Make vs Workato 2026: Which Workflow Automation Tool Wins?
Quick verdict: Make is our overall pick for Make vs Workato.
Make (4.0/5) is self-serve and published from $12/mo with a free tier; Workato (3.7/5) is quote-only enterprise iPaaS with no free plan. They meet only where a growing team hits governance requirements it cannot meet with credits alone.
| Tool | Rating | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make Best overall 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… |
| Workato Best for teams | 3.7/5 | Quote-only (no published self-serve price) | Workato is the enterprise iPaaS of the class — 1,200+ connectors including SAP, Workday an… |
Bottom line: Make (4.0/5) is the pragmatic buy — free at 1,000 credits/mo, Core $12/mo at 10,000, Pro $21/mo, Teams $38/mo, with published prices and branching capability that covers the large majority of real integration work. Workato (3.7/5) is the escalated buy: no published price at all, no free plan, and a deployment model that assumes certified administrators — in exchange for 1,200+ enterprise connectors including SAP and Workday, on-premises agents, recipe lifecycle management across dev/staging/production, and compliance coverage (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR) on upper editions. Make wins best-for-teams only up to a point: Teams at $38/mo adds roles and shared templates but nothing like Workato's RBAC and dedicated CSM. Choose Make for departmental automation with a credit budget; move to Workato when the integration touches systems of record and needs change control.
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
Workato · 3.7/5
Trial and developer sandbox (no free plan) · Quote-only (no published self-serve price)
No published tiers. Workato sells four editions (Standard, Business, Enterprise, and the 2026 Workato One tier for agentic automation) on a sales quote that combines a platform edition fee with usage-based billing driven by recipe count, task volume and connector mix. There is no free plan - only a trial and a developer sandbox. Because nothing is published, third-party procurement trackers circulate typical contract values; Workato publishes none of these, so treat any figure you see elsewhere as an unofficial estimate rather than a list price.
Quote-only — platform edition fee plus usage metered on a single consumption unit, billed annually
Workato is the enterprise iPaaS of the class — 1,200+ connectors including SAP, Workday and ServiceNow, recipe lifecycle management and on-prem agents, sold entirely on a sales quote with no published price.
Score breakdown
Pros
- Deepest enterprise connector set of the five, including SAP, Oracle, Workday, NetSuite and ServiceNow, plus on-premises agents.
- Recipe lifecycle management across dev, staging and production with Git-style version control and environments.
- Governance built for IT: advanced RBAC, SSO, dedicated CSM, SLA and compliance coverage on upper editions.
- Embedded/OEM programme lets vendors ship Workato inside their own product.
Cons
- No published pricing of any kind — every edition is a sales quote, so you cannot self-serve or budget from a list price.
- No free plan: only a trial and a developer sandbox, so evaluation requires a sales cycle.
- Steepest learning curve in the class; deployments are typically run by certified admins inside IT ops, not by the teams who own the process.
Pricing verified 2026-09-25
Frequently asked questions
Which is better overall, Make or Workato?
Make is our overall pick (4.0/5 vs 3.7/5). Make (4.0/5) is self-serve and published from $12/mo with a free tier; Workato (3.7/5) is quote-only enterprise iPaaS with no free plan. They meet only where a growing team hits governance requirements it cannot meet with credits alone.
Do Make and Workato offer free plans?
Make has a free tier. Make paid plans start at $12/mo (Core, 10k credits); Workato is quote-priced — Quote-only (no published self-serve price).
What does Make cost?
$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. Prices were last verified on 2026-09-25.