Every comparison of these three tools is written for an American business. They compare feature lists and app counts, and they conclude with something like "it depends on your needs."
For an Indian business, the decision usually turns on three questions those articles never ask: what does this actually cost at my volume in rupees, where does my data physically live, and do I have anyone who can maintain it?
Here's the version that answers those.
The one difference that decides most of it
Forget features for a moment. The structural difference between these tools is how you're charged.
Zapier and Make charge per task or per operation. Every step your workflow runs consumes credit. Run a workflow more often, or make it do more steps, and the bill goes up.
n8n is open source and can be self-hosted. You pay for a server. The workflow can run ten times a day or ten thousand times a day and the server cost is the same. (n8n also sells a hosted cloud version with its own pricing — self-hosting is the option that changes the economics.)
For a low-volume workflow, this barely matters. For a business automating something that runs constantly — every order, every enquiry, every message — it's the whole decision.
The perverse thing about per-task pricing: the more successful your automation is, the more it costs you. A workflow that saves you two hours a day is one that runs a lot, which is exactly the workflow that gets expensive. We've seen businesses deliberately run workflows less often to control a bill, which defeats the purpose entirely.
What each one actually costs in India
n8n, self-hosted. A VPS capable of running n8n for a small-to-mid business is available in India for roughly ₹1,000–₹3,000 per month — a figure Indian n8n agencies publish openly. That's your infrastructure. Executions are effectively unlimited. What you're really paying for is setup and maintenance: Indian agencies publish setup fees in the ₹15,000–₹80,000 range with monthly management retainers of ₹3,000–₹15,000 depending on complexity.
Note that n8n hosting india and hostinger n8n india are common search terms in India — self-hosting on cheap Indian VPS infrastructure is already normal behaviour here, not an exotic choice.
Make. Priced per operation with tiered plans in US dollars. Cheaper per operation than Zapier, and its visual builder handles branching and iteration well. For an Indian business the practical issue is that the bill is in dollars, subject to exchange rates, and scales with volume.
Zapier. The most polished, the largest app catalogue, the easiest for a non-technical person to use — and comfortably the most expensive per task of the three. For a small number of simple, low-volume connections it's excellent value because you'll never need help. For anything high-volume it's the priciest option by a wide margin.
Rough rule of thumb: below a few thousand runs a month, the difference between the three is small enough that convenience should decide. Above roughly ten thousand runs a month, self-hosted n8n is dramatically cheaper and the gap widens with every increase in volume.
Check current pricing on each vendor's site before deciding — all three change their plans. The structural difference (per-task vs per-server) is what's stable.
Where your data sits
This is the question Indian articles skip and Indian businesses should not.
With Zapier and Make, your data passes through their infrastructure, which is largely outside India. Every record the workflow touches — customer names, phone numbers, invoice values, patient appointment details — transits a third-party service abroad.
With self-hosted n8n, you choose the server. Put it on an Indian VPS and your data never leaves the country and never touches a third party's systems.
For a lot of businesses this is irrelevant. For some it's decisive:
- CA and accounting firms handling client financial data
- Clinics and diagnostics handling patient information
- Jewellery and high-value retail handling customer and inventory records
- Anyone with a client contract that specifies where data may be processed
India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 creates real obligations around personal data. Self-hosting doesn't automatically make you compliant, but it removes an entire category of question you'd otherwise have to answer about cross-border transfer.
Honest comparison
| n8n (self-hosted) | Make | Zapier | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Server cost only, ~₹1,000–3,000/mo. Unlimited runs | Per operation, USD, tiered | Per task, USD, tiered — most expensive |
| Where data sits | Your server, your choice of country | Their infrastructure, largely outside India | Their infrastructure, largely outside India |
| Setup difficulty | Needs a developer or an agency | Moderate — a capable non-developer manages | Easiest — genuinely non-technical |
| Maintenance | You or your agency. Updates, backups, uptime | None — they run it | None — they run it |
| Ready-made connectors | Good, growing | Very good | Best in class |
| Custom code inside a workflow | Yes — full JavaScript/Python | Limited | Very limited |
| Complex logic, loops, branching | Strongest | Good | Weakest |
| Building AI agents | Strong native support | Improving | Basic |
| If it breaks at 11pm | Your problem (or your agency's) | Their problem | Their problem |
| Vendor lock-in | None — open source, your server, your data | Real | Real |
| Best for | High volume, custom logic, sensitive data, AI agents | Mid volume, visual builders, moderate complexity | Low volume, simple connections, no technical help available |
Which to pick
Pick Zapier if you're connecting two or three mainstream SaaS tools, the workflow runs a few hundred times a month, nobody in your business writes code, and you'd rather pay more than think about it. This is a completely legitimate choice and a lot of businesses over-engineer past it for no reason.
Pick Make if your workflows have real branching and iteration, you're at moderate volume, you have someone reasonably technical who enjoys visual builders, and the data isn't especially sensitive.
Pick self-hosted n8n if any of these are true:
- The workflow will run thousands of times a month
- You're building AI agents or anything with an LLM in the loop
- You need custom code inside the workflow
- Your data is sensitive or your clients ask where it's processed
- You want to own the system outright with no per-task bill
- You have a developer, or you're working with an agency who'll maintain it
Pick a combination if that's what fits. There's nothing wrong with Zapier handling three simple SaaS connections while n8n runs your high-volume order pipeline. Tool loyalty is not a business strategy.
"Is n8n dead?" and other things people ask
A few questions come up often enough to answer directly.
Is n8n free? The self-hosted community edition is free to use under its licence. You pay for the server it runs on and for anyone who sets it up and maintains it. There's also a paid cloud version and paid enterprise features. "Free" means no per-task fee, not no cost.
Is n8n still relevant? It's one of the most actively developed tools in this category and its AI agent capabilities are among the strongest available in a workflow tool. The "is n8n dead" question shows up in search mostly because of licence-model debates, not because the project stopped.
What happens if my n8n server goes down? Your workflows stop. This is the genuine trade-off of self-hosting. Mitigate it with monitoring, alerting and backups — which any competent agency will set up as standard. If nobody in the conversation is talking about monitoring, that's a warning sign.
Can I move from Zapier to n8n later? Yes, but workflows don't transfer automatically — they're rebuilt. If you expect to reach high volume, it's worth considering that at the start rather than migrating twenty workflows later.
What we build on, and why
We build most client work on self-hosted n8n, for four reasons: the client owns the system outright, there's no per-task bill that grows as the automation succeeds, we can drop custom code in wherever a workflow needs something no connector provides, and the data stays on infrastructure the client controls — which matters a great deal to the CA firms, clinics and jewellery businesses we work with.
That's a preference, not a rule. When a client has three simple connections, low volume and nobody technical, we've told them to use Zapier and not pay us. That's the right answer sometimes, and an agency that never gives it is selling you their preference rather than solving your problem.
Key takeaways
- The real difference is the charging model: Zapier and Make charge per task; self-hosted n8n charges you for a server, roughly ₹1,000–₹3,000/month, with unlimited runs.
- Per-task pricing punishes success — the workflows that save you the most time are the ones that run most often, and cost most.
- Below a few thousand runs a month, pick on convenience. Above ten thousand, self-hosted n8n is dramatically cheaper.
- Data location is decisive for some industries. Self-hosted n8n on an Indian server keeps client and patient data in India; Zapier and Make route it through infrastructure abroad.
- Self-hosting's genuine trade-off is that uptime becomes your responsibility. Insist on monitoring, alerting and backups.
- Using more than one tool is fine. Tool loyalty is not a strategy.
Not sure which one fits your situation?
Tell us what you're trying to automate and roughly how often it'll run. We'll tell you which tool makes sense — including when the answer is "use Zapier and don't hire us." Then, if it's worth building, we'll give you a fixed price for it.
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Related: Workflow automation services · What automation actually costs in India · Connecting Tally to your other systems