What Workflow Automation Costs in 2026
For a five-person company running three modest automations, the software runs about $45 to $110 a month at September 2026 list prices. The four hours of monthly maintenance cost roughly $149 at the federal rate for small employers, making labor the larger line item.
For a five-person company running three modest automations, the software costs roughly $46 to $110 a month — Make's share re-read on 27 October 2026, Zapier's on 28 October, the rest in September. The person who maintains it costs more than that — about $151 a month at four hours of upkeep, using the federal average for employer compensation costs. The software line is the part everyone budgets for and the smaller of the two.
Below is the full arithmetic, with every price checked against the vendor's own page and the reading date given with the sources.
The number that decides your bill is not the price
Three major platforms bill for three different things, and the difference is larger than the difference in sticker price.
- Zapier bills per task. Its help documentation defines a task as "any successful action that runs in Zapier," and notes that "Zap triggers never use tasks" and that filters and paths do not count either (Zapier help, checked September 2026).
- Make bills per operation. Make defines an operation as "a single module run to process data or check for new data," and notes that a module's operation count depends on how many bundles it processes — "each module runs one or more times, resulting in 1 or more operations" (Make Help Center, checked September 2026).
- n8n bills per execution. n8n defines an execution as "a single run of an entire workflow" and states plainly that "it does not matter how many nodes or steps the workflow has" (n8n, checked September 2026).
A workflow with six steps that runs 400 times a month consumes roughly 2,000 tasks on Zapier, roughly 2,400 operations on Make, and 400 executions on n8n. Same work. A sixfold difference in billable units.
A realistic workload for five people
Take three automations that a small ops team plausibly runs.
- Lead intake. Web form fires, record created in the CRM, Slack notification, confirmation email, row appended to a tracking sheet. Four actions after the trigger. 400 runs a month.
- Overdue invoice nudge. Runs every business day, pulls about 30 overdue invoices, and for each one sends an email and logs it. 22 runs a month, 30 records per run, 2 actions per record.
- Weekly report. Pulls data, computes, formats, emails. About six steps. 4 runs a month.
| Workflow | Zapier tasks | Make operations | n8n executions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead intake | 400 × 4 = 1,600 | 400 × 5 = 2,000 | 400 |
| Invoice nudge | 22 × 30 × 2 = 1,320 | 22 × (1 + 30 × 2) = 1,342 | 22 |
| Weekly report | 4 × 6 = 24 | 4 × 7 = 28 | 4 |
| Monthly total | 2,944 | 3,370 | 426 |
The Make column includes the trigger module, which Make counts as an operation; Zapier's column does not, because Zapier documents triggers as free. The n8n column is just the number of runs.
Before you compare prices, count your billable units. Two vendors quoting the same dollar figure can bill you six times apart.
List prices
| Product | Price | Included volume | Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier Free | $0 | 100 tasks/mo | 1 |
| Zapier Professional | From $19.99/mo billed annually | From 750 tasks/mo | 1 |
| Zapier Team | From $69/mo billed annually | From 2,000 tasks/mo | 25 |
| Make Free | $0 | 1,000 credits/mo | Unlimited |
| Make Core | $10.59/mo billed monthly | 10,000 credits/mo | Unlimited |
| Make Pro | $18.82/mo billed monthly | 10,000 credits/mo | Unlimited |
| n8n Starter | €20/mo billed annually | 2,500 executions/mo | Unlimited |
| n8n Pro | €50/mo billed annually | 10,000 executions/mo | Unlimited |
| Power Automate Premium | $15/user/mo paid yearly | Cloud flows plus attended desktop flows | Per user |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7/user/mo paid yearly | Web and mobile apps, Teams | Per user |
Sources, all checked September 2026 except Make's two monthly prices, re-read on 27 October 2026, and the Zapier ladder, re-read on 28 October 2026: Zapier pricing, Make pricing, n8n pricing, Power Automate pricing, and Microsoft 365 Business plans.
One note on the Make rows. Make now states the conversion on its own pricing page: "Each module action in your scenario, like adding a Google Sheet row or fetching Gmail account data, counts as one credit." So 10,000 credits is 10,000 module actions, not 10,000 scenario runs — a five-module scenario spends five credits every time it fires. The conversion sentence was read 8 September 2026 and the two Make prices above were re-read on 27 October 2026, both at Make pricing; the full ladder at every published tier is in Make credits explained.
What Zapier costs above the entry tier
The "from $19.99" figure is the bottom of a slider, and the slider is where the real money is. Zapier prices Professional and Team from an interactive task-tier control that a plain fetch of the page cannot read; driven in a browser on 4 September 2026 and again on 28 October 2026, in US dollars, it produces the following. The seven priced stops read in September are unchanged to the cent; the other ten were read in October. Team is not sold below 2,000 tasks, which is why its two lowest cells are empty. The two right-hand columns are the same plans billed monthly instead of yearly, which is what the page's "Save 33%" refers to.
| Tasks/month | Professional, billed yearly | Team, billed yearly | Professional, billed monthly | Team, billed monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 (Free) | $0 | — | $0 | — |
| 750 | $19.99 | — | $29.99 | — |
| 1,500 | $39 | — | $58.50 | — |
| 2,000 | $49 | $69 | $73.50 | $103.50 |
| 5,000 | $89 | $119 | $133.50 | $178.50 |
| 10,000 | $129 | $169 | $193.50 | $253.50 |
| 20,000 | $189 | $249 | $283.50 | $373.50 |
| 50,000 | $289 | $399 | $433.50 | $598.50 |
| 100,000 | $489 | $599 | $733.50 | $898.50 |
| 200,000 | $769 | $999 | $1,149 | $1,499 |
| 300,000 | $1,069 | $1,199 | $1,599 | $1,799 |
| 400,000 | $1,269 | $1,399 | $1,899 | $2,099 |
| 500,000 | $1,499 | $1,799 | $2,199 | $2,699 |
| 750,000 | $1,999 | $2,199 | $2,999 | $3,299 |
| 1,000,000 | $2,199 | $2,499 | $3,299 | $3,749 |
| 1,500,000 | $2,999 | $3,399 | $4,499 | $5,099 |
| 1,750,000 | $3,199 | $3,799 | $4,799 | $5,699 |
| 2,000,000 | $3,389 | $3,999 | $5,099 | $5,999 |
One arithmetic note before the table is used for anything: the monthly-billed column is almost exactly 1.5× the yearly one, which is the same thing as the page's advertised "Save 33%" (1 ÷ 1.5 = 0.667). Run the discount on all 32 published pairs and 31 of them deliver 33% or better, nearly all of them landing within a hundredth of a point of 33.3%. One pair does not deliver: Professional at 500,000 tasks, $1,499 yearly against $2,199 monthly, is a discount of 31.8%. The most generous pair on the page is Professional at 2,000,000 tasks, at 33.5%. Treat the ratio as a rough test of list pricing, not a rule.
Figures read from Zapier pricing on 4 September 2026 by stepping the task-tier control through each published stop, and re-read the same way on 28 October 2026 with every figure unchanged. The table carries all seventeen priced stops, plus the free tier at the top; past them the slider has one more position, labelled "Custom task limit", with no price against it. Two things fall out of the table. The price per task improves sharply with volume — Professional on annual billing runs about 2.45 cents a task at 2,000 tasks ($49 ÷ 2,000) and about 0.17 cents at 2 million ($3,389 ÷ 2,000,000), a fourteen-fold difference — so a volume estimate that is wrong by a tier changes the bill more than the choice of plan does. And Team is not a fixed premium over Professional. Across the fifteen stops where both are sold it swings from 40.8% at 2,000 tasks to 10.0% at 750,000, with no direction to it: 38.1% at 50,000, 22.5% at 100,000, 10.2% at 400,000, back up to 20.0% at 500,000, and 18.0% at 2 million. Check the premium at the tier you will actually sit on rather than assuming it shrinks with volume.
Three monthly budgets, with the arithmetic
Assume the workload above and five people who need mailboxes.
| Line item | Arithmetic | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Option A — Make Core | ||
| Automation platform | $10.59 × 1 org | $10.59 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7 × 5 users | $35.00 |
| Subtotal | $45.59 | |
| Option B — n8n Starter | ||
| Automation platform | €20 × 1 org, billed annually in euros | €20.00 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7 × 5 users | $35.00 |
| Subtotal | Mixed currency; convert at your card's rate | $35.00 + €20.00 |
| Option C — Power Automate Premium | ||
| Power Automate Premium | $15 × 5 users | $75.00 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7 × 5 users | $35.00 |
| Subtotal | $110.00 | |
Annualized, that is $547 for Option A and $1,320 for Option C. The spread between the cheapest and the most expensive software option is about $773 a year — real money, but about twenty hours of staff time at the compensation rate in the next section.
The line item nobody budgets
Automations need maintenance: an API changes, a column gets renamed, a credential expires, someone asks for a new field. Budget four hours a month for a five-person company running three workflows. That is one hour a week, and it is the low end.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that total employer compensation costs averaged $37.64 per hour worked in June 2026 at private establishments with 1 to 49 workers — the band a five-person company sits in (BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Table 6). The all-private-industry average is higher, $46.89, but it is dominated by large employers and is the wrong number for a small business.
Four hours × $37.64 = $150.56 a month, or $1,806.72 a year. That is more than three times the Option A software bill. Use your own loaded rate if you have one — the point is the ratio, not the average.
Full picture, Option A: $45.59 software + $150.56 labor = $196.15 a month, or $2,353.80 a year.
Where budgets actually blow up
Four failure patterns, none of them visible in the arithmetic above.
Per-record loops. Look again at the invoice workflow. It runs 22 times a month and consumes over 1,300 billable units on the per-action platforms, because it touches 30 records each time. Any workflow that loops over rows is where per-task pricing gets expensive, and it is the workflow to count first.
Retries and reruns. A failing step that retries consumes units. On per-task pricing, a workflow that errors halfway through has already spent the tasks for the steps that succeeded — Zapier's definition counts successful actions, and the ones before the failure were successful.
Seat creep. Zapier's Team plan includes 25 users at its stated entry price, and Make and n8n advertise unlimited users on paid plans. Power Automate Premium is priced per user, so it scales linearly with headcount: five people is $75 a month, twelve is $180.
Premium connectors. Some integrations sit behind higher tiers on every platform. Check that your specific apps are available on the plan you priced before you commit to an annual term.
How to price your own build
- Write out each workflow as a numbered list of steps.
- Estimate runs per month, honestly, including the ones that fire at 2 a.m.
- Multiply by the vendor's unit: actions for Zapier, module runs per bundle for Make, whole runs for n8n.
- Add 30% for retries, test runs and the workflows you have not thought of yet.
- Look up the plan that covers that volume, and note the price of the tier above it — that is the one you will be on within a year.
- Add four hours a month of maintenance at your loaded rate.
Do that and the decision comes down to two cases. If your workflows are step-heavy and loop over records, per-execution pricing wins on arithmetic alone. If you run a handful of simple two-step automations, the per-task platforms are cheaper and easier to staff. Either way, the software is the small number.