Free automation is not one thing — it is three different ceilings. Zapier's free plan gives 100 tasks/mo but restricts you to two-step Zaps and a single seat, so branching costs money the moment you need it; Professional starts at $19.99/mo billed annually (pay-monthly is roughly $29.99/mo, so annual saves about 33%), and Team jumps to $69/mo annual or about $103.50/mo monthly. Make's free plan gives 1,000 credits/mo with branching intact but only 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval between runs, which rules out anything time-sensitive; Core at $12/mo for 10,000 credits is the cheapest managed volume in the class, and annual billing saves 15% or more while credits scale from 10k to 8M+ per month. n8n's Community Edition is the outlier: self-host it and there is no licence cost, no execution cap and no user cap at all — you pay only for the server; its cloud Starter at EUR 20/mo billed annually saves about 17% versus pay-monthly, and the meter is one complete workflow execution, not one step, so a long branching workflow counts once. Microsoft Power Automate has no free plan, only a 30-day trial; Premium is $15/user/mo billed yearly, and per-flow automation starts at $100/flow/mo with a 5-license minimum, so the entry point is five seats before you touch a single flow. Workato has no published price at all — Standard, Business, Enterprise and Workato One are all sales-quoted, with a platform edition fee plus usage metered on a single consumption unit billed annually. The second question is what the cheapest usable paid entry is once free runs out: Make Core at $12/mo for 10,000 credits is the cheapest managed volume, Zapier Professional at $19.99/mo annual for 750 tasks is the cheapest mainstream task meter, n8n Cloud Starter at EUR 20/mo for 2,500 complete executions is the cheapest per-execution meter, Power Automate Premium at $15/user/mo is the cheapest per-user meter, and Workato has no published entry price at all. Which of those is cheapest depends entirely on whether your meter is actions, credits, executions or people. Pricing verified against official pages (2026-09-25).
n8n (4.0/5) is the only tool with no ceiling on free: the Community Edition is free to self-host with unlimited workflows, executions and users. Cloud is the paid alternative at EUR 20/mo for 2,500 complete executions. The cost you take on is infrastructure and maintenance, not licence fees.
Free tier: Yes · 14-day free trial on cloud plans
Paid from: €20/mo (Starter, annual) (Priced per complete workflow execution, not per step - a workflow counts as one execution no matter how many nodes it contains, and every plan includes unlimited users, unlimited workflows and every integration. Starter gives 2,500 executions/mo with 5 concurrent executions and 1 shared project; Pro gives 10,000 with 20 concurrent, admin roles, global variables, workflow history and execution search; Business gives 40,000 with SSO/SAML/LDAP, Git version control, environments and a self-hosted option. The Community Edition is free to self-host under the fair-code Sustainable Use License with unlimited workflows, executions and users - you pay only for infrastructure. Enterprise is quote-only.)
n8n is the only tool in the class you can self-host free with unlimited workflows, executions and users — and on cloud it bills per complete workflow execution, not per step, with JavaScript and Python anywhere in the flow.
Make (4.0/5) gives 1,000 credits/mo free with routers and iterators available, unlike Zapier's two-step limit. The walls are 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval. Core at $12/mo lifts both and adds 10,000 credits.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $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.)
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.
Zapier (4.2/5) is the gentlest onboarding and free for 100 tasks/mo, but the free tier allows two-step Zaps only and one seat. Professional at $19.99/mo annual unlocks multi-step Zaps and 750 tasks.
Free tier: Yes · 14-day free trial on paid plans
Paid from: $19.99/mo (Professional, annual) (Task-based: one task = one action a Zap successfully completes, and the trigger does not count. Free gives 100 tasks/mo, unlimited Zaps but two-step Zaps only, and 1 seat. Professional starts at 750 tasks/mo and scales by tier (1,500 $29.99, 3,000 $49.99, 5,000 $69.99, up to 2M at $5,999/mo); Team starts at 2,000 tasks and includes 25 seats with SAML SSO. Filters, Paths and Formatter steps do not consume tasks. Every plan includes unlimited Zaps, Tables, Forms and Zapier MCP. Enterprise is quote-only.)
Zapier connects 9,000+ apps with the shallowest learning curve in the class — free for 100 tasks a month, paid from $19.99/mo, and priced per completed task rather than per step or per seat.
Power Automate (4.3/5) has no free plan — only a 30-day trial — but Premium at $15/user/mo paid yearly is predictable and does not meter usage, so a busy month never spikes the bill. Limited cloud-flow rights come bundled with some Microsoft 365 licences.
Free tier: No — trial only · 30-day free trial
Paid from: $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.)
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.
Workato (3.7/5) offers only a trial and a developer sandbox, and every edition is a sales quote. It belongs on a free-tier shortlist only as the escalation path once governance and enterprise connectors become the requirement.
Free tier: No — trial only · Trial and developer sandbox (no free plan)
Paid from: 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.)
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.
Bottom line: Bottom line: start on n8n if you can run a server, because free there means unlimited rather than capped. Start on Make if you want branching on a free managed plan and can live with 2 scenarios and a 15-minute poll. Start on Zapier if the person building it is not technical and 100 tasks/mo covers the evaluation. Skip the free question entirely for Power Automate and Workato — both require a paid commitment or a sales call, and Power Automate's $15/user/mo is the cheapest predictable entry if you already own Microsoft 365.
n8n. Its Community Edition is free to self-host under a fair-code licence with unlimited workflows, executions and users — you pay only for infrastructure. Zapier (100 tasks/mo) and Make (1,000 credits/mo) have genuinely useful but capped free tiers.
Make for managed use — 1,000 credits/mo with branching intact, limited to 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute interval. Zapier's free tier is easier to learn but restricts you to two-step Zaps and one seat.
Make Core at $12/mo for 10,000 credits, then Power Automate Premium at $15/user/mo, then Zapier Professional at $19.99/mo annual for 750 tasks, then n8n Cloud Starter at EUR 20/mo for 2,500 executions. Workato has no published entry price.
No. Power Automate offers a 30-day trial only; Workato offers a trial and a developer sandbox with no free production tier.