Make vs Microsoft Power Automate 2026: Which Workflow Automation Tool Wins?
Quick verdict: Microsoft Power Automate is our overall pick for Make vs Power Automate.
- Best overall: Microsoft Power Automate (4.3/5)
- Best free: Make
- Best for teams: Microsoft Power Automate
- Pricing last checked: 2026-09-25
Power Automate (4.3/5) edges Make (4.0/5) on governance, localisation and per-user pricing that ignores volume; Make counters with a free tier, a vendor-neutral catalogue and 10,000 credits for $12/mo.
| Tool | Rating | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make Best free | 4.0/5 | Free $12/mo (Core, 10k credits) | Make trades Zapier's linear steps for a visual canvas with routers, iterators and error ro… |
| Microsoft Power Automate Best overall Best for teams | 4.3/5 | $15/user/mo (Premium, paid yearly) | Power Automate is the Microsoft 365-native automation layer: $15/user/mo for cloud and att… |
Bottom line: Power Automate (4.3/5) takes the rating on enterprise fundamentals — $15/user/mo paid yearly with no usage meter, tenant-level governance, DLP policy, managed environments and the class's best localisation, plus attended and unattended RPA in the same product ($150/bot/mo). Make (4.0/5) takes accessibility and breadth: a free 1,000-credit tier that needs no Microsoft estate, Core at $12/mo for 10,000 credits, and a visual canvas with routers and iterators that handles data transformation Power Automate does awkwardly. The deciding question is where your systems live. Inside Microsoft 365, Power Automate's bundled use rights and Dataverse integration make Make largely redundant. Across a heterogeneous SaaS stack, Make's catalogue and credit economics win, and its free tier means you can prove the workflow before anyone signs a licence.
Pricing and details
Make · 4.0/5
Free plan available · $12/mo (Core, 10k credits)
Credit-based: every module execution counts as one credit, including triggers, routers and filters. Free gives 1,000 credits/mo, 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval between runs. Core, Pro and Teams all start at 10,000 credits/mo and differ by feature: unlimited active scenarios and minute-level scheduling from Core, priority execution plus full-text log search from Pro, team roles and shared scenario templates from Teams. AI modules cost 2-50 credits each and the Make Code app bills 2 credits per second of execution. Data transfer caps are 512MB on Free and 5GB per 10k operations on paid tiers. Enterprise is custom.
Annual billing saves 15% or more versus pay-monthly; credits scale from 10k to 8M+ per month
Make trades Zapier's linear steps for a visual canvas with routers, iterators and error routes — free for 1,000 operations a month, paid from $12/mo, and the best price per unit of work for complex branching.
Score breakdown
Pros
- Best price per unit of work in the class: Core is $12/mo at 10,000 credits, roughly an order of magnitude cheaper than Zapier for equivalent volume.
- Visual canvas with routers, iterators, aggregators and visual error routes handles branching that Zapier's linear model cannot.
- Every module counts as one credit, and credits scale to 8M+/month, so high-volume pipelines stay on-platform.
- Make Code runs JavaScript or Python inside a scenario, and 350+ AI apps plus an MCP server are wired in.
Cons
- Steeper learning curve than Zapier — the canvas, operations accounting and error handling take real time to internalise.
- Free plan is tight: 1,000 credits/mo, 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval between runs.
- Credits are consumed by triggers, routers and filters too, and AI modules cost 2-50 credits each, so budgets need modelling before you commit.
Pricing verified 2026-09-25
Microsoft Power Automate · 4.3/5
30-day free trial · $15/user/mo (Premium, paid yearly)
Per-user and per-bot licensing rather than usage metering. Premium ($15/user/mo) covers cloud flows, attended desktop flows (RPA) and process mining with 50MB of stored data, plus 250MB Dataverse database and 2GB file capacity. Process ($150/bot/mo) licenses an unattended bot for a core business process that unlimited users in the organisation can access; Hosted Process ($215/bot/mo) adds a Microsoft-hosted virtual machine on Azure. The Process Mining add-on is $5,000/tenant/mo per 100GB. Limited cloud-flow use rights are bundled with select Microsoft 365 licences. There is no free plan - only a 30-day trial.
Prices shown are the paid-yearly rates; Power Automate per flow is $100/flow/mo (minimum 5 licenses)
Power Automate is the Microsoft 365-native automation layer: $15/user/mo for cloud and attended desktop flows, $150/bot/mo for unattended RPA, and per-user or per-bot licensing instead of usage metering.
Score breakdown
Pros
- Per-user and per-bot licensing rather than usage metering, so a busy month does not generate a surprise invoice.
- Best localisation and enterprise governance of the five: tenant-level admin, DLP policies, managed environments, broad language coverage.
- Attended and unattended RPA in the same product as cloud flows — $15/user/mo covers attended desktop flows, $150/bot/mo unattended.
- Limited cloud-flow use rights are bundled with select Microsoft 365 licences, so existing estates may already own part of it.
Cons
- No free plan — only a 30-day trial, which makes it the least accessible option for solo evaluation.
- Steepest conceptual surface of the five: licensing SKUs, environments, Dataverse capacity and connectors all interact.
- Deepest capability sits inside the Microsoft estate; non-Microsoft SaaS coverage trails Zapier and Make.
Pricing verified 2026-09-25
Frequently asked questions
Which is better overall, Make or Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft Power Automate is our overall pick (4.3/5 vs 4.0/5). Power Automate (4.3/5) edges Make (4.0/5) on governance, localisation and per-user pricing that ignores volume; Make counters with a free tier, a vendor-neutral catalogue and 10,000 credits for $12/mo.
Do Make and Microsoft Power Automate offer free plans?
Make has a free tier. Make paid plans start at $12/mo (Core, 10k credits); Microsoft Power Automate paid plans start at $15/user/mo (Premium, paid yearly).
What does Microsoft Power Automate cost?
$15/user/mo (Premium, paid yearly) — Per-user and per-bot licensing rather than usage metering. Premium ($15/user/mo) covers cloud flows, attended desktop flows (RPA) and process mining with 50MB of stored data, plus 250MB Dataverse database and 2GB file capacity. Process ($150/bot/mo) licenses an unattended bot for a core business process that unlimited users in the organisation can access; Hosted Process ($215/bot/mo) adds a Microsoft-hosted virtual machine on Azure. The Process Mining add-on is $5,000/tenant/mo per 100GB. Limited cloud-flow use rights are bundled with select Microsoft 365 licences. There is no free plan - only a 30-day trial. Prices were last verified on 2026-09-25.