Zapier vs Make: Our Verdict
One sells simplicity and reach across 9,000+ apps. The other sells a visual canvas and cheaper credits. We tested both on the same automations to decide which one most teams should actually pay for.
We recommend Zapier for non-technical teams and for anyone whose automations have to reach a long tail of niche apps; it wins on integration breadth, setup speed, and governed AI agents. Make is the right pick for technical builders who need a visual canvas, granular branching, and materially lower running costs at moderate-to-high volume.
These two platforms answer the same question in opposite ways. Zapier treats automation as a linear trigger-action Zap, prices per task, and ships the largest connector catalogue on the market. Make treats automation as a visual scenario on a canvas with routers, iterators, and filters, prices per credit, and undercuts Zapier by roughly 3-5x at equivalent volume.
Both shipped major AI updates in 2025 and 2026: Zapier Agents and the AI Copilot on Zapier's side, Make AI Agents and the Maia assistant on Make's. We ran each platform through the same three automations, a lead-routing flow, a Shopify order pipeline, and an AI-classified inbound support queue, and scored them round by round. Every round names a winner and states the concrete procedure we used to decide it.
Zapier ships integrations for more than 9,000 apps and had a native connector for every one of the mainstream tools plus 27 of the 30 niche apps we tested. Make lists roughly 3,000+ apps and covered the mainstream set cleanly, but it was missing native support for several of the niche tools; some were only reachable via community-built apps or the generic HTTP module.
How we tested itWe took a list of 40 real business apps (a mix of Google Workspace, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Mailchimp, and 30 niche/vertical tools including regional CRMs, invoicing tools, and community platforms) and checked whether each platform shipped a native, maintained connector for every one, and whether the connector supported both triggers and actions.
Zapier's linear trigger-action model and template library got the non-technical reviewer to a published Zap in under fifteen minutes. Make's visual canvas needed more setup (authorising modules, arranging them on the canvas, mapping data between them) and took the same reviewer more than twice as long, even though the finished scenario was easier to read at a glance.
How we tested itWe asked two reviewers - one non-technical, one technical - to build the same three-step lead-routing automation from scratch in each platform, and timed how long each took to a working, published run.
Make's routers, iterators, and filters render every branch on the canvas and let a reviewer watch data flow through each path in the execution log. Zapier's Paths and Sub-Zaps handled the same logic, but with more clicks, more separate Zaps to maintain, and less visibility into where a specific record ended up on a given run.
How we tested itWe built a five-branch Shopify order pipeline with conditional routing by country, an iterator over line items, filters on order value, and an AI-classified support handoff, and counted how many attempts each platform needed to land a working end-to-end run.
Make Core runs around $12 per month for 10,000 credits with unlimited active scenarios; Zapier Professional is $19.99 per month for 750 tasks and $49 per month for 2,000 tasks on annual billing. At the workload we tested, Make came in roughly 3-5x cheaper per unit of work. Even after the November 2025 change that adds a 25% markup to extra-credit packs, the total bill on Make stayed well below the equivalent Zapier plan.
How we tested itWe priced a month of the same workload on each platform's individual paid plan at annual billing - a multi-step lead-routing Zap running roughly 1,000 times, an order pipeline of six modules per order across 1,000 orders, and a weekly reporting scenario - and compared the total cost including any overage packs.
Zapier Agents can act across 9,000+ authenticated app connections, and paid plans include admin controls to allowlist apps, require approvals, and define action-level permissions. Make AI Agents (rolled out to all plans in February 2026) build cleanly on the same visual canvas and are transparent to debug, but the agent builder is still flagged beta in places and the governance controls are thinner: IT teams can't restrict builders to pre-approved apps or set action-level permissions the same way.
How we tested itWe built the same AI-classified support triage agent on each platform - reading an inbound email, classifying urgency and topic, drafting a reply, and either sending it or routing to a human based on a policy - and evaluated the agent-building experience, the tool catalogue exposed to the agent, and the admin controls available to restrict its actions.
Zapier counts one task per successful action and doesn't charge for filters, Paths, Formatter, Delay, Tables, or Forms; overages are billed at 1.25x the base rate up to a hard cap of 3x the plan allowance, so the bill can't run away silently. Make counts one credit per module call, and routers, iterators, and polling triggers multiply usage in ways that surprise newer builders. A scenario that looks like three steps on the canvas can consume eight to fifteen credits per run, and extra-credit packs since November 2025 carry a 25% markup over included credits.
How we tested itWe ran each of the three workloads for a full month on both platforms and watched how the meter moved - which steps counted, how iterators and branches multiplied usage, and how each platform behaved when the pool ran out.
Where the verdict turned
Zapier and Make are the two hosted automation platforms most teams weigh against each other, and after running the same workloads through both, we can say plainly that they aren’t interchangeable. Zapier took the rounds that decide whether a team can actually get automation off the ground: integration breadth, setup speed, agent governance, and a bill that behaves predictably. Make took the rounds that decide whether the platform can grow with a technical team: complex branching logic and cost at scale.
The pricing gap is real and worth stating in plain numbers. Make Core is around $12 per month for 10,000 credits with unlimited active scenarios; Zapier Professional starts at $19.99 per month (annual) for 750 tasks. At the workloads we tested, Make came in roughly 3-5x cheaper per unit of work. That’s a meaningful saving, but it comes with meaningful trade-offs: fewer native connectors, a steeper learning curve, and thinner governance once agents enter the picture.
What changed in 2025 and 2026
Both platforms have shifted underneath their pricing pages. On August 27, 2025, Make renamed its billing unit from “operations” to “credits”; standard module executions still cost one credit each, but some AI features and code execution can cost more. In November 2025, Make also adjusted extra-credit pricing so that additional packs, whether purchased manually or via auto-purchase, carry a 25% markup over the credits included in a plan. Make AI Agents shipped to all paid plans in February 2026 and can now use either Make’s AI provider or a customer’s own OpenAI/Anthropic connection.
Zapier’s individual pricing has held: Professional at $19.99 per month (annual) for 750 tasks, Team at $69 per month (annual) for 2,000 tasks, with overages billed at 1.25x the base rate up to a hard cap of 3x the plan allowance. Zapier Agents remain a paid add-on rather than part of the base subscription, and MCP access is included on Free, Professional, and Team plans at no extra cost.
Who should buy which
Choose Zapier if a non-technical operator has to build and maintain the automations, if you rely on niche or vertical SaaS tools that a broad connector catalogue is more likely to cover, or if you want governed AI agents with admin controls out of the box. Zapier’s linear model, template library, and larger app catalogue make it the lowest-friction option for most teams, and per-task metering with a hard 3x overage cap keeps the bill from surprising anyone.
Choose Make if you have a technical builder on staff, if your workflows genuinely need routers, iterators, and multi-branch logic, or if the volume is high enough that Zapier’s per-task pricing would dominate the bill. Make’s visual canvas is easier to debug at complexity, and at moderate-to-high volume it’s consistently 3-5x cheaper than Zapier for equivalent work, provided the team has the discipline to design lean scenarios, prefer webhooks over polling, and watch the credit meter.
A pragmatic split is also reasonable. Some teams run Zapier for the long tail of connectors that only Zapier covers and consolidate their highest-volume, most branching workflows in Make to control cost. But if forced to one platform, our recommendation for most teams is Zapier. For technical builders with volume, Make.