Cheapest Zapier alternatives, task limits included

Zapier's task-based ladder

Our scenario: single user, monthly billing. Zapier's free plan includes 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps only — enough to test the idea, not run a business on. Professional starts from $19.99/month (the exact price scales with your selected task tier) and unlocks multi-step Zaps, unlimited premium apps, webhooks and AI fields — its free plan already includes Zapier Copilot for building simple Zaps. Team starts from $69/month for 25 seats, with shared workflows and SAML SSO, and Enterprise goes further still with unlimited users and advanced admin controls at a price Zapier only quotes on request. Pipedream is also listed in this category for developers, but our research hasn't captured any of its plans or capabilities yet, so we can't state a price for it — a research gap worth flagging rather than filling in with a guess.

Cheaper no-code automation with the same shape

Make's free plan gives 1,000 credits a month; Core is $9/month at the 10,000-credit tier (scales with credit volume) with unlimited active scenarios and a 1-minute scheduling interval, and Pro is $16/month at the same credit tier with priority execution; Teams is $29/month for shared scenario templates and team roles. IFTTT's Pro plan is $35.88/year, billed annually only — about $2.99/month, the cheapest paid tier in the category — for 20 applets and webhooks; Pro+ is $107.88/year (about $8.99/month) for unlimited applets.

Integrately's Starter plan is $19.99/month billed annually ($239.88/year) for 2,000 tasks, up from its free plan's 100 tasks and single-step-only automations. Albato's Pro plan is $22/month ($15/month billed annually) for 1,000 transactions. All four match Zapier's free-to-paid shape — a free tier to try it, a cheap paid tier to run it for real.

Free tiers to test before paying anyone

Every tool here has a real free plan, not just a trial. Zapier: 100 tasks/month, two-step Zaps. Make: 1,000 credits/month across 2 active scenarios. IFTTT's free plan covers 2 Applets at standard speed — the paid jump exists because 2 Applets is a genuinely small number. Integrately's free plan gives 100 tasks but restricts you to single-step automations, the same ceiling Zapier's free plan puts on multi-step Zaps. Albato's free plan is more generous at the entry point: 100 transactions/month across 5 active automations, 1 team seat, no card required.

Self-hosting removes the subscription entirely

n8n's Community Edition is free, open source and self-hosted — no monthly fee, though you run the server. Its own cloud pricing runs higher than Zapier's equivalent tier: Starter is about $23/month billed annually (≈$280/year, converted from a EUR price) for 2,500 executions a month, Pro is about $58/month annually (≈$700/year) for 10,000 executions, and Business is about $778/month annually (≈$9,337/year) for 40,000 executions with SSO — all three are currency conversions the seed flags as uncertain, so treat them as approximate. Activepieces offers the same self-hosted choice: a free single-user cloud plan, a fully free self-hosted Community Edition with no cap on runs or users (though it excludes AI agents, chat and the team/SSO layer), or Plus cloud at $16/month billed yearly ($192/year) for 5 seats if you'd rather not run the server yourself; its Team tier is $166/month billed yearly ($1,992/year) for 25 users, with additional seats at $25/user/month beyond that.

AI-agent automation is priced as a different product

Gumloop and Lindy sit in a different subtype — AI agents that act rather than workflows that trigger — and price accordingly. Neither has a free plan, unlike Zapier, Make or IFTTT. Gumloop's Pro plan is $37/month for 20,000 credits, with unlimited agents and seats, plus an 8% orchestration fee on top. Lindy's Plus plan is $29.99/month per user for 3,000 credits, climbing to $99.99/month (Pro, 15,000 credits) and $199.99/month (Max, 35,000 credits) per user. At the top, Workato publishes no price at all — quote-based, typically five figures a year — the expensive enterprise anchor the rest of this category is priced against.