Make vs n8n
 Make |  n8n | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 44/100 | 53/100 |
| Rank in category | #3 | #1 |
| Rated comments | 31 | 40 |
| Best for | Non-technical teams and beginners building multi-step automations; Freelancers who hand finished workflows to non-technical clients; Users who have outgrown Zapier's pricing or simple linear flows | Technical builders and automation agencies who want code-level control; High-volume workflows where per-step pricing would get expensive; Teams that want to self-host and keep data on their own infrastructure |
| Skip it if | High-volume or very complex scenarios where per-module credits add up; Teams that need to self-host; Developers who want heavy custom code or agent-style AI workflows | Non-technical users who want true no-code; Anyone unwilling to patch, secure and maintain a self-hosted instance |
| Starting price | $9/mo | 20€/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Free plan with 1,000 credits/month. Paid plans shown at 10,000 credits/month: Core $9/mo, Pro $16/mo, Teams $29/mo; Enterprise is custom. Credits replaced operations as the billing unit; most module actions use 1 credit and unused credits expire at the end of the term. The page says annual prepay is cheaper (badged "Save 15%"). | Self-hosted Community Edition is free. Cloud plans billed annually: Starter 20€/mo (2.5k executions), Pro 50€/mo (10k executions); Business 667€/mo (40k executions, self-hosted only); Enterprise via sales. Executions count whole workflow runs, not steps. Annual billing saves 17%; cloud trial needs no card. |
Independent users see Make as the middle ground: easier than n8n for non-coders and cheaper and better at branching logic than Zapier, which is why freelancers hand it to non-technical clients. The main complaint is cost as scenarios grow, sharpened by the switch to per-module credits that some users say raised their bills overnight; with no self-hosting option, many who got more technical moved to n8n. The corpus leans heavily on r/n8n, so it over-represents people who left, and about a sixth of the 100 comments were promotional, including a run of near-identical 'I've seen zapier and integromat, X came up too' comments seeding unrelated products.
Users like
- Easier for non-coders to start with than n8n, and simple enough that non-technical clients can edit their own workflows[1][2][3][4][5]
- Seen as better than Zapier for branching, multi-step logic, easier to build and debug in, and cheaper at volume[1][2][3][4]
- The free tier and sign-in-only setup make it easy to try before committing[1][2]
- Small-business users report it running real day-to-day jobs: inbox summaries saving an owner about 3 hours a day, Trello sales automations, review collection into Airtable, and an AI receptionist built with Retell[1][2][3][4]
Users complain about
- Costs climb quickly once scenarios get complex or high-volume, because every module consumes an operation or credit[1][2][3][4][5]
- The move to a credit model raised bills for existing users; one says costs jumped about 30% overnight when previously free modules started using credits[1][2]
- Cloud-only, with no self-hosting, so users are tied to its pricing[1][2]
- Users who need more technical depth or AI agent workflows find it limiting and move to n8n[1][2][3][4][5]
Independent users are largely positive: self-hosting keeps running costs low and flat, code nodes and branching handle logic that simpler tools cannot, and many now build workflows by having Claude drive n8n through its MCP server. The trade-off is that it is not really no-code, and self-hosters own the operational work, from security patches on exposed instances to expiring OAuth tokens and a bloating executions database. The sample leans heavily on r/n8n and r/selfhosted; about one in eight comments was promotional, including three accounts steering one thread toward the Blotato scheduler and plugs for Kareenos, Windmill, Ayrshare and a cheap VPS host.
Users like
- Self-hosting keeps costs low and flat: users run it on a Raspberry Pi or a small VPS for a few dollars a month, and pricing is per workflow run rather than per step[1][2][3][4][5]
- Code nodes, loops and branching handle complex logic and odd data transformations without workarounds[1][2][3][4]
- Works well with AI assistants: users have Claude build and fix workflows through the n8n MCP server, though it still makes mistakes on complex expressions[1][2][3][4]
- Execution logs and the visual flow make it easy to find the slow or failing step and to hand workflows to non-technical clients[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Steeper learning curve than Make or Zapier, and self-hosting is beyond most people's idea of no-code[1][2][3][4][5]
- Self-hosters carry the security risk: it has had pre-auth remote code execution CVEs, and webhook endpoints stay publicly reachable by design[1][2]
- Ongoing maintenance: Google OAuth apps left in testing mode expire tokens every seven days and stop workflows, and an unpruned executions database (1.66 GB in one case) slows the instance[1][2]
- Some developers find it unnecessary or limiting next to plain code, CI tools or AI coding agents[1][2][3][4]