n8n vs Zapier vs Make: The Honest Comparison for 2025

Every few months someone publishes a “Zapier vs Make vs n8n” post that reads like it was generated by feeding all three marketing pages into a blender. This is not that post. If you are building automations for lead generation, data enrichment, or internal operations, here is what actually matters when choosing between these three platforms in 2025.

The quick overview

Zapieris the oldest and most well-known. It pioneered the “trigger plus action” pattern and has the largest integration library. It's a cloud-only product with no self-hosting option.

Make (formerly Integromat) offers a visual, node-based canvas. It handles branching and complex data routing better than Zapier. Also cloud-only.

n8n is open-source, self-hostable, and built for people who are comfortable with code but want a visual interface. It also has a cloud option (n8n Cloud) if you do not want to manage infrastructure.

Pricing breakdown

Pricing is where the differences get real. Here are the 2025 numbers:

Zapier

• Free plan: 100 tasks/month, single-step Zaps only.
• Professional: starts at $29.99/month (billed monthly) for 750 tasks/month. Multi-step Zaps included.
• Team: $103.50/month for 2,000 tasks/month with shared workspaces.
• Enterprise: custom pricing. Includes SSO, advanced admin, audit logs.

Zapier counts “tasks” per action step. A 5-step Zap that runs once uses 5 tasks. This means complex workflows burn through your allocation fast. If you are doing lead enrichment with 6 or 7 steps per lead, 750 tasks is only about 107 leads per month.

Make

• Free plan: 1,000 operations/month, 2 active scenarios.
• Core: $10.59/month for 10,000 operations/month.
• Pro: $18.82/month for 10,000 operations/month plus priority execution and full-text log search.
• Teams and Enterprise tiers available for higher volumes.

Make also counts per operation, but an operation is more granular. Routers, filters, and some modules count as operations too. However, the base cost per operation is significantly lower than Zapier. For the same 7-step enrichment workflow processing 1,000 leads, Make comes in at roughly $7–$19 per month on the Core plan, depending on how many operations each scenario consumes.

n8n

• Self-hosted (Community): free. You run it on your own server (a $5–$10/month VPS works for most teams).
• n8n Cloud Starter: $24/month for 2,500 executions/month.
• n8n Cloud Pro: $60/month for 10,000 executions/month with advanced execution features.
• Enterprise: custom pricing with SSO, source control, and environments.

The critical difference: n8n counts executions, not individual steps. A workflow with 15 nodes that runs once counts as one execution. For complex workflows, this is dramatically cheaper. That same 1,000-lead enrichment job? 1,000 executions on n8n. On Zapier, it would be 7,000+ tasks.

Self-hosted vs cloud

This is a binary: Zapier and Make are cloud-only. n8n gives you both options.

Self-hosting n8n means you control your data, pay nothing for the platform itself, and have no execution limits. You need a server (a $5 Hetzner VPS or a $10 DigitalOcean droplet is plenty for most setups), basic Docker knowledge, and willingness to handle updates. The n8n documentation covers this well.

Why does this matter? If you are processing sensitive data — personal emails, phone numbers, company information — self-hosting means that data never touches a third-party platform. For lead enrichment workflows, where you are handling names, emails, and LinkedIn URLs, this can be a compliance advantage.

If you do not want to manage infrastructure, n8n Cloud works fine. But the self-hosted option is a significant differentiator that Zapier and Make simply do not offer.

Ease of use vs flexibility

Zapier is the easiest to get started with. The trigger-action model is intuitive, the interface is clean, and the library of pre-built templates is enormous. If your automation is “when a new row appears in Google Sheets, send a Slack message,” Zapier gets you there in two minutes.

Make is more powerful for visual thinkers. The canvas-based editor lets you see data flowing between nodes, add routers for conditional logic, and handle complex branching. The learning curve is steeper than Zapier, but the payoff is workflows that handle real business logic.

n8n is the most flexible. It has a visual canvas like Make, but also exposes the raw data at every step. You can inspect the exact JSON payload between nodes, which makes debugging significantly easier. When something breaks, you can see exactly what data each node received and returned.

The trade-off is that n8n requires more technical comfort. Not necessarily coding ability — many users build complex workflows without writing code — but comfort with concepts like JSON, API responses, and data mapping.

Code nodes: the real differentiator

All three platforms support some form of custom code, but the implementation varies dramatically.

Zapier offers a Code by Zapier step that supports Python and JavaScript. It runs in a sandboxed environment with limited libraries. You cannot install npm packages. For simple data transformations it works fine. For anything complex, you hit walls quickly.

Make has no native code execution node. You can use webhooks to call external functions (like AWS Lambda or a custom API), but there is no built-in way to write and run code inside a scenario.

n8n has a full Code node that runs JavaScript or Python with access to npm packages (on self-hosted). You can write multi-line scripts, import libraries, handle complex data transformations, and even make HTTP requests from within a code node. For automation builders who occasionally need to go beyond point-and-click, this is extremely valuable.

If your workflows involve any custom data parsing, string manipulation, or conditional logic that goes beyond basic if/else, n8n's code node is in a different league.

Integrations ecosystem

Zapier has the most integrations: over 7,000 apps at last count. If an app exists, Zapier probably connects to it. This is a genuine advantage for niche tools.

Make has around 2,000 integrations. Fewer than Zapier, but the implementations tend to be deeper — offering more triggers and actions per integration.

n8n has around 400+ built-in integrations, but this number is misleading. Because n8n has a powerful HTTP Request node and code nodes, you can connect to any API without waiting for a native integration. If a tool has an API (and most do), you can use it in n8n. The trade-off is that you need to set up the API connection manually instead of using a pre-built connector.

For lead enrichment specifically, all three platforms can connect to the services that matter: Google Sheets, OpenAI, email validation APIs, and outreach tools. The integration count advantage matters more for niche use cases.

Lead enrichment: a concrete comparison

Let's say you want to build a lead enrichment workflow that takes a company list, finds decision makers, validates emails, and pushes results to a campaign tool. This is the core workflow that the Boltloop Lead Enrichment & Outreach System runs.

In Zapier, you would chain together: Google Sheets trigger, Webhooks by Zapier (for Serper.dev), Code by Zapier (for parsing), another webhook (for OpenAI), another webhook (for email validation), and a final action (for your outreach tool). Each step costs a task. A 7-step workflow processing 500 leads per month = 3,500 tasks. That exceeds the $29.99 Professional plan. You would need the Team plan or above.

In Make, the same flow would be a single scenario with HTTP modules, a JSON parser, and router modules. Roughly 8–10 operations per lead. 500 leads = 4,000–5,000 operations per month. The $10.59 Core plan handles this.

In n8n (self-hosted), it is one workflow with 10–15 nodes. 500 leads = 500 executions. Cost: $0, plus your VPS hosting. On n8n Cloud, the $24 Starter plan with 2,500 executions covers it easily.

Verdict: which one should you pick?

Pick Zapierif you need the widest integration library, your workflows are simple (1–3 steps), and you value ease of setup over everything else. It is the right choice for non-technical teams doing basic automation.

Pick Make if you need more complex branching logic, want a visual canvas, and prefer lower per-operation pricing over Zapier. Good for teams who have outgrown Zapier but are not comfortable self-hosting.

Pick n8n if you are building complex workflows, want full control over your data, need code nodes, or care about execution-based pricing. It is the best fit for lead enrichment, data pipelines, and any automation that involves more than five steps.

There is a reason the Boltloop workflow is built on n8n. For multi-step enrichment with API calls, AI extraction, validation, and campaign integration, n8n's combination of visual building, code nodes, and execution-based pricing makes it the most practical choice. It is not the easiest platform to learn, but it is the one you are least likely to outgrow.