The most important difference is how they bill. Zapier charges per task, one for each action step that runs, while n8n charges per workflow execution however many steps it has, and its Community Edition is free to self-host. Zapier earns its premium with the largest app catalogue and the easiest editor.
Billing is the heart of this comparison. Zapier counts a task each time an action step runs, so a 20-step Zap uses many times the allowance of a two-step one. n8n counts executions, one per full workflow run, so a 20-step workflow costs the same as a two-step one. On the entry plans that means 750 tasks on Zapier Professional at $19.99 a month on yearly billing, against 2,500 whole runs on n8n Cloud Starter at €20. And n8n's Community Edition is free to self-host.
Zapier earns its premium on ease. It connects more apps than any rival, and a non-technical person can build a working Zap in minutes in its step-by-step editor. n8n's canvas assumes you understand data structures. You can drop into JavaScript or Python in any node and call any HTTP API, which is exactly why non-technical users report a steeper learning curve than with Zapier or Make.
Both have pushed into AI agents from different directions. Zapier puts Agents, Copilot, Canvas and an MCP server on every plan, including Free, so an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT can act in your business apps without custom integrations; agents are metered separately in activities, and each MCP tool call costs two tasks. n8n builds agents out of nodes on the same canvas, with tools, memory and MCP, and self-hosted users bring their own API key, so no credit limits apply. Some n8n AI features, including the Assistant and agents, are still marked preview.
The costs each hides are different. Zapier's overage is billed at 1.25 times the base rate on annual plans and 2.5 times on monthly plans, and 10,000 tasks costs $129 a month. n8n's cheap software comes with the work of self-hosting, since updates, backups and security are yours, and its Business plan at €667 a month sits far above Pro and is self-hosted only for now. For a few reliable connections between a CRM, a form and Slack, Zapier is the sensible default. For anything long, branching or high-volume, n8n is the cheaper machine if you have the people to run it.