Automation Platform Pricing in 2026: Zapier, Make, n8n, Power Automate and Lindy on One Workload
As of October 12, 2026, one lead workflow (form, AI score, CRM, text, task, chat post) costs $12 to $39 a month at 300 leads on Make, n8n, Zapier and Power Automate billed yearly, and $15 to $289 at 8,000 leads. Zapier bills every action, Make every module, n8n each run, Power Automate the flow's owner, and Lindy credits.
What does an automation platform cost? The short answer
As of October 12, 2026, the same lead-intake workflow (form in, AI score, CRM contact, text to the lead, follow-up task, team chat post) costs $12 to $39 a month at 300 leads on annual billing across Make, n8n, Zapier and Power Automate, and $15 to $289 a month at 8,000 leads. The spread comes from what each platform meters: Zapier bills every action, Make bills every module including the trigger, n8n bills each run once, Power Automate bills the person who owns the flow, and Lindy bills credits that vary with the work.
Zapier, n8n, Power Automate, Lindy, Relevance AI, Retell and Vapi prices were read from each vendor's own pricing page on October 12, 2026. Make's pricing page blocked automated reads today, so Make figures are from our October 6, 2026 read of the same page and its credit selector. Where we assume how a workload maps to a vendor's unit, we say so.
The platforms side by side
| Platform | What it meters | Entry paid price | Next step up | What breaks the cheap plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier | Tasks: each successful action; triggers, filters and formatters are free | Professional, 750 tasks: $19.99/mo billed yearly, $29.99 monthly | Team from $69/mo billed yearly (2,000 tasks) | Steps per run and the AI model tier (an advanced model step uses 3 tasks, premium 5) |
| Make | Credits: roughly one per module action, including each trigger check | Core, 10,000 credits: $12/mo billed yearly, $16 monthly | Pro $21, Teams $38 at the same 10,000 credits | Polling triggers, which spend a credit on every check even when nothing is new |
| n8n Cloud | Executions: one per workflow run, whatever the step count | Starter, 2,500 executions: €20/mo billed yearly | Pro, 10,000 executions: €50/mo billed yearly | Schedule triggers: a 5-minute schedule alone is about 8,600 runs a month |
| n8n self-hosted | Nothing on the Community Edition; Business is licensed | Community Edition: $0 plus your server | Business: €667/mo billed yearly for 40,000 executions | Your time keeping the server patched and backed up |
| Power Automate | Licenses: per user (Premium) or per flow (Process) | Included in many Microsoft 365 plans, standard connectors only | Premium $15/user/mo; Process $150/bot/mo, both paid yearly | A flow that sends results back to the people who trigger it, which makes each of them need Premium |
| Lindy | Credits at $0.01 each on base plans, pooled across seats | Team: $29.99/mo for 3,000 credits per active user | Credit ladder up to 1,750,000 credits; top-ups $10 per 1,000 | Heavy tasks: Lindy publishes impact levels (low to high), not a credit count per task |
| Relevance AI | Actions and vendor credits | Enterprise only, quoted by sales | Not published | No self-serve price to plan against |
| Voice AI (Retell, Vapi) | Minutes of conversation | Retell $0.07 to $0.31/min; Vapi $0.05/min hosting plus model, voice and transcriber at cost | Enterprise and volume pricing | The model and voice you pick, which can multiply the per-minute rate |
One workflow priced on every platform
Vendor pages list units, not workloads, so here is one. A service business runs this lead workflow on every web lead: the form posts to a webhook, an AI step scores and summarizes the lead (standard model, or your own model key), then the workflow creates the CRM contact, texts the lead, adds a follow-up task and posts to the team chat. That is 5 Zapier tasks, about 6 Make credits and 1 n8n execution per lead. We priced it at three volumes:
| Platform and plan | 300 leads a month | 2,000 leads a month | 8,000 leads a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier Professional (billed yearly / monthly) | 1,500 tasks: $39 / $58.50 | 10,000 tasks: $129 / $193.50 | 40,000 tasks, 50,000 tier: $289 / $433.50 |
| Make Core (billed yearly / monthly) | 1,800 credits, 10,000 tier: $12 / $16 | 12,000 credits, 20,000 tier: $21 / $28 | 48,000 credits, 80,000 tier: $72 / $97 |
| n8n Cloud (billed yearly) | 300 runs, Starter: €20 | 2,000 runs, Starter: €20 | 8,000 runs, Pro: €50 |
| Power Automate, automated flow, owner holds Premium | $15 | $15 | $15 |
| Lindy, assuming 10 credits per lead | 3,000 credits: $29.99 | 20,000 credits: $149.99 | 80,000 credits: $499.98 (70,000 tier plus a 10,000 top-up) |
Three findings fall out of the table that no single vendor page shows.
- At 8,000 leads, the per-step meter costs about 4 times the per-module meter and about 5 times the per-run meter. Zapier at $289 billed yearly against Make at $72 and n8n at €50, for identical work. At 300 leads the gap is $27 a month, which is why small teams rarely feel it until volume arrives.
- Power Automate is flat because it bills a person, not the work. An automated flow runs as its owner, so one $15 Premium license covers it at every volume here, and about 10 actions per lead at 8,000 leads is roughly 2,700 actions a day, under Premium's 40,000. The catch is Microsoft's multiplexing rule: if the same flow emails each staff member a confirmation for their own submission, every one of them needs Premium. Our Power Automate pricing breakdown prices that one design change at $180 against $4,500 a year for 25 people.
- Agent platforms are the hardest to budget. Lindy's credit price is clear ($0.01 each on base plans), but it does not publish credits per task, so the 10-credits-per-lead row is our assumption. Triple it and the 2,000-lead month moves from $149.99 to more than the 45,000-credit tier at $299.99. Price an agent platform on a week of your real work during the trial before you commit. Our Lindy vs Relevance AI vs Gumloop comparison covers what each agent builder is best at.
Two costs sit outside every row. Make and n8n bill your AI model provider separately when you bring your own key, while Zapier's standard-model AI step is inside the 1 task. And none of these platforms includes the SMS carrier fees or the CRM seats the workflow writes to. For the three-way detail on the most common shortlist, including the step count where Make stops being cheaper than n8n, see n8n vs Make vs Zapier.
If the lead arrives by phone, the meter changes to minutes
A voice agent that answers the call before the workflow runs is billed per minute of conversation, not per step. At 300 calls a month averaging 3 minutes, that is 900 minutes: $63 to $279 at Retell's listed $0.07 to $0.31 a minute, depending on the model and voice. On Vapi, the $0.05 hosting rate is $45 for those minutes, and the transcriber, model and voice ranges Vapi's own calculator shows today ($0.0095 to $0.0099, $0.0077 to $0.0452 and $0.0146 to $0.0238 a minute) bring it to roughly $74 to $116, plus the phone carrier. The call then feeds the same lead workflow priced above, so a phone-first business pays both meters.
When is a custom build cheaper than a platform?
Less often than agencies suggest, on subscription math alone. SuperDupr's published price for an AI workflow automation build is $10,000 to $25,000, with $200 to $2,000 a month ongoing depending on volume. At the low end, spread over two years, that is about $617 a month ($10,000 divided by 24, plus $200). Against that line:
- Zapier crosses it at about 100,000 tasks a month on monthly billing ($733.50), which is 20,000 leads of this workflow. On yearly billing it crosses at about 200,000 tasks ($769 a month).
- Lindy crosses it past roughly 10,500 leads at our 10-credit assumption, where the next tier after 105,000 credits ($599.97) is 175,000 credits ($999.95).
- Make and n8n never cross it at small-business volume. Make's largest Core tier, 300,000 credits, is $237 a month billed yearly; n8n's Pro is €50 at 10,000 runs.
So for a business paying Zapier at 8,000 leads, the cheapest move is usually rebuilding the same workflow on Make or n8n, not commissioning custom code. A custom build earns its price on what the platforms cannot do: logic too tangled for a canvas, data that cannot leave your systems, AI steps that need your own rules and testing, a phone agent and a workflow that must act as one system, or volume in the tens of thousands of runs a month. That is also how we pick: n8n, Make or custom code, by what each costs at your volume. For how agencies package and price that work, see our guide to AI automation pricing.
Who can set up an automation platform for my business?
If your workflows are a few steps and a few hundred runs a month, set them up yourself on a free or entry plan; every platform above has one or a trial. Bring in a builder when a workflow touches money or customers, when it needs an AI step that has to be right every time, or when the bill has started to climb with volume. SuperDupr is an Austin studio that builds AI and automation systems for service businesses. Our published price for a connected workflow build is $10,000 to $25,000, most AI systems go live in 2 to 4 weeks, ongoing support runs $200 to $2,000 a month depending on volume, and the system belongs to your business. We do not resell platform seats. The first step is a free 30-minute strategy session, where we price your busiest workflow on the platforms above before recommending one.
Sources
- Zapier pricing, zapier.com/pricing, read October 12, 2026: plan cards (Free 100 tasks, Professional from $19.99, Team from $69 a month billed yearly) and the Professional and Team task tiers loaded by the page's tier selector (1,500 tasks $39 / $58.50; 10,000 $129 / $193.50; 50,000 $289 / $433.50; 100,000 $489 / $733.50; 200,000 $769 billed yearly). Task-per-step rules from Zapier's task usage page as summarized in our Zapier cost guide.
- Make pricing, make.com/en/pricing, read October 6, 2026 (automated read blocked October 12): Core, Pro and Teams prices at 10,000 credits and the Core credit ladder (20,000 $21 / $28; 80,000 $72 / $97; 300,000 $237 / $321).
- n8n pricing, n8n.io/pricing, read October 12, 2026: Starter €20 (2,500 executions), Pro €50 (10,000), Business €667 (40,000, self-hosted only), all per month billed annually; pricing per execution regardless of steps; schedule-trigger execution counts.
- Microsoft Power Automate pricing, microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-automate/pricing, read October 12, 2026: Premium $15 per user, Process $150 and Hosted Process $215 per bot a month, paid yearly. Licensing and action-limit rules from Microsoft Learn's Power Automate licensing FAQ, read October 10, 2026.
- Lindy pricing, lindy.ai/pricing, and Lindy's "Understanding Your Usage" help page, both read October 12, 2026: Team $29.99 for 3,000 credits per active user, the credit ladder, $10 per 1,000 top-up credits, $0.01 per credit on base plans, qualitative credit impact by task.
- Relevance AI pricing, relevanceai.com/pricing, read October 12, 2026: Enterprise plan only, custom actions and vendor credits, "Talk to sales."
- Retell AI pricing, retellai.com/pricing, and Vapi pricing, vapi.ai/pricing, both read October 12, 2026: Retell $0.07 to $0.31 a minute pay-as-you-go; Vapi $0.05 a minute hosting with transcriber, model and voice passed through at cost, and the calculator ranges quoted above.
- SuperDupr prices: our published AI workflow automation range and ongoing support range, as listed on superdupr.com.
- Worked example: SuperDupr's arithmetic on the published prices above, for an assumed lead workflow of one trigger and five actions; the Lindy row assumes 10 credits per lead, which Lindy does not publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
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It depends on how your workflow is shaped. For a 6-step lead workflow priced October 12, 2026, Make Core was cheapest at 300 leads ($12 a month billed yearly), n8n Cloud was cheapest per run at higher volume (EUR50 for 10,000 runs on Pro), and Power Automate was a flat $15 for the flow owner's Premium license if the business already runs on Microsoft 365. Zapier was the most expensive at every volume: $39, $129 and $289 a month billed yearly at 300, 2,000 and 8,000 leads.
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Zapier bills a task for every successful action, so a 5-action workflow uses 5 tasks per run. Make bills about one credit per module, but its credits are much cheaper per unit, and n8n bills one execution per run however many steps it has. At 8,000 runs of the same workflow, that is 40,000 Zapier tasks ($289 a month billed yearly), about 48,000 Make credits ($72) and 8,000 n8n executions (EUR50).
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Microsoft lists Power Automate Premium at $15 per user a month and Process at $150 per bot a month, both paid yearly, as of October 12, 2026. An automated flow runs as its owner, so one Premium license can cover a high-volume flow that uses premium connectors, unless the flow sends results back to the people who trigger it, in which case each of them needs Premium or the flow needs a Process license.
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Lindy sells credits at $0.01 each on base plans, starting at $29.99 a month for 3,000 credits per active user, with top-ups at $10 per 1,000 credits; it publishes credit impact by type of task but not a credit count per task. Relevance AI lists only an Enterprise plan with custom pricing through its sales team.
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On subscription cost alone, later than most people expect. A $10,000 build with $200 a month of support averages about $617 a month over two years. In our worked example, Zapier only passes that at about 100,000 tasks a month on monthly billing, and Make and n8n stay well below it at small-business volume. Custom builds earn their cost on logic, data control and AI steps the platforms cannot handle, not on the platform bill.