Independent review · Pricing re-checked 21 August 2026
Zapier: 9,000 integrations, and a free plan that isn't one
What that doesn't mean is that this page has no stake at all. Further down we tell cost-sensitive readers to price the same workflows on Make, Pabbly Connect and n8n — and Make and Pabbly Connect both pay us a commission, through the affiliate links on their own review pages. n8n pays us nothing. We say so again at the point where we send you there.
Zapier connects more apps than anything else we cover — upwards of 9,000, against Pabbly's roughly 2,000 and n8n's roughly 500. If the tool you need to automate exists, Zapier almost certainly connects to it. That breadth is the entire proposition and it's genuinely hard to argue with.
What it isn't is cheap, and the free plan is best understood as a demonstration rather than a tier you could run anything on.
- Best for
- Anyone whose stack includes an app nothing else connects to
- Free plan
- 100 tasks/mo, two-step Zaps only
- From
- USD $19.99/mo annual ($29.99 monthly) for 750 tasks
- Billing unit
- The task — usually one per action, but see below
- Watch for
- Task burn is usually 3–5× what people estimate
Pricing
| Plan | Annual | Monthly | Tasks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 100/mo, two-step Zaps only, no premium apps, no webhooks |
| Professional | from $19.99 | from $29.99 | 750/mo at entry, scaling by slider (~$49 annual at 2,000) |
| Team | ~$69 | ~$103.50 | 2,000/mo, multi-user — collaboration, not capacity |
| Enterprise | Custom | — | Reported to start around $700+/mo |
All prices in US dollars. Monthly billing runs roughly 33–50% above annual. Pricing is set by a task-volume slider rather than fixed tiers, so your actual figure depends on the volume you select. Re-checked 21 August 2026 — the prices are unchanged since our first check, but the way tasks are counted has moved, which is covered below and matters more.
The good news on task counting
The core rule is still favourable: triggers cost nothing, and neither do filters, paths, delays, formatting or Zapier's built-in tools. Only steps that actually do something are billed.
That's meaningfully better than Make, where a trigger spends a credit every time it checks even when nothing has changed. On Zapier, a workflow that polls constantly but acts rarely costs almost nothing. Worth noting that Make pays us and Zapier can't, and this paragraph still goes Zapier's way.
The unit changed in mid-2026, and most guides haven't caught up
“One task = one action” was a reliable rule until June and July 2026. It no longer is, and this is the part to check on Zapier's own pricing page rather than in any review.
AI steps are no longer one task each. AI-by-Zapier moved to model-based rates, reported at roughly one, three or five tasks depending on the model tier you select. A single AI step that looks like one action on the canvas can consume several tasks per run.
AI steps, code, MCP and SDK calls all draw from the same pool as ordinary actions — Zapier's pricing page states that tasks are shared across the account with no separate budgets by product. Zapier also now says that connector type and code runtime affect how many tasks an action uses.
The practical consequence: if your Zaps are AI-heavy, the task estimate you did from an older guide is low, possibly by a lot. Build one representative Zap and watch actual task usage for a week before choosing a volume on the slider.
The bad news: task multiplication
Most people underestimate their task burn by three to five times, because they count Zap runs rather than action steps. The AI rates above make that gap wider, not narrower.
Worked example: a Zap with 4 action steps, running 100 times a day, for 30 days. That's 12,000 tasks a month — not 3,000, and nowhere near the 750 the entry plan includes. On the slider that's a few hundred dollars a month.
And there's a hard stop: overage has billed at around 1.25× your effective rate, with Zaps pausing entirely once you pass three times your included volume. Zapier changed pay-per-task rates for monthly plans in July 2026, so confirm the current overage terms for your own billing cycle rather than relying on that multiplier. Either way, leave headroom on anything that matters.
The free plan is a trial
100 tasks a month sounds workable until you apply the counting. A two-step Zap uses one task per run, so 100 tasks is about three runs a day of one simple automation. Add a second action and you're at fifty.
The harder limit is structural: free Zaps can only have two steps — one trigger, one action. That rules out branching, formatting, chaining and essentially every pattern that makes automation worth doing. Premium connectors like Salesforce, HubSpot and Shopify are also excluded, and there are no webhooks.
Read it as a way to confirm Zapier connects your specific apps before you pay. Most people hit the two-step ceiling within a week.
Who it suits
- Anyone whose stack contains a niche app that Make, n8n and Pabbly don't support — this is the real reason to pay the premium
- People who'd rather look an answer up than work it out: Zapier has a decade of public documentation and community threads behind it, more than the others have, so most problems have already been solved in the open
- Short workflows: two or three actions, moderate volume, where task counting stays sane
- Teams who value a mature support operation
Where it's weaker
- One of the most expensive entry points in automation, and the cost scales with volume rather than complexity
- The free plan's two-step cap makes it a demo rather than a starting point
- Zaps pause entirely at 3× your task allowance — a hard failure mode, not a soft one
- AI-heavy Zaps consume tasks faster than the headline rule suggests, and the rates changed mid-2026, so older cost estimates understate them
- Long multi-step workflows are where it gets expensive fastest; n8n's per-execution billing is dramatically cheaper for those
- Premium apps are gated to paid plans, so the free tier can't even test some of the connections you're evaluating
Probably not for you if
- Your workflows are long — every extra action is another task, every run
- You're cost-sensitive and your apps are mainstream; Make, Pabbly or n8n will do the same job for less
- You want to run real automation for free — n8n self-hosted is the honest answer there, and it's the one option in this paragraph that pays us nothing
- Predictable billing matters more than integration breadth
Questions
Is the free plan usable?
Not for real work. 100 tasks a month is roughly three runs a day of one simple automation, and free Zaps are capped at two steps — no branching, no chaining, no formatting. It's a way to check Zapier connects your apps before paying, and that's all.
What actually counts as a task?
Ordinarily, one successful action step — triggers, filters, paths, delays and built-in tools are all free. So a 4-step Zap running 100 times a day costs 12,000 tasks a month, not 3,000. The exception, added in mid-2026: AI steps bill by model tier rather than one-per-step, and AI, code, MCP and SDK calls all draw from the same task allocation as ordinary actions. Do the sum before choosing a volume, and do it with your own AI steps included.
Did the pricing change recently?
The prices didn't; the counting did. We re-checked on 21 August 2026 and every plan figure was unchanged. But Zapier revised how AI steps consume tasks in June, folded code, MCP and SDK calls into the same allocation, and changed pay-per-task overage rates for monthly plans in July. If you're working from a guide written before mid-2026 — and most of the ones ranking are — its task estimates are optimistic.
What happens if I go over?
Overage has billed at around 1.25× your effective rate up to three times your included volume, past which your Zaps stop until the next billing cycle. That's a hard stop. Zapier changed pay-per-task rates for monthly plans in July 2026, so check the current terms for your billing cycle and leave headroom on anything that matters.
Is it worth the premium over Make or Pabbly?
Only for integration breadth. Zapier connects around 9,000 apps against Pabbly's roughly 2,000 and n8n's roughly 500. If your niche tool is only on Zapier, that's decisive and the price is irrelevant. If everything you use is mainstream, you're paying a lot for a longer list you won't touch. Disclosure: Make and Pabbly both pay us and Zapier can't, so weigh this answer knowing which way our interest runs — the breadth argument for Zapier is the one that costs us.
Which of these is easiest to learn?
We don't rate that. Nobody here has built a production workflow in Zapier, Make, Pabbly Connect and n8n, so a ranking would be other people's impressions with our name on it — see how we choose. What's factual: Zapier has more public documentation and community answers than Make, Pabbly or n8n, Make lays a scenario out visually, and n8n expects you to be comfortable with a server.
Why can't you get a Zapier affiliate link?
Their partner program is aimed at implementation consultancies — it requires approval, expects you to be a paying customer, and involves certification exams. It isn't open to publishers the way most software affiliate programs are. We'd rather say so than quietly leave the category leader out of our comparisons.
If it fits, start here
Use the free plan for one thing only: confirming that every app in your stack has a Zapier connector, including the obscure one. If they're all covered elsewhere too, price the same workflows on Make, Pabbly and n8n before committing — you'll usually pay less. If one app only exists here, the decision is already made.
Disclosure on that last paragraph: Make and Pabbly Connect pay us a commission if you sign up through the affiliate links on their review pages. n8n pays us nothing and Zapier can't pay us at all. So the cheaper route we've just pointed you down is one we partly profit from — check the billing models yourself rather than taking our word for it.
This link earns us nothing, and no version of it could — see the disclosure at the top.
Read next: Zapier alternatives compared — Make, Pabbly Connect and n8n against the category leader, with the billing models side by side.