--- title: "One five-step workflow: 187 runs a month on Zapier’s entry plan, 2,000 on Make’s" summary: "How Zapier, Make, n8n and Power Automate meter one five-step workflow, and how many runs each entry plan buys, from their pricing pages as of September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/empower-no-code-solutions-save-time-money format: Note desk: "SaaS & business software" published: 2025-05-28 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["no-code","workflow automation","Zapier","Make","n8n","Power Automate","pricing","OIDAR","GST","DPDP","CERT-In"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/empower-no-code-solutions-save-time-money.png --- # One five-step workflow: 187 runs a month on Zapier’s entry plan, 2,000 on Make’s *How Zapier, Make, n8n and Power Automate meter one five-step workflow, and how many runs each entry plan buys, from their pricing pages as of September 2026.* Note · SaaS & business software · By TechBag · Published 2025-05-28 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/empower-no-code-solutions-save-time-money A five-step no-code workflow runs about 187 times a month on Zapier’s cheapest paid plan and 2,000 times on Make’s, at list prices as of September 2026.[1][2] Both tools will save a small business time; that part of the 2023 piece holds. Whether they save money depends on a detail the original never mentioned: what the vendor counts as one unit of use. Get that wrong and a workflow that works becomes the line on the card statement nobody can explain. ## Three tools, three meters Zapier charges a task for every successful action step; the trigger that starts the workflow is free. Its Professional plan starts at US$19.99 a month for 750 tasks, and past the limit it can switch you to pay-per-task billing at a higher rate.[1] Make charges a credit for every module action, and reading data from an app or webhook counts, so the trigger costs a credit too; Core is US$9 a month for 10,000 credits and the free plan carries 1,000.[2] n8n charges per execution, a whole workflow run regardless of how many steps it has: Starter is €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions, Pro €50 for 10,000, and the self-hosted Community Edition is free.[3] Microsoft prices Power Automate Premium per person, US$15 a user a month paid yearly, rather than per run.[4] TechBag countTechBag arithmetic: one workflow, five steps The test workflow is a website lead that creates a CRM contact, adds a spreadsheet row, posts to a chat channel and sends a welcome email: one trigger, four actions. Each run uses 4 Zapier tasks, 5 Make credits and 1 n8n execution. Zapier Professional at 750 tasks covers 187 runs; Make Free at 1,000 credits covers 200; Make Core at 10,000 covers 2,000; n8n Starter covers 2,500. **Figure: Make’s free plan runs more of this workflow than Zapier’s cheapest paid plan** *Runs per month of a five-step workflow covered by each entry plan, list prices as of September 2026* Zapier Professional, US$19.99 750 tasks 187 runs Make Free, US$0 1,000 credits 200 runs Make Core, US$9 10,000 credits 2,000 runs n8n Starter, €20 2,500 executions 2,500 runs | | Value (runs) | | --- | --- | | Zapier Professional, US$19.99 | 187 | | Make Free, US$0 | 200 | | Make Core, US$9 | 2,000 | | n8n Starter, €20 | 2,500 | Source: Zapier, Make and n8n pricing pages (Internet Archive copies, 25 to 30 September 2026); TechBag arithmetic · as of 30 September 2026 · Power Automate is priced per user, not per run, so it is not on the chart ## What the meter means for the choice Zapier’s premium buys breadth and ease: more than 9,000 app connections, by its own count, and the gentlest builder of the three.[1] For a handful of low-volume workflows that is worth paying for. The meter starts to matter when a workflow succeeds, because success means volume, and per-step pricing multiplies volume by length. Per-run pricing does not care how long the workflow is; per-user pricing does not care how often it runs. Our view Our view: before you build, write down the steps and the expected runs a month, multiply, and price that number on each vendor’s page. Start on the tool your team will actually maintain, but if one workflow will run thousands of times, move it to a per-run or per-user meter before it becomes the biggest line on the bill. ## If you are buying this in India All four list prices in dollars or euros, though Zapier’s page includes INR among the currencies it can show.[1] A foreign vendor with no Indian entity supplies an OIDAR service: a GST-registered business pays the 18% itself under reverse charge and claims it back.[5] Make states its hosting as AWS in the EU or North America;[2] self-hosted n8n is the only one of the four you can keep on an Indian server. That matters because an automation tool holds working credentials for every app it touches and copies customer data between them. The DPDP Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, with the security-safeguard and breach-notice duties applying from 13 May 2027,[6] and CERT-In’s Directions of 28 April 2022 already require a reportable incident to be reported within six hours.[7] Keep a list of which workflow holds which key. TechBag quotes these tools with an Indian GST invoice where the vendor allows resale. How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 Plan prices and metering rules are read from Internet Archive copies of each vendor’s pricing page captured between 25 and 30 September 2026, at the lowest price each page displayed. Runs per month are TechBag arithmetic for one five-step workflow with no filters, routers or AI steps, which each vendor meters differently. Zapier’s tier prices above 750 tasks are set by a selector the archive did not capture, so they are not used. The original’s survey figures were removed because no primary source could be found. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [Zapier, Plans and pricing, Internet Archive copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20260925220911/https://zapier.com/pricing) — captured 25 September 2026 2. [Make, Pricing, Internet Archive copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20260930022556/https://www.make.com/en/pricing) — captured 30 September 2026 3. [n8n, Plans and pricing, Internet Archive copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20260925145227/https://n8n.io/pricing/) — captured 25 September 2026 4. [Microsoft, Power Automate pricing, Internet Archive copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20260929055623/https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-automate/pricing) — captured 29 September 2026 5. [India Briefing, OIDAR services: GST and reverse charge](https://india-briefing.com/news/tax-digital-services-oidar-in-india-gst-applicability-and-compliance-22465.html) — 29 September 2023 6. [Legismith Partners, DPDP Rules 2025 commencement timeline](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — notified 13 November 2025 7. [CERT-In, Directions under section 70B(6) of the IT Act (six-hour reporting)](https://www.cert-in.org.in/Directions70B.jsp) — 28 April 2022 **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [Slack Workflow Builder and platform](https://www.thetechbag.com/slack/slack-workflow-platform) — the no-code automation already inside the chat tool, against Power Automate and Zapier - [HubSpot Data Hub](https://www.thetechbag.com/hubspot/hubspot-data-hub) — CRM-native sync and automation, and where Zapier's broader connector library wins - [Developer tools guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/devops/developer-tools) — for when a workflow outgrows no-code and needs a repository and a pipeline