9 Best Zapier Alternatives in 2026

The short answer, by reason for leaving

Most people searching for a Zapier replacement are leaving for one of three reasons, and each points somewhere different.

• The bill. Make is the nearest like-for-like move. Pabbly Connect is worth a look if you need a large task allowance on a small budget.
• Control over data and cost. Self-host n8n or the Activepieces Community Edition, and per-run fees stop mattering.
• You already pay for Microsoft 365. Price Power Automate before buying anything, because the licence may already cover what you need.

Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 25 September 2026. To see these tools side by side with their plans and limits, browse the workflow automation tools in our directory.

Fix the Zap before you change the tool

Zapier has a specific failure mode. It is the fastest way to get an automation working, so teams build a lot of them quickly, and then the invoice makes switching feel urgent.

Sometimes it is. Often it is not, and the cheaper fix takes an afternoon.

Zapier meters tasks. Its pricing page, read on 25 September 2026, says each successful action in a Zap counts as a separate task, while checking for new data, Filter, Formatter, Paths, Delay, Looping and Digest steps do not. The allowance is 100 tasks a month on the free plan, 750 on Professional at $29.99 a month (or $19.99 a month billed yearly), and 2,000 on Team at $103.50 a month (or $69 billed yearly). So the bill is roughly runs multiplied by action steps, and you control both more than you think.

Put the filter straight after the trigger. Because filters are free, the only question is where they sit. A filter placed after two actions lets both actions run, and bill, before it stops anything. The same filter straight after the trigger stops the run first. A Zap that fires two hundred times a day but matters twenty times should pay for twenty runs of actions, not two hundred.

Batch the chatty actions. A Zap that posts one Slack message per new row spends a task per row. Digest steps do not count as tasks, so collecting the rows into one daily summary turns hundreds of actions into one.

Remove actions nobody reads. Look for steps that write to a sheet no one opens or notify a channel everyone muted. Each one is a task on every run.

Open your task history and sort by consumption. If two or three Zaps account for most of it, fix those first. If the bill still does not fit after that, the pricing shape is wrong for you, and the list below is where to look. Our Zapier directory entry keeps its current plans in one place if you want a baseline to compare against.

How we chose these nine

We started from the workflow automation category of the Automate Basics directory and kept a tool only if it met all four tests. We added Zoho Flow, which is not yet in the directory, because it is the Zoho-suite equivalent of Power Automate and a real option for teams already on Zoho:

1. It does Zapier's job. It connects business apps with triggers and actions, not only one vendor's own products.
2. You can check the price. Its pricing page was readable on 25 September 2026, and we note where it publishes no prices at all.
3. It is still running. Relay.app is left out because its homepage says the service shut down in September 2026. Pipedream is left out because its pricing page showed us no plans when we read it, and its homepage now presents it as an integration layer for AI agents rather than a Zapier-style builder.
4. It fits a real reason to leave. Each entry says who it suits and where it falls short.

The order is our editorial judgement of which tool a small team leaving Zapier should look at first. It is not a score, and no vendor paid to be listed. Prices change often, so treat every figure as a snapshot and open the linked pricing page before you buy.

Zapier alternatives compared

1. Make

Best for: teams leaving Zapier because of the bill who want the same way of working.

Make is the most natural landing spot because nothing conceptual changes. Triggers, actions, filters and multi-step flows all carry over, so you learn an interface rather than a discipline. It also handles branching, looping over lists and re-running a single failed step, which are the places multi-step Zaps get awkward.

The difference is the meter. Make's pricing page, read on 25 September 2026, starts Core at $9 a month for 10,000 credits with unlimited active scenarios and a one-minute minimum interval; the page says annual billing saves 15% or more, so check which billing view you are reading. A Make credit and a Zapier task are not identical units, but both roughly track one action, which is why the entry allowance goes further. The free plan gives 1,000 credits a month on 2 active scenarios, with runs no closer than 15 minutes apart. Make says it connects to over 3,000 apps.

Where it falls short: each module action spends a credit, so long scenarios still cost more than short ones. The canvas, with modules wired together on a board, takes a day or two to feel natural. There is no import from Zapier, so you rebuild workflow by workflow. See Make's plans and limits, or the head-to-head in Zapier vs Make.

Source: Make pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

2. n8n

Best for: high-volume workflows, and teams that do not want their data passing through a third-party platform.

n8n changes what you pay for. Its pricing page counts whole workflow executions "with unlimited steps", so a ten-step workflow costs the same as a two-step one. The hosted Starter plan covers 2,500 executions a month and Pro covers 10,000, at €20 and €50 a month billed yearly (the page showed us euro prices; the currency depends on where you view it). Both hosted plans offer a free trial with no card.

The bigger change is self-hosting. The Community Edition is free to run on your own server, which keeps every credential and every record on infrastructure you control. For client data or regulated records, that is the whole argument.

Where it falls short: someone has to maintain the server, apply upgrades and answer the alert when it stops. SSO and environments sit on the self-hosted Business plan, which the page listed at €667 a month billed yearly. New to it? Start with the n8n basics guide, then connecting Claude to n8n for an AI step inside a workflow. Plans are on n8n's directory page.

Source: n8n pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

3. Activepieces

Best for: small teams that want an open-source option with a hosted plan to start on.

Activepieces sits between Make and n8n. You can use its hosted cloud or run the open-source Community Edition from GitHub yourself. On 25 September 2026 the free cloud plan gave 100 credits a day for one user, including flows, agents, tables and MCP access. Plus cost $20 a month for 10,000 credits and up to 5 users, and Team cost $200 a month for 50,000 credits, 25 users and SSO. Extra credits on both were $0.007 each.

A daily allowance suits workflows that run a little every day better than ones that burst at month-end, so check your pattern before relying on the free plan.

Where it falls short: its catalogue of integrations is smaller than Zapier's, so confirm every app you need has a connector before you commit. The Community Edition is the automation core only, and team features sit on paid plans. Details are on the Activepieces page.

Source: Activepieces pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

4. Pabbly Connect

Best for: budget-minded teams that need thousands of simple tasks a month.

Pabbly Connect competes on volume per dollar. Its Standard plan includes 10,000 tasks a month, and like Zapier it does not count internal steps such as Filter, Router, Text Formatter, Iterator and JSON Extractor as tasks. For a team that has already cleaned up its Zaps and still needs thousands of simple actions a month, the task allowance per plan is the number to compare.

The free plan gives 100 tasks a month with no card, and Standard gives 10,000 tasks a month. It also sells one-payment lifetime plans with monthly caps of 3,000, 10,000 or 20,000 tasks.

Where it falls short: the page is priced by region, and it showed us rupee prices marked as discounted from a higher figure, so check the price in your own currency at checkout. A lifetime plan is a bet on the vendor still running the product years from now. Compare its limits on Pabbly Connect's directory page.

Source: Pabbly Connect pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

5. Microsoft Power Automate

Best for: teams whose work happens in Outlook, SharePoint, Teams and Excel.

If your stack is mostly Microsoft 365, price this before anything else. Inside a Microsoft tenant it has access no third-party tool matches, and your IT team already manages the identities it runs under.

Its pricing page, read on 25 September 2026, lists Premium at $15 per user a month, paid yearly, covering cloud flows, attended desktop flows, and process and task mining with 50 MB of data. Unattended desktop bots are priced separately at $150 per bot a month, or $215 on a Microsoft-hosted machine. A 30-day trial covers UI-based cloud flows and standard connectors.

Where it falls short: it is harder to learn than Zapier and clumsy with non-Microsoft apps, and per-user pricing adds up across a team. The two tools are set side by side in Zapier vs Power Automate, and our Power Automate alternatives guide covers the move in the other direction. Plans are on the Power Automate page.

Source: Microsoft Power Automate pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

6. Zoho Flow

Best for: businesses that already run on Zoho CRM, Books or Desk.

Zoho Flow is to the Zoho suite what Power Automate is to Microsoft: it connects the house apps closely and reaches outside them too. Its pricing page counts a task as each successful action in a flow. The free edition allows up to 5 flows and 100 tasks a month, Standard starts at 5,000 tasks a month with 15-minute polling, and Professional starts at 10,000 tasks with 5-minute polling and premium apps. A 15-day trial of all premium features needs no card.

Where it falls short: outside Zoho there is little reason to start here. The page did not render its prices when we read it on 25 September 2026, so we cannot quote them; check the Zoho Flow pricing page directly. It is not yet in our directory, so there is no Automate Basics page for it.

7. IFTTT

Best for: personal automations, phones and smart-home devices.

IFTTT meters differently from everything else on this list: by the number of Applets you keep, not by runs. The free plan allows 2 Applets with unlimited runs. Pro costs $35.88 a year ($2.99 a month) for 20 Applets with multi-action Applets, and Pro+ costs $107.88 a year ($8.99 a month) for unlimited Applets, filter code and AI services, per its plans page on 25 September 2026.

If your Zapier use is a handful of personal jobs, such as saving attachments or posting a notification, that can be far cheaper.

Where it falls short: it is not built for business processes with branching, shared team workspaces or approval steps, and multi-action Applets need a paid plan. Plans are on IFTTT's directory page.

Source: IFTTT pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

8. Gumloop

Best for: teams whose automations are mostly AI work, such as research, summaries and lead qualification.

Gumloop is built around AI agents rather than simple app-to-app steps. Its pricing page, read on 25 September 2026, starts Pro at $37 a month with 20,000 credits (7,400 plus 12,600 bonus credits), unlimited seats and a 14-day trial. Seats and teams are unlimited. Credits are valued at $0.005 each, and Gumloop adds an 8% orchestration fee on the full list cost of each task. Bringing your own model API key drops the token part of that cost to zero, but raises the orchestration fee from 8% to 16%.

Where it falls short: there is no free plan, and when the monthly credits run out, agents stop unless you have turned on pay-as-you-go, which is off by default. Unused credits do not roll over. For plain "new row, send email" workflows it is more tool than you need. See the Gumloop page.

Source: Gumloop pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

9. Workato

Best for: larger companies that need governed integration across CRM, ERP and finance systems.

Workato is the enterprise end of the market. If you have a compliance function and an IT team that signs off on every connection, it may be the only tool here that satisfies them.

Where it falls short: its pricing page publishes no prices and no self-serve plan; it asks you to book a demo. A small team will know within one visit that it is not the audience. More on Workato's directory page.

Source: Workato pricing page, read 25 September 2026.

What migration actually costs

Three things people underestimate:

Rebuild time is the real number, not subscription savings. Workflows do not port between any of these tools. Count your active Zaps, multiply by the honest time to rebuild and re-test each, and set that against the yearly saving. For five simple Zaps the sum is easy. For forty, it is a project.

Reconnecting every app. Each connection means finding credentials again, getting an admin to approve access again and re-testing permissions. This is what turns a two-hour move into a two-week one.

Running both for a while. Keep the old Zap off but not deleted until the new workflow has survived a full cycle, including month-end or the busy Monday. Budget for the overlap.

If you are weighing the three most common picks against each other, Zapier vs Make vs n8n vs ChatGPT walks through the trade-offs in one place.

Move one workflow at a time

Take the single Zap consuming the most tasks. Rebuild that one in whichever tool your reason for leaving points at, run both in parallel for two weeks, then switch the Zapier one off.

Within that fortnight you will know whether the new platform suits you, and you will have found out without betting the whole operation on a comparison table. To shortlist, open the workflow automation category and compare the plans of the two tools that match your reason for leaving.

Try this now

Open your Zapier task history and sort by consumption before you compare anything. If two Zaps account for most of the bill, the fix is those two Zaps, not a new platform.