Zapier Alternatives in 2026: What Each One Charges You For

The right Zapier alternative depends on what you want to stop paying for or maintaining. n8n and Activepieces count a whole run as one unit, however many steps it has. Make pairs a visual builder with a free credit allowance. Microsoft Power Automate suits Microsoft 365 companies. Merlin, which we make, covers personal Gmail and Calendar automations on a Mac.

A usage warning tends to start this search, so this page compares meters before features: what Zapier does better than the rest, one workflow priced through each tool, and when the cheapest fix is to keep your Zaps and change how they run.

Where Zapier is hard to beat

Zapier's biggest advantage is reach. Its homepage lists more than 9,000 apps, against the 3,000+ native apps on Make's site, 770+ on Activepieces' site and 500+ native integrations on n8n's. If your workflow depends on a niche app, check that it's supported before comparing anything else.

Zapier also goes well beyond simple connections. It offers AI agents and an MCP connection (a standard way to link AI assistants to apps) for assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude, and it lists SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, GDPR and CCPA compliance alongside SSO and SCIM. On paid plans, Human in the Loop pauses a Zap until someone approves or edits the data. The Team plan includes 25 seats, per the pricing page, so a company can run shared automations in one account.

How Zapier pricing works in 2026

Zapier charges by the task, and a task is one successful action step. Zapier's help page says triggers, Filter, Paths, Formatter, Delay and Looping steps don't count, and neither do failed actions or tests in the editor. A Zap that uploads a file to Dropbox and then messages Slack uses 2 tasks per run.

All figures here come from Zapier's pricing page, in US dollars:

• Free: $0 for 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps, one seat and 15-minute polling (how often a trigger checks for new data).
• Professional: from $19.99 a month billed yearly, or $29.99 billed monthly, for 750 tasks. Adds multi-step Zaps and 2-minute polling.
• Team: from $69 a month billed yearly, or $103.50 billed monthly, for 2,000 tasks. Adds 25 seats and 1-minute polling.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, unlimited seats.

Professional and Team have higher task tiers at higher prices. Going over your allowance is where plans differ most. With pay-per-task turned off, usage stops at your task limit until the next cycle. With it on, extra tasks cost 1.25 times the base rate on yearly billing and 2.5 times on monthly billing, and usage stops at 3 times your task subscription until the next cycle. Some steps cost more than one task: Zapier's own example is an MCP tool call at 2 tasks, and AI steps are priced by model tier. Zapier Agents use a separate allowance of activities.

One workflow, six ways of counting

Picture a workflow that runs 30 times each workday, 22 days a month, with 5 action steps and no AI. That comes to 660 runs and 3,300 actions a month. The table below is arithmetic on published rules, not a benchmark, and AI steps would change every line.

Run-based billing helps most when workflows have many steps. It helps much less with a two-action Zap at low volume, where the free or entry tiers may already cover you. And because Filter and Formatter steps cost nothing on Zapier, your task count can sit well below your step count. Look at your real numbers before assuming a switch will save money.

Make: a visual builder with its own credit meter

Make is the closest to Zapier in spirit: no coding needed, with a builder you can drive by prompting, drag-and-drop or MCP. It also offers AI agents you give goals, tools and limits. Its pricing page gives the Free plan 1,000 credits a month, with Core, Pro, Teams and Enterprise above it. Yearly payment costs less than monthly, and the current figures are on that page.

The meter works much like Zapier's. Most actions use 1 credit, and reading, searching, creating, updating and deleting data all spend credits, while router and error handler modules don't. Some AI features use more. Unused credits expire when the term ends, and scenarios stop when credits run out. On Free, the minimum gap between runs is 15 minutes, and the lowest regular interval is one minute.

Make fits someone who wants to see a workflow laid out visually and doesn't want to run a server. It won't change your bill's basic logic, since long workflows still cost more.

n8n: pay per run, or host it yourself

n8n bills each workflow run as one execution, regardless of steps or data. Its cloud plans, priced in euros and shown billed annually, are Starter at €20 a month for 2.5K executions and Pro at €50 for 10K. Self-hosted Business is €667 a month for 40K. The homepage describes a visual builder that lets you add code when needed, connections to any API over HTTP, and human approval steps for agents.

The Community edition is free and self-hosted, though it leaves out SSO, shared workflows and credentials, Git version control and a few other features. The source code is on GitHub, but the edition runs under n8n's own Sustainable Use License, and its license guidance says Community is free to use if only people in your organization create or edit workflows. Installation ranges from a one-line script to Docker Compose.

n8n fits a team with someone comfortable running software and writing the occasional bit of code. If nobody wants to own updates and uptime, use n8n's cloud plans or look elsewhere.

Activepieces: MIT-licensed, with flat plans

Activepieces is the option here that is plainly open source: its homepage says the core and its integrations are MIT-licensed. A run costs one credit however many steps it has. AI steps add 2, 10 or 20 credits by model class, and agentic actions cost 1. Free includes 1,000 credits and up to 5 users, Plus is a flat $20 a month for 10,000 credits, and Team is a flat $200 a month for 50,000 credits with 25 users.

You can also self-host for free, though the pricing page describes Community Edition as the automation core on its own, with access control, change tracking and Agents and Chat tied to paid plans. Activepieces fits small teams with many-step workflows whose apps are all in its catalog of 770+, which is far smaller than Zapier's.

Microsoft Power Automate: when your company already runs on Microsoft

Microsoft Power Automate makes the most sense where the accounts and documents already live in Microsoft 365. Microsoft's licensing guide says a free license covers work or school accounts, letting you create and run cloud flows with standard connectors, without sharing. Microsoft 365 licenses include a limited set of capabilities too.

Premium costs $15 per user a month, paid yearly, and adds premium and custom connectors, attended desktop automation and up to 40,000 actions a day per user. Unattended desktop flows need a Process license at $150 per bot a month, paid yearly. Power Automate is a poor fit for a personal Gmail setup, since the free license needs a work or school account in a Microsoft Entra tenant.

Merlin: personal routines you describe instead of build

Merlin is our own product, a Mac app built on AI, so weigh this section accordingly. Its automation feature, Routines, has no canvas, and its credits pay for the AI each run uses. You describe the outcome in chat ("before every meeting, prepare a short brief from Gmail and Calendar"), Merlin drafts a routine, and you test it and press Activate.

A routine can start on a schedule, on a Gmail or Google Calendar event, from a webhook, or by hand. It can act through Gmail, Calendar and connected apps such as Slack, Notion, Linear, Airtable and Todoist, or any app with a custom MCP server. Each one follows a written playbook, which suits work involving judgment: deciding which emails matter, or summarizing a thread. For copying the same fields between two systems every time, a Zap's fixed mapping is the better tool.

Merlin won't suit everyone. It needs a Mac, and onboarding requires Gmail and Google Calendar. Slack, Notion and other connected apps can't start a routine directly. Schedules can't run more often than every 15 minutes, so Zapier's 1-minute polling is faster. Routines belong to one person's account, so we wouldn't move a team's shared Zaps here. And routines run unattended: a Slack post from a live run goes out with no approval card, unlike a request in chat, so test first.

On Merlin's pricing page, the free plan renews 5,000 credits monthly and needs no payment card, with two saved routines plus built-ins such as Daily Digest and Meeting Brief. Pro costs $278 billed yearly, or $29 by the month, for 25,000 monthly credits and up to 20 active routines.

You also don't have to choose. Webhooks by Zapier can POST data to a URL, and a Merlin routine can start from a POST, so a Zap can hand Merlin an event from an app it can't watch.

Plans side by side

Decide by what's actually bothering you

• One or two Zaps drive the bill: stay, and fix those. Put a Filter early so runs that don't matter stop before they spend tasks, and compare yearly billing, which is 33% off. Moving the rest gains little.
• Long workflows at high volume: n8n or Activepieces, because a run costs the same at 3 steps or 30.
• You need your data on your own servers: n8n Community or self-hosted Activepieces, if someone can maintain them.
• You want a visual builder and no server: Make.
• Microsoft 365 is your company's home base: Power Automate, starting with what your license already includes.
• A niche app or a large team with compliance needs: Zapier, most likely. Its catalog and account controls are the reason to pay.
• Your automations are personal, around email and meetings: Merlin on a Mac. Our guides to Gmail automation ideas and Google Workspace automation show the free options to try first.

Moving off Zapier without breaking anything

Moving a workflow off Zapier usually means rebuilding it by hand, so plan to move only what earns the effort, unless your new tool says it imports Zaps.

1. Open the Task usage tab in Zap history. It lists up to 100 workflows sorted by tasks used, which tells you where the money goes.
2. Export your Zap history if you need records. Zapier guarantees only 60 days of run data.
3. Confirm that every trigger and action exists in the new tool's catalog, not just the app's name.
4. Rebuild the busiest workflow first and test it with sample data.
5. Turn the Zap off when the new version goes live, so the same event doesn't fire twice.
6. Watch a full week of runs, then downgrade. Zapier's downgrades take effect when the billing cycle ends.