Zapier overage cost: what happens past your task limit (monthly vs annual)
1,500 runs a month, 2 billable actions each (3,000 tasks), on monthly billing.
- This workload is 3,000 Zapier tasks, 4,500 Make credits or 1,500 n8n executions a month.
- Cheapest verified option: Make (Core 10,000 credits) at $10.59/month, $254.16 over 24 months.
- The priciest ranked option is Zapier at $133.50/month: $1,474.92 more per year than the cheapest.
- n8n Cloud (Starter) has no exact verified price here (TODO-verify), so it is not ranked.
- On annual billing the same 3,000 tasks cost Professional 2,000 tasks + pay-per-task overage at $79.63/mo; overage is 1.25x the base rate on annual vs 2.5x on monthly.
Cheapest
Make Core 10,000 credits: $10.59/mo
Your workload in each vendor's unit: 3,000 Zapier tasks · 4,500 Make credits · 1,500 n8n executions per month (monthly billing).
| # | Option | Plan | Per month | Per year | 24-mo TCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Make cheapest | Core 10,000 credits | $10.59 | $127.08 | $254.16 |
| 2 | Zapier | Professional 5,000 tasks | $133.50 | $1,602.00 | $3,204.00 |
Prices exclude VAT/sales tax.
Not ranked (no exact verified price)
- n8n Cloud — Starter TODO-verify Starter price on monthly billing is TODO-verify (only annual is published).
Self-hosted n8n Community shown, never ranked
The software is free with no execution cap. Infrastructure cost is TODO-verify (only a single secondary source so far). Self-hosting is cheaper than the cheapest ranked option (Make, $10.59/mo) only if your server plus your time costs less than that.
The catch, per option
- Zapier — Professional 5,000 tasksOverage: Pay-per-task overage (opt-in) is about $0.0668 per task (2.5x the base rate on monthly billing); Zaps pause at 15,000 tasks (3x the plan).
- Every successful billable action is a task; triggers and built-in steps (Filter/Formatter/Path) cost 0 tasks.
- Free is two-step only (trigger + 1 action, no built-in steps, no webhooks).
- Make — Core 10,000 creditsOverage: Scenarios stop at the credit limit; upgrade, buy credit packs or go Enterprise. No overage dollar amount is modeled.
- 1 credit per module action including the trigger read; Router and error handlers are free and are not entered (1 trigger + 2 billable actions per run).
- When credits run out, scenarios stop; unused credits expire.
- Monthly price is Make's published monthly price (about annual / 0.85).
- Same volume on Pro: $18.82/mo; Teams: $34.12/mo.
- n8n Cloud — Starter
- One execution = one whole workflow run, so step count does not change the price.
- No auto-overage on Starter/Pro-1: upgrade or one-time reset.
- Priced in EUR; converted with the exchange rate you set.