearly billing. Self-hosted n8n on the Community Edition is the one option priced in dollars on both sides, at a $12 server.

Toolradar data: the workflow automation ranking we run evaluates 1,016 tools as of October 10, 2026, and only 3 of the 10 tools it lists have a free plan. Both products also have Toolradar profiles, for n8n and Zapier. This comparison reads each vendor's own pricing page as of October 10, 2026, and works only from those published figures.

Quick verdict

Factor	n8n	Zapier
What you pay per	One full workflow run, whatever the number of steps	One successful action; the trigger that starts a run is free
Free tier	Visible Cloud plans start with a trial. Community Edition is free to self-host	Free plan with 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps only
Cheapest paid plan	Starter, EUR 20 a month on annual billing, 2,500 executions	Professional, $19.99 a month on annual billing, 750 tasks
10,000 tasks, four-step Zap	Starter, 2,500 executions	Professional 10K
Self-hosting	Yes, Community Edition under a license for internal business use	No self-hosted option on Professional or Team
Team size	Unlimited users on every plan	Team plan includes 25 users

The table answers the question most buyers have. The rest of this page checks whether the unit counts hold up for the workloads you actually run.

How each tool counts a run

Zapier charges per successful action. A Zap with one trigger and four actions uses four tasks per run, because the trigger is free. Zapier's pricing page says it never charges a task to check for new data, only when an action completes. So 10,000 tasks a month is 2,500 runs of a four-action Zap.

n8n charges per full run. A run that starts at the trigger and finishes at the last node counts as one execution, however many nodes sit in between. So 2,500 runs of a four-step workflow are 2,500 executions on n8n, against 10,000 tasks on Zapier. That gap is the whole argument for n8n on price, and it has a limit.

If every workflow has a single action, the two units match one for one. A one-step Zap is one task, and a one-node workflow is one execution. In that case n8n gains nothing from the per-run model, and the comparison reduces to the plan prices. Zapier's Free plan (100 tasks) and n8n's trial (1,000 executions) both suit a test flow, not a team running thousands of runs.

Zapier also has a pay-per-task option. Once you reach your plan's task limit, billing switches to a higher per-task rate so your Zaps keep running. That protects uptime, but it means a busy month can cost more than the plan price suggests.

Cloud plans at 10,000 tasks a month

The workflow shape decides the n8n plan. The Zapier side stays fixed at the same 10,000 tasks.

Workflow shape	Zapier tasks	n8n executions	Zapier plan	n8n plan
Four actions per run	10,000 (2,500 runs)	2,500	Professional 10K	Starter, EUR 20 a month
Two actions per run	10,000 (5,000 runs)	5,000	Professional 10K	Pro, EUR 50 a month
One action per run	10,000 (10,000 runs)	10,000	Professional 10K	Pro, EUR 50 a month

The arithmetic is 10,000 divided by the actions per run. Four actions give 2,500 runs, two give 5,000, and one gives 10,000. Starter's 2,500 executions are an exact fit for the four-action shape, with no headroom. Any extra run in the month moves you to Pro, which covers 10,000 executions.

Starter also limits a single run to 5 minutes and allows 5 executions at once. A workflow that waits on a slow API for longer than that needs Pro, which allows 40 minutes per run. The execution caps in the table are the hosted plan limits, and they are separate from the self-hosted route covered below.

Zapier's prices are for annual billing unless noted. The Professional 10K tier costs $193.50 a month billed monthly, or $1,548 a year billed yearly, which works out to $129 a month. The Team 10K tier costs $253.50 a month billed monthly, or $2,028 a year billed yearly, which is $169 a month. The yearly discount on Professional 10K is $774 a year, so the monthly rate costs $2,322 a year.

n8n's Cloud prices are published in euros, and its pricing page shows no dollar figure. The Starter plan is EUR 24 a month billed monthly, or EUR 240 a year billed yearly. Pro is EUR 60 a month billed monthly, or EUR 600 a year billed yearly (EUR 50 a month). Business is EUR 800 a month billed monthly, or EUR 8,000 a year billed yearly (EUR 667 a month), and it is self-hosted only.

This page does not convert euros to dollars. A rate would be one we would have to choose, and it moves, so each price stays in its own currency. Read every n8n figure in euros and every Zapier or DigitalOcean figure in dollars.

Self-hosted n8n in dollars

Self-hosting is the only route where the two sides can be compared in dollars. The Community Edition costs nothing to download. Its license allows use for your own internal business purposes, and it does not allow you to offer n8n to others as a service on a paid basis. A hosted client service falls outside it.

The server is the cost you pay directly. DigitalOcean's Basic Droplets are priced in dollars: 2 GiB of memory with 1 vCPU costs $12 a month, and 4 GiB with 2 vCPUs costs $24 a month. The 4 GiB size is our assumption for headroom, not a figure from n8n.

Set in dollars, that is $144 a year for the smaller server or $288 a year for the larger one, against $1,548 a year for Zapier's Professional 10K tier on yearly billing. Self-hosted n8n has no per-run fee, so the server cost stays the same as the workload grows, up to the limit of the machine.

Hosted alternatives are listed in our cloud free tiers comparison, and our best serverless platforms guide covers the option of running no server at all.

The server bill leaves out the work. Someone has to apply updates, back up the data, watch uptime and fix the failures that a hosted service handles for you. For a team that cannot afford an outage, that work is the real cost of the route.

Business features are a separate purchase. SSO, LDAP and Git version control sit on the Business plan, and the Business plan is self-hosted only. It costs EUR 667 a month on annual billing. If you need those features on your own server, the self-hosted route picks up a euro price, so compare it with the euro rows above, not with the dollar figures.

Team size, apps and polling

n8n includes unlimited users and workflows on every plan, and its pricing page says every integration is available on all plans. Its Pro plan adds 3 shared projects, admin roles and 7 days of insights. Business adds SSO and LDAP.

Zapier's Team plan includes 25 users, shared Zaps and folders, shared app connections and SAML SSO. At the 10K tier that is $169 a month on yearly billing. Zapier's pricing page lists more than 9,000 apps. n8n's pricing page gives no app count.

Polling speed also differs by plan. Zapier's Free plan checks for new data every 15 minutes, Professional every 2 minutes, and Team every minute. The interval matters most for triggers that check an app on a schedule.

Where each one is the wrong pick

n8n is the wrong pick for a non-technical builder. The canvas is heavier than a no-code tool, and code steps assume someone who writes JavaScript or Python. Starter's 5-execution concurrency and 5-minute run cap rule out long batch jobs. Its Cloud plans start with a trial, so a team that wants a permanent free hosted tier will not find one among the visible plans. Self-hosting moves the operations work onto your team, and a database for the workflows, such as one on Supabase, becomes a second system to run.

Zapier is the wrong pick for a team that runs many multi-step workflows. Each extra action is another task, so a four-action flow costs four times a one-action flow. The Free plan allows only two-step Zaps and checks for new data every 15 minutes. Pay-per-task above a plan's limit costs more per task. The Professional and Team plans have no self-hosted option, so teams with data residency rules need to check the hosted terms.

Which one to choose

Choose n8n when your workflows run more than one action per run, your team writes code, and you either accept a Starter-sized run cap or have a server to run. Its per-run billing makes multi-step AI and data jobs cheap to scale.

Choose Zapier when most Zaps have a single action, the people building them are not developers, or the app you need is in its catalogue of more than 9,000. With one action per run the unit counts match, so the plan prices and the apps decide.

For either choice, the unit count matters more than the plan name. Count the actions per run in your own workflows first, then pick the plan. If a workflow calls a model at every step, that model bill sits on top of either plan, and our free LLM APIs guide lists the zero-cost options. A coding agent inside a workflow adds its own subscription, and our Claude Code review and Claude Code pricing guide cover that side.

FAQ

Is n8n cheaper than Zapier in 2026?

It depends on the steps per run and on whether you self-host. At 10,000 Zapier tasks a month, a four-step workflow fits n8n Starter (EUR 20 a month on annual billing, 2,500 executions). The same work needs Zapier Professional 10K, $129 a month on yearly billing. The two are in different currencies and this page does not convert them.

How does Zapier count tasks?

Zapier counts each successful action as one task. The trigger that starts a Zap does not count, and checking for new data is free. A four-action Zap uses four tasks per run.

Is self-hosted n8n free?

The Community Edition costs nothing to run under its license for internal business use. You pay for the server, which is $12 to $24 a month on DigitalOcean's Basic plans for the sizes this page uses, plus the time to keep it running.

Does n8n have a free plan?

The visible Cloud plans all start with a trial, which allows 1,000 executions, 5 concurrent executions and a 180-second execution timeout. The Community Edition is the free option, and it runs on your own server.

Does Zapier offer a self-hosted option?

Zapier's Professional and Team plans have no self-hosted option, so the self-hosted route in this comparison is n8n's alone.

How much does Zapier cost at 10,000 tasks a month?

Professional 10K costs $129 a month on yearly billing ($1,548 a year), or $193.50 a month billed monthly. Team 10K costs $169 a month on yearly billing, or $253.50 billed monthly.

Methodology and sources

Each price on this page was read on the vendor's own pricing page as of October 10, 2026. Zapier's figures come from Zapier's pricing page, which lists the same plan tiers its task slider uses. n8n's Cloud prices come from n8n's pricing page, and are quoted in euros because n8n publishes no dollar price. The license terms come from n8n's license on GitHub. Server prices come from DigitalOcean's Droplet pricing in dollars.

The scenarios are arithmetic on those figures: tasks divided by actions per run, and monthly price times twelve for the yearly totals. No plan was bought or run for this page, and nothing here is a benchmark of either tool's performance.

To compare the self-hosted route with other ways to run automation, see our best self-hosting tools guide and the best AI app development platforms guide. Our n8n review covers the Cloud plans in more detail, and our Dify review covers Dify, an LLM app platform.

Cite this: Devshot, "n8n vs Zapier 2026: What Each Costs at 10,000 Tasks a Month", October 2026.

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