Zapier vs n8n: What You Trade for Self-Hosting

Zapier charges you per successful action step and runs exclusively in its own cloud. n8n charges per whole workflow execution — regardless of how many steps that workflow contains — and can run on a server you control. Those two facts explain almost every other difference between them.

The practical consequence: a twelve-step workflow that runs a thousand times a month costs twelve thousand tasks on Zapier and one thousand executions on n8n. That gap is not marketing spin, it's arithmetic, and it's why n8n has become the default answer for anyone whose workflows got long.

What you give up is real too. n8n asks you to run infrastructure, or to accept a smaller integration library, or both.

• Zapier: 9,000+ apps, no servers, per-step billing, cloud only
• n8n: roughly 2,000 integrations, self-hostable, per-execution billing, source-available under a restrictive licence
• The dividing question: is your constraint app coverage, or is it workflow length and data residency?

Quick comparison

Per-step vs per-execution, and why it changes design

Zapier's pricing model counts a task each time it successfully completes a unit of work. Triggers, polling, and built-in tools like Formatter and Filter are free, but every action that touches an external app bills.

n8n's model counts an execution as a single run of the entire workflow — the platform's own pricing page puts it plainly: it doesn't matter how many steps the workflow contains or how much data passes through it.

The design consequences run in opposite directions:

On Zapier you consolidate. Fewer, fatter steps. Push branching into Paths and reshaping into Formatter, because those don't bill. Splitting one workflow into three Zaps for readability costs you real money.

On n8n you consolidate too — but into one workflow, not one step. A hundred-node workflow costs the same as a three-node one. What costs you is triggering the workflow more often. Batching a nightly job into a single execution that loops internally is dramatically cheaper than firing one execution per record.

That second point catches people migrating from Zapier, where per-record firing is normal and harmless.

The licence question, stated accurately

n8n is frequently described as open source. It is not, and the company doesn't claim to be. n8n is distributed under the Sustainable Use License, a fair-code licence. The source is on GitHub and you can read it, modify it, and self-host it freely for internal use.

What you cannot do is offer n8n to third parties as a hosted service — building a competing n8n cloud is out. Because the Open Source Initiative's definition doesn't permit use restrictions, n8n correctly avoids the "open source" label.

For most teams this distinction is academic: internal self-hosting is exactly what the licence permits, with no cap on workflows or run frequency. It matters if you're an agency planning to resell managed n8n instances, where you need a commercial arrangement.

What self-hosting actually costs

The "n8n is free" framing skips the bill you do pay:

• A server, and someone who maintains it. Updates, backups, TLS certificates, monitoring, and the 2am page when the queue stalls
• Scaling work. Moving to queue mode with workers once a single instance stops keeping up
• Absent enterprise features. SSO, log streaming, and external secret storage sit behind the Enterprise licence, self-hosted or not
• Debugging on your own. No support ticket to file when a node misbehaves

If nobody on your team owns infrastructure, self-hosted n8n is a liability rather than a saving. n8n Cloud exists precisely for teams that want the execution-based billing without the operations burden, and it's the honest comparison point against Zapier for most buyers.

Where each one wins

Zapier wins on coverage. 9,000+ apps in the directory against roughly 2,000 n8n integrations. If your stack includes something niche, Zapier is far more likely to have it already. n8n's HTTP Request node can talk to any REST API, but "any API" means reading docs and handling auth yourself.

Zapier wins when the owner isn't technical. Non-engineers maintain Zaps successfully. n8n expects comfort with data shapes, expressions, and JSON — and self-hosted n8n expects comfort with a server.

n8n wins on long workflows. This is the clearest case. Once workflows routinely exceed ten steps, per-execution billing stops punishing you for thoroughness.

n8n wins on data residency and control. Regulated industries, or anyone who can't route customer data through a third-party cloud, don't have a Zapier option at all. Self-hosting is the whole point.

n8n wins on AI work. Its LangChain nodes and native support for local models make agent-shaped workflows first-class rather than bolted on. If that's your direction, n8n is the more natural home for it.

The gap neither one closes

Both tools assume you know what you want to build and need a place to build it. That assumption holds for integrations. It holds less well for AI work, where the useful thing is usually something someone else already got working — a configuration, an agent, a prompt chain with the sharp edges filed off — and your problem is reproducing their setup, not designing your own.

That's a different job. Taku is an AI-native desktop workspace built for it: mirror an AI app or workflow that already works, run it locally, then remix it into your own. Taku is in Beta, and the Mac app is available now. Browsing the free app library is a faster start than a blank canvas.

Choosing without regret

Work through it in this order:

1. Do you have a hard data-residency requirement? Yes → n8n self-hosted. The decision is made.
2. Is there someone who will own a server? No → Zapier or n8n Cloud.
3. How long are your workflows? Consistently over ten steps → n8n's billing model pays for itself.
4. How niche is your stack? Several obscure tools → Zapier's coverage is worth the per-step cost.
5. Everything else → start on Zapier. It's easier to migrate away from a working automation than to finish one you never got running.

If neither model fits, Make sits between them — cloud-hosted like Zapier, but with a visual canvas closer to n8n's. And if you're specifically weighing n8n against everything else in the category, our n8n alternatives rundown covers the field.

FAQ

Is n8n free?

The Community Edition is free to self-host, with no limit on workflows or executions. You pay for the server and the maintenance. n8n Cloud is paid, and self-hosted Enterprise features require a licence key.

Is n8n open source?

No, and n8n doesn't claim it is. The source is available under the Sustainable Use License, which permits internal use and modification but forbids reselling n8n as a hosted service. Use restrictions disqualify a licence from the OSI definition of open source.

Will n8n really be cheaper than Zapier?

For long workflows, usually and substantially — you're comparing one execution against one task per step. For short, high-frequency workflows the gap narrows, because Zapier's free triggers and free built-in tools do real work you'd otherwise pay for.

Can I move my Zaps to n8n automatically?

No. There's no supported converter. Migration is a rebuild, so it's worth prototyping your two or three heaviest workflows on n8n before committing.

Does n8n need a developer?

Self-hosted, yes — someone has to own the server. n8n Cloud removes that, but building in n8n still assumes more comfort with data structures and expressions than Zapier does.

What about Power Automate?

Different billing shape again: Microsoft licenses per user and per bot rather than per run, which changes the maths entirely. See Zapier vs Power Automate.