Make
Visual automation for teams who want more power than Zapier without the complexity of n8n.
Our Make Review
Make sits in the most interesting position in the automation market — more powerful than Zapier, more accessible than n8n, and significantly cheaper than either at equivalent usage volumes. This review explains exactly how the credit system works, who each plan is actually built for, and when Make is the right choice versus its two closest competitors.
What Is Make and Where Does It Sit in the Automation Market?
Make (formerly Integromat, rebranded in 2022) is a visual workflow automation platform. You connect apps and build "scenarios" — sequences of module actions that run automatically based on a trigger. A scenario might watch for new rows in a Google Sheet, transform the data, create a record in your CRM, send a Slack notification, and log the result — all without writing a line of code. Make occupies the middle ground in the automation market. Zapier is the simplest tool — great for beginners, expensive at scale, limited for complex logic. n8n is the most powerful — free to self-host, supports deep custom code, but requires technical confidence to use well. Make sits between them: more visual flexibility and logic capability than Zapier, more accessible to non-developers than n8n, and cheaper than Zapier at comparable usage volumes. That middle position is both Make's competitive advantage and its challenge. It is the right tool for a large segment of users — teams who need more than Zapier offers but do not have developers available to manage n8n. Understanding whether you are in that segment is the most important question to answer before signing up.
Understanding Make's Credit System — The Most Important Thing to Get Right
Make prices by credits. One credit equals one module action in a scenario execution. Every module that runs uses one credit — the trigger module, each transformation step, each app action. A scenario with 8 modules that executes 500 times in a month uses 4,000 credits. This is not unique to Make — Zapier calls the same concept "tasks" and charges the same way. But it has three practical implications most new users miss: First, complex scenarios cost proportionally more. A 15-step scenario costs 3x as many credits as a 5-step scenario for identical execution frequency. This means it is worth auditing your scenarios for unnecessary steps — every module you remove is a direct credit saving. Second, the free plan's 1,000 credits is genuinely limiting. One scenario with 10 modules running every hour burns 7,200 credits in a day. The free plan is for learning, not running real automations. Third, credit efficiency matters more as you scale. At 10k credits/month, inefficiency costs you little. At 300k credits/month, a 20% reduction in unnecessary module steps saves you money equivalent to an entire lower tier. The practical approach: before choosing a credit tier, map out your key scenarios, count their average module steps, multiply by expected monthly executions, sum across all scenarios, and add 25% buffer. Most individual users land in the 10k–40k range. High-volume operations businesses often need 150k+. Pricing verified March 2026 from make.com/en/pricing.
What Make Does Better Than Zapier
The most common Make user journey is: start on Zapier, hit a limitation or a pricing ceiling, switch to Make. Understanding what Make does better explains why that migration happens. Visual scenario canvas vs linear steps: Zapier builds automations as a vertical list of steps. Make shows your entire scenario as a canvas with connections between modules. For simple automations this makes no difference. For complex ones — with routers that split data into parallel paths, filters that conditionally stop execution, iterators that loop through arrays of records — the visual canvas is dramatically more readable and debuggable. Routers and conditional logic: In Zapier, creating different actions based on conditions requires separate Zaps or complex filter configurations. In Make, a Router module splits your scenario into multiple branches in a single visual flow — one branch for new customers, another for returning customers, a third for VIPs — all in one scenario you can see and maintain together. Price per operation at scale: Zapier's Professional plan gives 2,000 tasks/month at $19.99/month. Make's Core plan gives 10,000 credits at $9/month. For comparable usage, Make is typically 2–4x more cost-effective. At high volumes the gap is even larger. Data transformation: Make's formula and function library for transforming data between modules is more capable than Zapier's, and the Code App (Core+) lets you drop into JavaScript or Python for anything the built-in functions cannot handle.
Make vs n8n — When to Choose Which
Make and n8n are the two serious tools for teams who have outgrown Zapier. They are not interchangeable — they serve genuinely different needs. Choose Make if: your team includes non-developers who need to build and maintain automations independently; you want a polished, cloud-hosted product with a support team behind it; you need access to 3,000+ pre-built app integrations with a reliable maintenance track record; or you want AI agent capabilities and are willing to use a beta feature. Choose n8n if: you want to self-host for free (the Community Edition on GitHub has no subscription cost); your team has developers who are comfortable writing JavaScript or Python and want code-level control at every step; you need to keep automation data entirely within your own infrastructure for compliance reasons; or you are building complex AI agent workflows using LangChain integration. The price comparison is closer than it looks at first glance. Make Core at $9/month for 10k credits vs n8n Starter at $24/month for cloud hosting. For lower automation volumes, Make is cheaper. For teams who can self-host n8n, the cost is zero. For high-volume automation at the enterprise level, the pricing becomes comparable. There is no universally right answer — the decision comes down to whether your team has the technical skill and operational capacity to manage a self-hosted n8n instance, and whether that trade is worth the cost saving.
Make's AI Features — What's Real and What's Still Beta
Make has invested heavily in AI capabilities, and it is worth being clear about what is production-ready versus what is still developing. Production-ready: 350+ AI app integrations covering OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI, Stability AI, ElevenLabs, and hundreds of specialist AI tools. These are native Make integrations you can use in any scenario today. The AI Content Extractor and AI Web Search modules are also available and useful for enriching automation data with AI-processed content. Production-ready with your own LLM key: The AI Toolkit lets you use your own OpenAI or Anthropic API key within scenarios — useful for teams who already pay for API access and want to embed AI calls directly into workflows without a separate tool. Beta — use with caution in production: Make AI Agents. This is Make's most ambitious AI feature — scenarios where AI reasoning adapts the automation path in real time rather than following fixed logic. The concept is compelling, but beta status means it is not appropriate for mission-critical workflows yet. Worth experimenting with on non-critical scenarios. The honest assessment: Make's AI integration story is good for connecting your workflows to external AI tools. Its native AI reasoning capabilities are a work in progress. If AI agents are your primary need, n8n's LangChain integration or a dedicated agent platform is currently more mature.
Which Make Plan Should You Choose? An Honest Guide
Free: Use it to learn the platform. The 2 active scenario limit and 15-minute scheduling interval make it unworkable for real business use. Treat it as a hands-on tutorial environment. Core at $9/month (10k credits): The right starting point for most real users. Unlimited scenarios, 1-minute scheduling, Code App access, and Make API cover the vast majority of individual and freelancer use cases. Start here and upgrade the credit tier as your volume grows — you do not need Pro features to get genuine value. Pro at $16/month (10k credits): The main addition is priority execution — your scenarios jump the queue during peak usage periods. If you have time-sensitive automations where a 30-second delay matters (customer-facing workflows, real-time alerts, payment processing triggers), the priority execution is worth the $7 premium. Custom variables are a useful quality-of-life feature for complex scenario management. Teams at $29/month (10k credits): This plan is about team collaboration, not raw power. If multiple people on your team build and manage automations and you need access controls, template sharing, and dedicated consultant support, Teams is the right choice. Solo users and small teams where one person manages everything do not need it. Enterprise: Contact sales for custom pricing. The headline additions are overage protection (no scenario stops if you hit your credit limit), SSO, audit logs, and 24/7 senior support. Right for organizations where automation downtime has a direct business cost. Remember: all prices shown are for the 10k credit base tier. Selecting more credits increases the price proportionally. See make.com/en/pricing for the full tier pricing. Pricing verified March 2026.
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Key Features
Everything you need to know about Make
Visual Scenario Builder
Make's drag-and-drop canvas is the core of the product — and it is meaningfully better than Zapier's linear editor for complex automations. You see your entire workflow at once: triggers, routers that split logic into parallel paths, filters that stop execution based on conditions, iterators that loop through data arrays, and error handlers. A scenario that would require multiple separate Zaps in Zapier can be built as a single, readable scenario in Make.
3,000+ App Integrations
Make connects to over 3,000 apps including every major business tool — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Airtable, Notion, and hundreds more. The HTTP module lets you connect to any REST API not covered by a native integration. Custom apps can be built and shared within your organization on paid plans.
Credit-Based Pricing (Operations Model)
Make prices by credits — each module action in a scenario execution counts as one credit. A scenario with 5 modules that runs 100 times uses 500 credits. This is more granular than Zapier's task pricing but can be harder to predict. The upside: you pay for what you actually use, and you can optimize credit consumption by reducing unnecessary module steps. All plans include unlimited users — your team size never affects your bill.
Make AI Agents & AI Toolkit
Make has native AI capabilities built into all plans — no AI-specific add-on required. The AI Toolkit provides built-in AI tools using Make's own AI provider or your own LLM API key. AI Agents (currently beta) let you build workflows that adapt dynamically using AI reasoning rather than fixed logic paths. 350+ AI apps are available as native integrations including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI, and dozens of specialist AI tools. AI Web Search and AI Content Extractor are also included.
Code App (JavaScript & Python)
The Make Code App, available on Core and above, lets you run custom JavaScript or Python directly within a scenario. This is the feature that moves Make beyond pure no-code — you can write transformation logic, call external libraries, or handle data structures too complex for Make's built-in tools. Code execution is priced at 2 credits per second of execution time on paid plans.
Scenario Scheduling (Down to 1 Minute)
Core and above allows scenarios to run on a schedule as frequently as every 1 minute — compared to the 15-minute minimum on the Free plan. Most business automation needs are well-served by minute-level scheduling: syncing data between systems, processing incoming leads, monitoring for changes in connected apps, or sending time-sensitive notifications.
Teams, Roles & Template Sharing
The Teams plan adds multi-team support with team-level permissions — control which scenarios, connections, and templates different team groups can access. Teams can create and share scenario templates, making it easy to standardize automation patterns across business functions. The Enterprise plan adds full audit logs, SSO, and domain claim for organizational-level governance.
Make Grid & Analytics
Make Grid gives a holistic view of your entire automation landscape — see all scenarios, their health, execution frequency, and interdependencies in one place. The Analytics Dashboard (Teams and above) tracks how workflows perform over time. This observability layer is genuinely useful for operations teams managing dozens or hundreds of active scenarios.
Annual Credit Flexibility
On annual billing, prepaid credits expire after 12 months rather than each calendar month. This matters for businesses with seasonal workloads — a retail company with heavy automation in Q4 can use the credit buffer built up in quieter months without losing it at month-end. Make also offers on-demand extra credit purchases if you exceed your monthly allowance.
Make Pricing
Choose the plan that fits your needs
Free
- ✓1,000 credits/month
- ✓2 active scenarios maximum
- ✓3,000+ app integrations
- ✓No-code visual workflow builder
- ✓15-minute minimum interval between scheduled runs
- ✓5-minute max scenario execution time
- ✓5MB max file size
- ✓512MB data transfer
- ✓7-day execution log retention
- ✓90-day expert support access to get started
- ✓AI applications, MCP server, AI Agents (beta), AI Toolkit — all included
- ✓Good for: learning Make, testing integrations, or running 1–2 simple automations
Core
- ✓Everything in Free, plus:
- ✓10,000–8M+ credits/month (price scales with credit tier selected)
- ✓Unlimited active scenarios
- ✓1-minute minimum scheduling interval
- ✓40-minute max scenario execution time
- ✓100MB max file size
- ✓5GB data transfer per 10k credits
- ✓30-day execution log retention
- ✓Make API access (60 calls/minute)
- ✓Code App — custom JavaScript or Python (2 credits/sec)
- ✓Unlimited users
- ✓Technical support from Make's expert team
- ✓Good for: freelancers and solopreneurs automating simple to moderate workflows
Pro
- ✓Everything in Core, plus:
- ✓Priority scenario execution (High priority queue)
- ✓Custom variables — edit and manage data across multiple scenarios at once
- ✓Full-text execution log search
- ✓250MB max file size
- ✓Make API access (120 calls/minute)
- ✓Real-time execution monitoring
- ✓Annual billing: credits expire after 12 months instead of monthly
- ✓Good for: individuals and small teams with moderate-to-high automation needs who want faster execution and advanced data control
Teams
- ✓Everything in Pro, plus:
- ✓Teams and team roles — manage permissions for scenarios, apps, connections, and templates
- ✓Create and share scenario templates across your organization
- ✓Priority scenario execution (top priority queue)
- ✓500MB max file size
- ✓Make API access (240 calls/minute)
- ✓Analytics Dashboard — workflow performance over time
- ✓Make Grid — holistic view of your automation landscape
- ✓Good for: SMB teams where multiple people build and manage automations together
Enterprise
- ✓Everything in Teams, plus:
- ✓Custom functions (custom JavaScript functions in scenarios)
- ✓Enterprise app integrations (SAP and others via on-prem agent)
- ✓24/7 top-priority support from senior specialists
- ✓Access to Value Engineering Team for onboarding and strategic guidance
- ✓Credits overage protection — uninterrupted execution if you hit your limit
- ✓Advanced security features
- ✓SSO (OAuth2 and SAML2)
- ✓Domain claim for enforced SSO login
- ✓2FA enforcement across organization
- ✓Audit logs
- ✓60-day execution log retention
- ✓Make API access (1,000 calls/minute)
- ✓1GB max file size
- ✓Good for: organizations running critical business processes with compliance and governance requirements
Pros & Cons
- ✓The visual scenario canvas is genuinely superior to Zapier's linear step-by-step builder — you can see the full logic of a complex automation at once, including routers, filters, error handlers, and parallel paths
- ✓Pricing is per credit (operation), not per user — all plans include unlimited users, which makes Make dramatically cheaper than Zapier for growing teams
- ✓3,000+ app integrations including a Code App for custom JavaScript or Python on paid plans — more flexibility than Zapier without requiring the technical knowledge n8n demands
- ✓Built-in AI capabilities on all plans — AI agents (beta), AI web search, AI content extractor, and 350+ AI app integrations are included without an AI-specific add-on fee
- ✓Annual billing gives yearly credit flexibility — prepaid annual credits expire after 12 months rather than each month, useful for businesses with seasonal or irregular automation volume
- ✓Free plan is genuinely usable for learning — 1,000 credits/month with access to all 3,000+ integrations and the full visual builder, not a crippled demo
- ✕The credit system is confusing to new users — every module action in a scenario counts as one credit, meaning a single scenario run with 10 steps uses 10 credits. High-step automations eat through credits faster than expected
- ✕The free plan limits you to only 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval between runs — enough for testing, but genuinely restrictive for real use
- ✕Steeper learning curve than Zapier — the visual canvas is more powerful but also more complex to navigate for users who just want a simple "if this, then that" automation
- ✕No self-hosting option — unlike n8n, Make is cloud-only. Teams with strict data residency requirements or who need air-gapped infrastructure cannot use Make
- ✕AI Agents feature is still in beta — powerful in concept but not yet production-ready for mission-critical workflows
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Make
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Make vs Competitors
| Feature | Make | Zapier | n8n |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $10.59/mo (Core) | $19.99/mo (Professional) | $24/mo (Starter cloud) |
| Free Plan | 1,000 credits/mo | 100 tasks/mo | Free (self-hosted) |
| Pricing Model | Per operation (credit) | Per task | Per execution |
| Unlimited Users | Yes — all plans | No — per seat on higher plans | Yes — all plans |
| Self-Hosting | No (cloud only) | No | Yes (free) |
| Custom Code | Yes (JS/Python, Core+) | Limited | Yes (JS/Python, all plans) |
| App Integrations | 3,000+ | 6,000+ | 400+ |
| AI Agents | Yes (beta, all plans) | Partial | Yes (LangChain built-in) |
Explore Top Alternatives
See how Make compares to other leading AI tools
n8n
Better choice if you want self-hosting (free Community Edition), more developer control with code at every step, or need to avoid cloud-only infrastructure.
Zapier
Better choice if you are completely new to automation and want the simplest possible starting point — easier to learn, larger template library, but more expensive at scale.
Perplexity AI
Better choice if your primary need is AI-powered research and answering questions rather than connecting and automating between business apps.
OpenClaw
Better choice if you want a pre-built autonomous AI agent rather than building custom automation workflows between apps from scratch.
Claude AI
Better choice if your primary need is AI assistance for writing, analysis, and coding rather than automating workflows between business tools.
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