Make / n8n
Make vs n8n: choosing the best tool for automation and AI
Choosing the right workflow automation and AI platform is essential for modern businesses. Make and n8n offer distinct approaches. This comparison highlights their key differences to help you select the best automation tool for your needs.
Make vs n8n
Features comparison
Make provides a visual-first platform for rapid AI orchestration across all skill levels. While n8n offers deep developer customization, it requires significantly higher technical overhead and maintenance compared to Make's intuitive, enterprise-grade speed.
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Costs |
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Pre-built integrations |
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AI and agentic automation |
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Model Context Protocol (MCP) |
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Workflow orchestration |
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User-friendliness |
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Cloud vs. self-hosted |
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Security, compliance, and reliability |
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Support and community |
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Pricing comparison
Make’s flexible plans that scale vs n8n’s pricier plans that charge per execution
Make offers flexible, credit-based plans that scale with workflow complexity and delivered value. Plans include: Free; Core; Pro; Teams and Enterprise - and are designed for everyone from those looking to experience Make’s visual-first interface and create their first scenario, through to teams streamlining AI and automation efforts together. n8n relies on a pricier per-execution model, while its self-hosted options often hide significant infrastructure and maintenance costs.
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Free | $0/mo 1,000 credits/mo | Free | $0/mo 14-day trial only |
Core | $9/mo Starting at 10,000 credits/mo | Starter | $20/mo 2,500 executions/mo |
Pro | $16/mo Starting at 10,000 credits/mo | Pro | $50/mo 10,000 executions/mo |
Team | $29/mo Starting at 10,000 credits/mo | Business | $667/mo 40,000 executions/mo |
Enterprise | Custom pricing/mo 24/7 dedicated support | Enterprise | Custom pricing/mo Berlin business hours support |
Pricing comparison
Make
Make employs a credit-based pricing model; as of November 2025, operations have fully transitioned to credits as the billing unit. Each step ("module") that processes data in a Make automated workflow ("scenario") usually consumes at least one credit.
Most modules consume one credit, though certain features – like those that receive multiple data bundles or use Make's built-in AI tools – can consume more than one credit. This accounts for variable consumption: simpler scenarios consume very few credits, while scenarios with many steps or those routinely processing large datasets can be optimized to operate in bulk. Make's pricing tiers include a Free plan with 1,000 credits per month indefinitely and paid plans starting at $9 for 10,000 credits per month; users can purchase additional credits or upgrade their plan at any time. Enterprise pricing is customized based on each company’s needs.
n8n
n8n charges based on workflow executions. All plans include unlimited workflows and unlimited steps within those workflows.
The core pricing metric is the execution: each time a complete workflow runs, it counts as one execution regardless of how many steps ("nodes") exist within that workflow or how much data it processes. For cloud-hosted plans, n8n's pricing begins at approximately $20 per month for 2,500 executions (Starter plan). Enterprise pricing is customized based on each company's needs.
Perhaps n8n's most distinguishing feature is its self-hosted Community Edition, which comes with no licensing cost and unlimited executions. However, the resources needed to self-host can be significant, as self-hosting introduces infrastructure costs and maintenance overheads such as investments in server resources, monitoring, and updates.
User-friendliness
Make's no code and low-code vs n8n's deep technical knowledge
Make foregrounds visual low- and no-code principles to enable users just starting out and to save advanced users time. The Make platform's drag-and-drop interface allows users to build automated workflows within the visual Scenario Builder. Immediate visual feedback helps users at all levels understand what their automation is doing.
n8n's editor has some visual elements but still needs deep technical literacy to prove useful. As a result, n8n is generally seen as a much more challenging platform to grasp and start getting value from - especially when compared to a visual platform such as Make.
User-friendliness
Make
Make emphasizes visual design as a means to accessibility. The platform's drag-and-drop interface allows users to build automated workflows by connecting modules within the visual Scenario Builder. Modules represent actions and use animations to illustrate how data flows in their workflow. This immediate visual feedback helps users at all levels understand what their automation is doing.
The core Scenario Builder has a redesigned navigation system that improves discoverability and reduces complexity. For users who need custom logic, custom functions are also available. This makes it straightforward to add conditional logic, loops, and data transformations in a no-code or low-code way.
Authentication is also streamlined: for most integrations, users create a connection in a pre-built app and sign into the service without needing to understand OAuth flows, client IDs, secrets, etc. Templates and Scenario Sharing let users easily import proven existing flows to their own instance. Scenario Run Replay lets you re-run any scenario using historical trigger data, helping to identify errors and prevent data loss with essentially one click.
Make's no-code and low-code approachability helps less-technical users fully utilize the platform and speeds up output for advanced users.
n8n
n8n offers a canvas with some visual elements, but is primarily designed for users familiar with technical concepts. This interface provides immediate feedback – outputs appear next to settings at each step, users can execute individual nodes without running the entire workflow, and data can be replayed without re-triggering events. These features support iterative development and debugging.
For this reason, n8n is generally seen as a more challenging platform to grasp and start getting value from. The platform requires close understanding of concepts like JSON data structures, API authentication, and workflow logic. While the visual editor somewhat reduces the need for coding compared to traditional development, users still need technical literacy to use the platform effectively.
Thus n8n suits developers, data teams, and technical businesses that prioritize control and customization over immediate ease of use. Organizations without dedicated technical resources may struggle with the initial setup and ongoing workflow management.
Integrations
Make’s 3,000+ pre-built apps vs n8n’s risky community nodes
Make
3,000+
Make provides 3,000+ company-maintained integrations for trustworthy, streamlined setup of popular and niche apps, plus the ability to use custom APIs and code on paid plans. The sheer volume of pre-built, maintained integrations means fewer development barriers and faster time-to-value.
n8n
1,200+
n8n offers 1,200+ pre-built integrations plus, if self-hosted, the option to develop and use community nodes that carry security risks. This is a significantly smaller library of integrations than offered by Make - which should be a consideration for organizations prioritizing breadth and speed.
Integrations
Make
Make offers an extensive integration ecosystem with over 3,000 pre-built applications. Whether connecting to popular professional platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Workspace, Netsuite, or more consumer-focused tools like Canva and Etsy, Make likely has a native integration ready to use. This list of apps is built and maintained to company-wide security standards by Make itself.
Each Make integration ("app") comes with pre-configured triggers and actions, reducing setup time and eliminating the need to understand the underlying APIs. Authentication is streamlined – users often just click "Create Connection" and sign into the service. This plug-and-play approach means teams can build functional automations within minutes.
Make's integration library covers a wider range of applications, with specific popular apps available in Make but absent from n8n. The ability to connect to custom APIs through HTTP modules is available on all plans, and the ability to introduce custom Python and JavaScript via the Code app is included on all paid plans. Enterprise plans can also utilize Custom Functions.
For organizations prioritizing breadth and speed, Make's ready-to-use integration library provides a substantial advantage. The sheer volume of pre-built, maintained integrations means fewer development barriers and faster time-to-value.
n8n
n8n provides over 1,200 pre-built integrations covering popular business applications, databases, and services. While this library is smaller than Make's, n8n's robust HTTP Request nodes are often cited as strengths; they allow developers to connect to virtually any service with an API, even without a pre-built integration.
For organizations with proprietary systems or niche software requirements not covered by pre-built integrations, n8n supports custom node development. Technical teams can build their own integrations, use them internally, and even publish them to the n8n community. It should be noted, however, that installing community nodes requires self-hosted infrastructure and installing unverified code from a public source into your instance; n8n warns about the security risks of this practice.
n8n's architecture particularly suits organizations that need to integrate with legacy systems, internal tools, or APIs outside the mainstream SaaS ecosystem. Here, developers appreciate a code-first approach.
AI & agentic automation
Visual AI agents vs
complex customization
Make lets inexperienced users access AI integration without developers via pre-built AI integrations, upcoming conversational workflow building, shareable AI agents, and visual multi-agent orchestration. In short, Make offers AI capabilities at every stage of the automation journey.
n8n also provides pre-built AI integrations and supports custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows. However, building advanced AI workflows in n8n requires deep technical knowledge - and the platform lacks the powerful orchestration features that Make users benefit from.
AI & Agentic automation
Make
Make offers AI capabilities at every stage of the automation journey: from building workflows, to accelerating with AI agents, to orchestrating complexity at scale. The visual interface and pre-built modules mean teams of all kinds can use AI automation without developer support.
All major AI providers including OpenAI, Google AI, and Make's own AI toolkit are among Make's 3,000+ pre-built apps. These modules handle a range of tasks without requiring custom code. Maia by Make will simplify AI automation for even more users by allowing them to build workflows through natural conversation.
Make AI Agents offer the ability to create autonomous digital colleagues capable of decision-making and tool use. Agents can be shared across teams and workflows, and users can provide them with context by simply uploading files; in n8n, this requires building a custom RAG workflow with vector databases. Agents can become callable tools through Make's MCP server. The latest generation of Make AI Agents are designed to be as visual and intuitive as every other part of Make. A core focus is that agents are built, run, and debugged inside the scenario builder. This means that users can create agents that interpret input, choose the right tools and adapt within workflows.
Make Grid is a visual orchestration feature specifically created to make complex multi-agent automation landscapes understandable.
n8n
n8n includes nearly 70 dedicated nodes for AI integration and interacting with large language models (LLMs). These integrations enable users to build sophisticated multi-step AI agents capable of complex decision-making and data processing.
n8n supports RAG workflows using vector databases, allowing AI agents to access and process internal data sources. Users can implement custom AI logic through code nodes, connect to any LLM provider – such as OpenAI, Hugging Face, Google AI, Claude, or self-hosted models – via API, and chain complex data transformations. n8n's self-hosting option also means AI models can run locally on internal infrastructure.
However, building advanced AI workflows in n8n requires deep technical knowledge. Users must understand concepts like vector embeddings and API integration; while developers appreciate this flexibility, it can present obstacles for less-technical teams. Some users state that AI features for basic use cases can feel insubstantial, while advanced AI usage demands custom work.
Workflow orchestration
Make
Make has made workflow orchestration a priority with the introduction of Make Grid, a dedicated, visual orchestration feature included in all paid plans.
Make Grid automatically generates a real-time map of an organization's entire automation landscape, showing relationships between scenarios, data flows, and dependencies. This bird's-eye view provides transparency into how automations interconnect, enables quick identification of bottlenecks, and facilitates troubleshooting across complex environments. For those managing dozens or hundreds of scenarios and multi-agent workflows across multiple teams, this immediate observability is invaluable in saving time as well as stress.
Make's visual orchestration model suits organizations that value visual clarity, oversight, and information-sharing between cross-functional teams with differing levels of technical familiarity.
n8n
n8n allows users to create complex, advanced workflows involving parallel execution branches and intricate logic trees. For developers managing data synchronizations, multi-system integrations, or AI-driven processes requiring parallel operations, n8n provides a high degree of granular control via detailed logs and error handling. Orchestration patterns are therefore limited only by programming ability.
However, layering and managing highly complex workflows such as those that involve multiple AI agents can become challenging. Users report that managing orchestration through the AI agent tool node on a single canvas makes it difficult to comprehend large, interconnected workflows at a glance. This is particularly the case when it comes to identifying small but crucial errors in workflow construction. The fixed node overview has been noted as a frustration when dealing with massive workflow structures that employ dependencies and overlapping inputs and outputs.
Enterprise readiness
Make
Make operates as a mature, enterprise-ready SaaS platform with infrastructure designed for reliability and scale. The platform runs across multiple server zones within Amazon AWS environments for optimal flexibility and data-management options.
In addition to Make's standard security measures that include GDPR, SOC 3, SOC 2 Type II compliance, ISO 27001 compliance, and data encryption standards, Enterprise plans come with additional benefits such as company-wide single sign-on (SSO) via OAuth2 or SAML2, and role-based access controls.
Enterprise customers also receive 24/7 priority customer support, on-prem agents for the ability to securely access local networks and data from core business applications, custom functions, and comprehensive audit logs.
Make's Enterprise approach provides trustworthiness and predictability: organizations know uptime guarantees, compliance certifications, and support response times before deploying business-critical automations on infrastructure managed by Make.
n8n
n8n's Enterprise option includes Git-based workflows, environment management, SSO authentication, and queue-mode scaling. These features support software development best practices such as version control, testing across development/staging/production environments, and enterprise authentication standards.
n8n Enterprise plans come in cloud-based and self-hosted options, and the latter is often cited as a plus by organizations with exacting data sovereignty, compliance, or security requirements. It's often claimed that this allows data to remain within the organization's infrastructure, though this is difficult to achieve in reality, as by their nature iPaaS solutions pull and send data to other software.
However, local deployment and maintenance can present challenges, as technical teams must assume complete control operations. Node maintenance and reliability concerns as well as issues updating instances have been documented, and the burden of managing infrastructure, ensuring uptime, applying security patches, and troubleshooting issues falls on the organization rather than the vendor. This makes the platform a significant draw on internal resources and potentially less attractive for enterprises without strong DevOps capabilities.
Support and community
Make
Make provides a mature, comprehensive support system that scales with subscription level.
Official support is included on all paid plans and operates through a ticketing system. Enterprise customers benefit from priority 24/7 customer support with two-hour SLAs, as well as dedicated account management and one-on-one consulting with Make value engineers to help with implementation, optimization, and scaling.
To users at all levels, Make also offers extensive additional materials at no extra cost, including:
- Make Community forum with an average of 4,200 active monthly users.
- Make Academy, a collection of 36 interactive courses covering foundational concepts to agentic automation skills.
- Single-URL Scenario Sharing and 7,900+ pre-built scenario templates that speed building.
- Help Center and how-to articles for documentation, setup walkthroughs, and best practices.
- A regularly updated blog detailing features, common use cases, and real-world examples.
In addition to resources provided directly by Make, a network of over 500 solution partners is trained and certified by Make to provide expert product advice and consulting services. The large user base of over 350,000 users also generates significant third-party content to complement official support, such as YouTube tutorials, guides, and inspiration.
n8n
n8n's support model is significantly less robust and primarily relies on forums; official support is extended only to users on the most expensive plans and is handled via email.
For cloud plans and most paid plans below Enterprise level, support issues are restricted to n8n-provided documentation and community input. However, company-provided documentation is often cited as insufficiently thorough and users must consult forums, GitHub discussions, Discord servers, and community tutorials. The official n8n forum is made up of 1,400 monthly active community members who suggest solutions, nodes, and other know-how; users can also examine source code, submit bug reports, and contribute fixes. Around 1,700 workflow templates are also available. However, the quality and speed of community responses are not predictable, so troubleshooting complex issues often requires waiting, sifting through docs, and experimenting. This model may be workable, if frustratingly slow, for technical teams able to debug issues independently.
Only Enterprise customers receive dedicated support via a dated email-based system, and specific SLAs and response time commitments are less prominently displayed than with most enterprise SaaS vendors. In general, customer service experiences with n8n are often reported as lackluster.
Secure cloud vs self-hosted
Understanding the cloud versus self-hosted debate requires examining what each deployment model provides and costs.
Secure cloud-hosted automation platforms like Make handle infrastructure management, security patches, updates, and scaling on the vendor side; for the user, this can be interpreted as automatically. Organizations pay a subscription fee and receive a service that's immediately available and continuously maintained. Benefits include faster deployment, predictable costs, and no internal IT burden.
Self-hosted platforms like n8n's Community Edition give organizations more exacting control over their automation infrastructure. Developers can customize the platform to their specific requirements, giving greater control over data location, upper limit of workflow executions, and ability to integrate with internal systems behind firewalls. The trade-off is that organizations themselves are responsible for handling server provisioning, monitoring, security updates, backups, and troubleshooting; appropriate resources and risk-management must be allocated to address these issues.
Self-hosting is valuable to organizations with strict data residency requirements, extremely high workflow volumes, or specialized infrastructure as well as sufficient DevOps expertise to make the costs of adding a self-hosted application minimal. These, however, represent a minority of organizations.
Cloud-first approaches align with the reality faced by the majority of businesses, where finite technical talent is better deployed building products rather than maintaining infrastructure. For these companies, cloud platforms like Make reduce complexity and risk: organizations get enterprise-grade infrastructure, compliance certifications, security monitoring, and reliability guarantees without dedicating internal resources to platform management.
Security, compliance, and
reliability
Make
Transparent
standards
Make maintains comprehensive security and compliance certifications and documentation, and makes sure these standards are easy to find. The platform helps customers to keep their data secure with built-in GDPR, SOC 3, and SOC 2 Type II compliance, encryption, and single sign-on (SSO).
n8n
In-house
variability
n8n's cloud offerings comply with some standards, but self-hosted deployments require expensive in-house security and compliance controls.
Security, compliance, and reliability
Make
Make maintains certifications and compliance with major security and privacy frameworks, and makes sure these standards are easy to find:
- SOC 3, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR compliance for data protection and privacy.
- OWASP and SAST development standards.
- AES-256 encryption for data at rest using AWS Key Management Service.
- TLS 1.2 and 1.3 for data in transit.
- Passwords stored in encrypted format, irreproducible by anyone including Make employees.
- Hosting environment accessible only via VPN, not from public internet.
- Regular penetration testing by independent third parties.
Make's infrastructure is deployed across multiple zones within Amazon AWS EC2 private instances with Amazon Enterprise support ensuring continuity during maintenance or infrastructure issues. Enterprise customers receive additional security features.
n8n
n8n's cloud-based options comply with SOC 2 Part II and GDPR. These options are hosted on servers in Frankfurt, Germany, within the EU, and the platform implements standard data security practices such as AES-256 and FIPS-140-2 compliance via its Azure Storage server provider. Additional certifications or compliance measures are not prominently documented in detail.
The picture is quite different for self-hosted deployments. Here, the level of protection is mainly determined by the implementing organization's infrastructure and practices: users control data storage location, access policies, network security, and encryption standards. While this provides maximum control, it also means the user's organization – not n8n – is fully responsible for ongoing security upkeep such as applying patches promptly, configuring proper access controls, threat monitoring, maintaining backups, and ensuring infrastructure resilience.
Users have noted in particular that achieving compliance standards like SOC 2, GDPR, or HIPAA with self-hosted n8n deployments is challenging, as it requires implementing appropriate controls at the individual organizational level. Organizations themselves must have the capability and resources to handle these functions effectively.
Making the choice
When choosing between Make and n8n, it's key to think about who will be using your automation platform - and how much technical support your organization can provide. For developers and organizations with abundant resources, n8n might be an answer. Make, however, provides an approachable platform for organizations that prioritize speed to value and ease of use across skill levels. Its well-supported visual-first core product makes automation accessible to more teams faster, its natural-language AI-building features unlock complex capabilities with ease, and its dedicated visual orchestration features provide literal observability advantages as automation complexity grows. In other words, Make balances the ability for less-technical users to experiment and build, the power to accelerate with AI, and the opportunities to scale seamlessly.
Today's organizations are expected to leverage automation and AI at every level to produce real results. For them, Make presents the strongest choice: a professional, business-ready solution that scales. Get started and make it happen today.
FAQ
Strictly speaking, there is not a free n8n plan. Self-hosted and cloud plans below Enterprise level can be accessed via free trials for a limited time only.
n8n does offer a free, self-hosted Community Edition that comes with a narrower feature set. This, however, is not a subscription plan in a traditional sense, as there is no ongoing relationship between n8n as the provider and the user: all installation, security measures, updates, and so on must be handled by the user. This is why n8n recommends self-hosting for expert users only; this approach also does not factor in the potentially significant costs of servers and related maintenance.
Make, by comparison, offers a Free plan that is not time-limited. This is an ideal option for users who want to get started running one or two simple automations or those who want to get acquainted with automation and AI platforms at their own pace.
Make employees offer official, professional support to customers on all paid plans. Users can follow a guided customer service flow to file a ticket, to which Make personnel will directly follow up within a short window. Alternatively, the Help Center acts as a hub of documentation, Community posts, Academy materials, and more for customers who prefer self-guided problem-solving.
Make's Enterprise plan includes all of the above as well as 24/7 customer support with two-hour SLAs, dedicated account management, and one-on-one consulting with Make value engineers to help with implementation, optimization, and scaling.
n8n does not offer dedicated customer support to most paid users. Some documentation is provided, but troubleshooting issues are primarily directed to community forums with unpredictable outcomes.
Only n8n's Enterprise and Power users get access to dedicated technical support over and above forums. Support is managed via email, mainly during European business hours and with unclear response-time SLAs; this may present significant problems if users encounter issues with business-critical automations.
Make Grid automatically generates a real-time, visual map of an organization's entire automation landscape. "Islands" with colored icons represent workflows and AI Agents in use, while second-order islands group teams' automations all in one place. This bird's-eye view transparently shows changes, dependencies, reused elements, and easy-to-spot error notices even in complex, multi-agent environments. Workflow orchestration isn't an afterthought but an integrated part of Make's visual approach to automation.
n8n does not offer a comparable workflow orchestration feature. Sophisticated AI agents can be deployed, added to, and reused. However, employing replicated tools or outputs across workflows often requires building intricate automations on a single, sprawling canvas, or it means switching between multiple canvases and updating each element accordingly. Clarity and effective troubleshooting with n8n therefore becomes dramatically more complicated as the complexity of tools grows.
n8n is specifically targeted to technical teams with developers' mindsets. Therefore, familiarity with technical know-how is taken as granted in order to use the platform effectively. This, combined with limited official customer support, means that beginner users will find using n8n challenging and time-consuming, and answers to their questions may be difficult to find.
On the other hand, Make is created with the goal of onboarding basic users into the world of automation and training them up to be proficient users. This begins with providing a cloud-based, no-code building environment that shows how programs interconnect and how data flows in a visual way. Structured learning materials help users explore advanced features and upskill as needed, eventually enabling the smooth transition to low-code power users who scale up to broad AI-powered automations across their business.
For users just starting out with automation, Make is the clear choice.
Make's credit-based pricing charges per step in a workflow (most steps consume one credit), making costs scale with workflow complexity. However, Make rewards efficient workflow design, and its cloud-first approach eliminates infrastructure overhead – Make handles all server costs, maintenance, and uptime. For example, a marketing team running moderate-volume workflows with a handful of steps benefits from Make's pricing. This predictable subscription model often proves more cost-effective, especially when total cost of ownership is considered.
n8n charges per workflow execution regardless of steps count, making it potentially preferable for applications such as complex data processing performed frequently. However, hidden costs accumulate quickly, especially in self-hosted configurations: server infrastructure, monitoring systems, security patches, backups, and DevOps personnel. In this case, an organization running many thousands of executions monthly might pay nothing in licensing fees but easily spend thousands on infrastructure and engineering time.
Cost-effectiveness depends on your specific goals and configuration, but Make's inclusive model typically delivers better value for more use cases across different teams.