If you have a small business in the US and you heard the word Zapier for the first time on a podcast or on LinkedIn, this post is for you. We're going to compare Zapier with n8n, its open-source alternative, without pushing either one. By the end you'll know which one suits you, not which one suits us as an agency.
What automation is (in 30 seconds)
Automating is asking a tool to do, on its own and always the same way, a repetitive task a person handles today. Three concrete examples from the day-to-day of a small business:
- A new email arrives at hola@yourbusiness.com, it's automatically saved to a Google spreadsheet with the date and sender, and the manager gets a WhatsApp notification.
- A customer pays an invoice through Stripe, a PDF receipt is emailed to them, the balance is updated in QuickBooks, and they're added to the active customer list in Mailchimp.
- Every Monday at 8 a.m., the new reviews from Google Business Profile are pulled, translated to Spanish if needed, and posted to the team's Slack channel.
This gets built by connecting pieces. Each piece is called a node (a block that performs an action, like reading an email or sending a message). The full chain is called a workflow. The event that kicks off the chain is called a trigger. Zapier and n8n do exactly the same thing in this sense: they let you connect nodes to build workflows that start with a trigger. What changes is how they do it, how much they cost, and where your data lives.
Zapier in 1 minute
Zapier is the best-known automation tool in the world. According to its public data, more than 5 million companies and individuals use it. It's a cloud service: you sign up, pay a monthly subscription, and everything runs on their servers. You don't need to install anything.
Approximate pricing (per current public pricing, subject to change)
- Free: around 100 tasks a month, 2-step workflows only.
- Starter: around $20 a month, up to 750 tasks, multi-step workflows.
- Professional: around $50 a month, up to 2,000 tasks, conditional logic included.
- Team: around $70 a month per user, up to 50,000 tasks, multiple users sharing workflows.
- One task = each time a node does something. A 4-step workflow that triggers 100 times a month uses 400 tasks, not 100.
What it does well
- Gentle learning curve: someone with no technical background can build their first workflow in an afternoon.
- Huge community: there are tutorials, templates and answers on Reddit for almost any common use case.
- More than 7,000 native integrations: if your CRM, your billing system or your delivery app exists, it's almost certainly in Zapier.
- Official support with an SLA on paid plans: if something breaks, you have someone to call.
What it does poorly
- The price climbs fast with volume. Going from 2,000 to 10,000 tasks a month can multiply the bill by four or five.
- Your data passes through Zapier's servers. For sensitive industries (legal, healthcare, finance) that can be a regulatory or client problem.
- Complex logic gets slow and expensive: every branch, every filter and every loop counts as extra tasks.
- Real lock-in: migrating 30 Zapier workflows to another tool is a project of weeks, not days.
n8n in 1 minute
n8n is an open-source automation tool. It does practically the same thing as Zapier, but with one key difference: you can install it on your own server (that's called self-hosted). If you install it yourself, you don't pay n8n for the executions: you only pay your server provider.
Approximate pricing (per current public pricing)
- Self-hosted: the software is free. You only pay for the server (VPS) where it runs, between $5 and $20 a month on providers like Hetzner, DigitalOcean or Linode. No execution limit.
- n8n Cloud (their managed version): starter plan around $20-25 a month, pro plan around $50 a month, with limits based on active executions.
- Unlike Zapier, n8n doesn't charge per node executed, but per full workflow executed. That changes the math in your favor at volume.
What it does well
- If you self-host it, the data lives on your infrastructure. For clinics, law firms, accountants and real estate agencies, this solves a real problem with clients who ask where their data is.
- No execution cap on self-hosted. A business moving 50,000 tasks a month pays $10 in server costs with n8n, where with Zapier it would pay hundreds.
- Supports complex logic with many branches, loops, chained filters and retries with no cost penalty.
- Lets you run inline JavaScript inside a node when you need something custom that no prebuilt node solves.
What it does poorly
- The technical curve is steeper. Without a technical background it's hard to build and maintain workflows on your own.
- Self-hosted needs someone to update the server, run backups and check on it when something breaks. That's done by an agency or an in-house developer.
- Smaller native integration catalog: around 400 versus Zapier's 7,000. For unusual tools you may have to build the integration by hand via API.
- The community is active but smaller: there are fewer tutorials in Spanish than for Zapier.
Practical comparison, criterion by criterion
A summary criterion by criterion, assuming a small business of 10 to 50 employees:
- Ease of use: Zapier wins. A person with no technical training can build basic workflows on their own. n8n requires someone technical or an agency.
- Pricing at 10,000 executions a month: n8n wins big. Self-hosted is $10-20 in server costs. Zapier at that volume runs $70-200 a month depending on the type of tasks.
- Data ownership: n8n self-hosted wins. Your data doesn't leave your infrastructure. Zapier processes it on their servers in the US.
- Native integrations: Zapier wins. 7,000 against 400 makes the difference when your tool is niche.
- Complex logic: n8n wins. Branches, loops and custom code with no price penalty.
- Official support: Zapier wins. They have a dedicated team with an SLA on paid plans. n8n self-hosted depends on the community or on your agency.
When to choose Zapier
Zapier is the right answer in these five scenarios:
- Your team is non-technical and wants full autonomy. The marketing or operations person will build and maintain the workflows without asking a developer for anything.
- Your real volume is low: under 2,000 tasks a month. At that level, paying $20-50 for Zapier is cheaper and simpler than maintaining a server with n8n.
- You need to connect a niche tool that only Zapier integrates out of the box. For example, vertical restaurant systems, event platforms or regional accounting software with little global traction.
- You're just starting and you don't yet know which automations you'll actually use. Zapier lets you test fast and drop what doesn't work without having built infrastructure.
- You operate in an industry with no strong regulation on where data lives: generic retail, marketing, events, unregulated professional services.
When to choose n8n
n8n is the right answer in these five scenarios:
- You handle sensitive data that, by regulation or by contract with your clients, can't live on third-party servers. Clinics, law firms, accountants with corporate clients.
- Your real volume is high or about to grow fast: above 5,000 executions a month. The savings accumulated against Zapier pay for the initial consulting within a few months.
- Your workflows have logic with many branches, chained conditions or need custom code. In Zapier every extra step costs money; in n8n it doesn't.
- You already work with an agency or have an in-house developer who will maintain the infrastructure. The technical barrier stops being a problem.
- You want to avoid lock-in: n8n is open source, the workflow format is exportable, and nobody can raise your price without notice or close your account.
What we use by default at Tekysoft and why
Honest disclosure: at Tekysoft we use self-hosted n8n as our default stack when we build automations for our clients. Three concrete reasons:
- Most of our clients are Hispanic businesses with customers who expect privacy: dental clinics, immigration attorneys, accountants. Having the data on their own server is a real argument in front of their end customer, not a technical subtlety.
- Our clients tend to scale from 1,000 executions a month to 20,000 in under a year once they start selling seriously. In that range, self-hosted n8n saves them hundreds a month against Zapier.
- We maintain the server and the workflows as part of the monthly maintenance. The technical curve that would be a problem if they did it alone, we absorb it.
The most expensive mistake we see in small businesses isn't choosing wrong between Zapier and n8n. It's automating nothing out of fear of choosing wrong, and continuing to pay two salaries on repetitive tasks that can be solved in an afternoon of work. Either tool is better than none.
