n8n vs. Zapier

Looking for Zapier alternatives? Thinking about moving over to n8n?

You’re in the right place if you ever felt limited when adding code to your advanced workflows or simply worried about being charged for every step of your workflow.

Here’s a comprehensive comparison of Zapier vs n8n with features and a pricing overview!

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Features comparison: n8n vs Zapier

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n8n
n8n_image
Zapier
Self-hosting
Yes
No
Python or JS support
Both Python and JS
Both Python and JS
Easy error handling
Yes, with customizable error workflows
No
Pre-built connectors
387+
5,000+
Webhook triggers
Yes, on all plans
Premium app, available only with the Pro plan and onwards
Export/import workflows
Yes
Yes
Credentials sharing
Yes, starting from €50/mo for the Pro plan
Yes, starting from the team plan (€375.75 per month)
Pricing model
Charge per workflow, no limit on operations
Charge for each individual task that your workflow includes
Free trial
Yes, free trial
Yes, free trial
Community support
Yes
Yes
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n8n
Self-hosting Yes
Python or JS support Both Python and JS
Easy error handling Yes, with customizable error workflows
Pre-built connectors 387+
Webhook triggers Yes, on all plans
Export/import workflows Yes
Credentials sharing Yes, starting from €50/mo for the Pro plan
Pricing model Charge per workflow, no limit on operations
Free trial Yes, free trial
Community support Yes
n8n_image
Zapier
Self-hosting No
Python or JS support Both Python and JS
Easy error handling No
Pre-built connectors 5,000+
Webhook triggers Premium app, available only with the Pro plan and onwards
Export/import workflows Yes
Credentials sharing Yes, starting from the team plan (€375.75 per month)
Pricing model Charge for each individual task that your workflow includes
Free trial Yes, free trial
Community support Yes

About n8n

n8n is a low-code, source-available, self-hostable alternative to Zapier. It’s really good for technical people who want to build complex workflows faster.

With n8n, you can build workflows using Javascript when you need flexibility. Or quickly connect apps with a drag n’ drop GUI when you don’t. You can easily handle advanced functionality like implementing multiple triggers, as well as branching and merging your flows.

With 220+ integrations and customizable HTTP requests, you can add any API to your workflow.

About Zapier

Zapier is a no-code automation tool that lets you connect your apps into automated workflows. It’s really good for handling simple tasks that don’t require complex conditional logic and is easy to get started, especially for non-technical users. You can easily configure a great range of integrations, but if you need more custom logic, you’d need to upgrade to higher-tier plans.

Pricing comparison

n8n

n8n is a workflow automation tool under the sustainable use license. You can host it on your own server. The source code is available here on GitHub. For organizations with stricter security or compliance requirements, n8n has an enterprise offer.

n8n Cloud is n8n's hosted solution. In addition to all the features of n8n, it provides added benefits such as:

  • No technical setup or maintenance for your n8n instance
  • 24/7 uptime monitoring
  • Connect apps in just 1 click via OAuth
  • One-click upgrades to the newest n8n versions

n8n Cloud packages start at €20 per month for 2,500 workflow executions.

Unlike Zapier, n8n doesn’t charge you extra for running more advanced workflows that have a lot of operations, steps, or tasks. n8n doesn’t have Premium apps – all integrations are at your free disposal. At the top end, it’s several hundred euros cheaper per month, or thousands of euros cheaper per year.

Learn more about n8n’s execution advantage: why n8n is the most cost-effective option in the market.

Zapier

Zapier’s Starter plan includes 750 tasks (not workflows!) and costs € 18.83 /month, billed annually. Prices increase as you add more tasks to your workflow.

In Zapier, every time a task in a workflow performs an action, it counts as a new task. For example, when your workflow reads a record from HubSpot, writes a row into a Google sheet, or posts a tweet, each counts as a task. A single workflow can be thousands of tasks that can burn through 1/4 of the budget with a single careless execution.

It’s better to use external tools for more specialized needs like scraping or looping/transforming data as even such trivial tasks will eat up most of the tasks.

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Self-hosting

n8n

Self-hosting is a faster way to start: you can self-host n8n for cheap or free (no fees to n8n) on your choice of Virtual Private Server (VPS), Heroku, your own server or even your personal computer. Self-hosting also means you can keep your data private instead of letting Zapier have a free pass at it, which also means you could simplify GDPR compliance.

Zapier

Zapier hosts data in AWS servers located in the United States, including customers' personal data and the data that is processed on behalf of customers.

Universal connectors

n8n

Firstly, n8n is building its own native integrations and accepting community-built connectors to its library (available for self-hosted now, coming soon for cloud). However, if you don’t find the integrations you need, that’s fine: you can send HTTP requests or even write your own JavaScript code inside a workflow to do pretty much anything.

You can also code your own custom integrations, or even radically change the system or its UI to better suit your use case. The code for n8n is available on GitHub and n8n team is always keen to accept new contributions from the community.

Zapier

Zapier's got you covered with 5,000+ apps that you can integrate between each other – they are easy to configure and incredibly reliable.

To build more custom integrations, you can send webhooks in Zaps or trigger Zaps from webhooks if you're on a paid plan. Webhooks by Zapier offers GET, POST, PUT methods, which include automatic data parsing, and you can also select Custom Request for other use cases. All webhooks in Zapier are subject to a collective limit of 10,000 requests in a 5-minute window. This includes subscription webhooks or REST Hooks.

Branching and conditional logic

n8n

n8n is made specifically for use cases with complex logic and that’s why in your workflows you can represent:

  • Merging: if you want to merge items returned by different nodes;
  • Looping: if you want to process multiple similar items;
  • IF conditions: if you want to split a workflow conditionally based on comparison operations;
  • The Switch node: is similar to the IF node, but supports up to four conditional routes;
  • The Execute Command node: if you want to run shell commands on the host machine that runs n8n;
  • Comparing databases: if you want to compare data from two input streams.

n8n uses a concept of data flowing from start to finish. You can add variables and "items" and access previous items and data from previous nodes. Check out the docs.

Zapier

Zapier does a good job at handling triggers (e.g. Zapier Gmail node allows you to filter messages for matching a specific filter) and regularly checks your trigger for new data. When the Zap triggers, Zapier automatically performs your action for you.

Zapier offers multi-step Zaps, however no powerful conditional Zaps. There’s still a workaround such as three separate Zaps where each has a unique filter, but without a possibility to route to different steps based on variable input. Also, there’s a limit on the number of levels of logical branching which is sometimes better to be replaced with Google Scripts which offers a richer feature set despite the increase in coding.

Some of the multi-step Zaps are not intuitive to create and the more complicated your workflow, the more difficult it is to visualize:

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UI built for developers

n8n

In n8n, you can write custom JavaScript code snippets to add, remove, and update the data you receive from a node. The Code node gives you access to the incoming data and you can manipulate it.

Apart from the n8n Code node, overall n8n’s UI is closer to a developer’s own environment:

  • The Schedule Trigger node to run workflows at fixed intervals and times;
  • Multiple trigger nodes and waiting for data;
  • Error handling workflow that is triggered whenever a workflow fails;
  • Array/string manipulation in n8n is as simple as using vanilla Javascript;
  • Input and output views to save your mental energy when going back and forth between data sets;
  • Data pinning to save the output data of a node, and use the saved data instead of fetching fresh data in future workflow executions;
  • Sticky Notes to annotate and comment on your workflows.

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Zapier

Code node by Zapier is a step that can be added to your workflow just like any other trigger or action but with writing either Python or Javascript code.

Even though Zapier allows you to incorporate code snippets into the workflow, it’s still not that scalable and advanced when it comes to branching, loops, custom scripts, and HTTP calls.

Moreover, Zapier was simply not made for complex workflows and that's why:

  • Code Steps are limited to returning 250 items in the output object;
  • The total size of the code and the data processed by the code cannot exceed 6MB;
  • You cannot require external libraries or install or import libraries commonly referred to as "npm modules".
  • Webhook is a premium feature and not all apps can send back data in a way that Zapier can interpret in subsequent steps.

Keep in mind that the Code app is an advanced feature, and the Zapier support team can't help to troubleshoot the code if there are errors.

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Customer support

n8n

With 2,000+ active members, the n8n community is very open, so you’ll get fairly quick responses (often the same day) in the n8n’s community forum. There are still multiple other ways to contact n8n or use a large active community of n8n experts. Also, n8n’s documentation gets updated every day with the last release updates so you can navigate there to find the solutions you might need.

Zapier

Zapier offers community support as well as premier support and Live chats that become available only with the Team or Company plans and before that, you will have Zapier’s help center to find your answers.

Zapier vs n8n: Which one to choose?

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Simply speaking, n8n and Zapier are addressing the same needs – data integration and workflow automation but are made for use cases with different levels of complexity and customization.

Zapier is a handy tool when it comes to linear automation and basic integrations. It is a paid platform that offers a selection of 5,000+ integrations and is easier to get started than n8n.io.

n8n is a flexible workflow automation platform for technical people who want to build complex workflows faster — without struggling against a spaghetti of scripts.

With n8n, developers can benefit from:

  • Charging per workflow with no limit on tasks/steps
  • Self-hosting option for better security and data privacy
  • Branching, looping, merging data
  • Advanced Code node
  • Error handling workflow
  • The HTTP node to build your own integrations

You’re now armed with knowledge! Hopefully, this guide was useful to give you a general overview of Zapier compared to n8n.

Switching to n8n gives you the flexibility of a fully customizable workflow, and we have a support team on hand if you need help migrating your data. If you still have questions, you can reach us any time at [email protected]. Tom or Jon will answer, usually on the same day.

Or if you’re ready to work on your first n8n workflow right away, try n8n for free now!

The technical people in our team are big fans of n8n, it makes their work easier and offers a lot of flexibility.

leen-peterson

Leen Penders

CMO at Dropsolid

Tech savvy folks ❤️ n8n

See what our global community has to say about their favorite workflow automation platform.

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I'm in love with Canva, Bubble and n8n/make.

It's like having (at least) two developers.

The speed of building and cost savings are amazing.

Now add ChatGPT and you can virtually create any type of startup from scratch.

sergio-tweet

I created my first backend app with @Railway (a year ago) but I used my personal GitHub account, today I migrated to my prod account, I made a
@n8n_io workflow to sync to the new instance, and also some Postgres nodes. I'm pretty happy with the result.

Marketing Tech ⭐ Sarah Tamsin

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