n8n vs Make: Which Automation Platform Should You Choose?

n8n is the better automation platform for most technical teams. It costs less at scale, offers real self-hosting, and provides far more advanced AI capabilities. Make (formerly Integromat) has a more polished interface and a bigger native-integration library. But once you move past basic automations, n8n’s flexibility and cost savings become impossible to ignore.

Both platforms are serious Zapier alternatives (see our n8n vs Zapier comparison if that’s your actual choice) with visual workflow builders, hundreds of integrations, and active communities. The question isn’t whether they’re capable, they both are. The question is which one fits your specific needs.

Pick n8n if you want self-hosting, AI-powered workflows, cost savings at scale, or data sovereignty for GDPR compliance. Pick Make if you prefer a polished cloud interface, need obscure app integrations, or want the simplest possible learning curve. For power users and growing agencies, n8n delivers more value per dollar.

At a Glance: n8n vs Make Comparison

What Is n8n?

n8n (pronounced “n-eight-n”) is an open-source workflow automation platform built in Berlin. You connect apps using a visual canvas editor: drag nodes onto the workspace, draw connections between them, and your workflow runs.

What sets n8n apart is its fair-code license and self-hosting option. The Community Edition is genuinely free, unlimited workflows, unlimited executions, no artificial caps. You just need a server. With over 172,000 GitHub stars, n8n is one of the most popular open-source automation tools in existence.

n8n excels at complex workflows. You can branch, loop, merge, and call sub-workflows. You can write JavaScript or Python inside any node. You can build AI agents with LangChain integration. The platform rewards technical thinking: if you’re comfortable with APIs, JSON, and automation logic, n8n feels incredibly powerful.

The cloud version starts at $20 a month and handles hosting for you. But the real value is self-hosting: run n8n on a $5 a month VPS and get unlimited executions with complete data control.

What Is Make?

Make (Integromat before its 2022 rebrand) is a visual automation platform founded in the Czech Republic in 2012. It competes directly with Zapier and n8n, positioning itself as a more affordable alternative with powerful visual workflows.

Make’s strength is its polished, intuitive interface. Scenarios (Make’s term for workflows) appear as circular modules connected by lines, a different visual language from n8n’s canvas approach, and many users find it easier to parse at a glance.

With over 1,500 native integrations, Make connects to more apps out of the box than n8n. The platform handles branching, routing, iterating over arrays, and error handling, plus variables and basic data stores.

Make is cloud-only. There is no self-hosted version. All data flows through Make’s servers. They offer EU data center options for European businesses, but you never get the full data sovereignty that self-hosting provides. Pricing is based on operations, each action in a scenario counts as one, similar in spirit to Zapier’s task-based model.

Which Is Easier to Use?

Make is slightly easier for beginners. n8n is easier for complex work.

Make’s circular module design is visually distinctive and intuitive out of the box. Building a basic scenario takes 10 to 15 minutes for a first-timer. n8n’s canvas approach has more visual overhead initially: there are dozens of node types, the expression editor has its own syntax, and data flow isn’t obvious at first.

Here’s the key insight: the learning investment pays dividends. Once you understand n8n’s model, typically after a weekend of focused exploration, building complex workflows becomes faster and more natural. Branching, merging, and error handling stay visually clear even as logic gets complicated, where the same logic in Make’s circular layout tends to get cluttered.

If you’re building simple, linear automations and want to start immediately, Make is slightly easier. If you’re building anything with conditional logic, loops, or multiple branches, n8n’s canvas becomes a real advantage after the initial learning curve.

Which Has More Integrations?

Make wins on quantity. n8n wins on flexibility.

The numbers: Make offers 1,500 plus native integrations, n8n offers 400 plus, roughly a 4 to 1 gap on paper. In practice it’s much smaller than it looks. n8n’s HTTP Request node connects to any app with an API, and nearly every modern tool has one. Authentication setup takes 5 to 15 minutes instead of a pre-built connector click, but once configured it works just as well. n8n also supports community nodes, third-party integrations you can install with one click on a self-hosted instance.

For the most common business apps (Google Workspace, Slack, Microsoft 365, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot, Salesforce, Stripe, Shopify, GitHub, Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB) both platforms have native support. Where Make genuinely wins is niche and regional tools: that industry-specific app with 500 customers is more likely to have a native Make connector than an n8n one.

How Does Pricing Compare?

n8n wins decisively at any serious volume, but understanding why requires understanding how each platform counts usage.

Make counts operations: every action in a scenario counts as one, so a 5-module scenario run 100 times uses 500 operations. n8n counts executions: one complete run of a workflow equals one execution regardless of how many nodes it contains, so a 20-node workflow and a 3-node workflow running once cost the same. This difference compounds hard at scale.

Make pricing

n8n pricing

Real-world scenarios

Freelancer, 5,000 operations a month, 5-step average workflow. Make costs about $9/month, n8n Cloud about $20/month, self-hosted n8n about $5 to $10 in hosting. At this volume Make is actually cheaper than n8n Cloud, but self-hosted n8n still beats both.

Small business, 50,000 operations a month. Make runs $99 to $199/month, n8n Cloud $50 to $100/month, self-hosted n8n $10 to $20 in hosting. The gap widens fast: Make now costs 2 to 4 times more than n8n Cloud, and 10 to 20 times more than self-hosted n8n.

Growing company, 500,000 operations a month. Make runs $500 to $1,500 plus a month, self-hosted n8n stays at $20 to $50 in hosting. At scale the difference is staggering, self-hosted n8n saves thousands of dollars a year. This is the math that drives technical teams and agencies to n8n.

Can You Self-Host?

n8n: yes, completely free. Make: no, never. This is a fundamental architectural difference that matters more than most people realize.

n8n’s Community Edition is open source (fair-code licensed). You can run it on your own infrastructure, a Linux VPS, a Docker container, a Kubernetes cluster. Your data never touches anyone else’s servers, your credentials stay on your hardware, your workflow logs live on your own drives. Self-hosting takes some technical ability, most teams get it running in an afternoon, and your only ongoing cost is the server itself.

Make is cloud-only, period. All workflows, data, and credentials flow through their infrastructure. EU data center options help with some compliance requirements, but you never get true data sovereignty.

Three groups care deeply about this: EU businesses needing GDPR compliance, regulated industries (healthcare, finance, government) that can’t send data to third-party clouds, and cost-conscious teams running high-volume automations where per-operation pricing would be prohibitive. There’s also a quieter fourth group: agencies. If you build automations for clients, self-hosted n8n with unlimited executions is how you protect margins, your cost is infrastructure, your revenue is client contracts. For a deeper look at that angle, see our n8n for enterprise comparison.

Which Has Better AI Capabilities?

n8n wins decisively here, it isn’t close. Both platforms added AI features over the past two years, but took very different approaches.

n8n went all in on AI infrastructure. The AI Agent node is a complete LangChain implementation inside a visual builder. You can build autonomous agents that reason and use tools, connect to OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or local models via Ollama, add vector stores (Pinecone, Qdrant, Supabase, Weaviate) for RAG pipelines, build multi-turn conversations with persistent memory, and chain multiple models together with custom logic.

Make has AI features, but they’re more limited: connecting to OpenAI as an action step, using AI to transform or summarize data within a module. There’s no agent framework, no RAG pipeline support, no vector database integration.

If AI automation is a priority, and it should be, n8n provides enterprise-grade capability Make simply doesn’t match. For simple text processing either platform is fine. For agents, memory, and retrieval, n8n is in a different league.

Which Handles Errors Better?

n8n has more robust error handling. Make has decent basics.

n8n lets you define separate error workflows that trigger whenever any workflow fails, resume failed executions from the exact point of failure rather than the beginning, build try or catch patterns directly into logic, and set per-node timeouts. Make offers error handler modules, auto-replay of failed operations, and execution history, adequate for most standard scenarios but less flexible when failures carry real cost.

Which Builds More Complex Workflows?

n8n handles complexity better, though both platforms are fully capable for standard use cases.

n8n’s canvas is a genuine visual programming environment: unlimited parallel branches, merging results from multiple branches, looping over arrays with transformations, calling sub-workflows and passing data between them, switch nodes for multi-way routing, and custom JavaScript or Python anywhere. Make’s circular design handles most scenarios well but can get visually cluttered once logic gets genuinely complex, since the interface wasn’t built for that scale of workflow.

Data Privacy and GDPR Compliance

n8n provides true data sovereignty, self-hosted n8n means your data never leaves your infrastructure, credentials are encrypted on your own servers, and air-gapped deployment is possible. Make offers EU data center options, which covers many compliance scenarios, but can never offer what self-hosting provides: certainty that your data stays on hardware you control. For healthcare, finance, government, or any organization with strict data-handling requirements, that distinction is the whole decision.

When Should You Pick Make?

Make is the right choice when you want a polished, fully managed experience with no server to think about, when you need a specific niche integration that only Make supports natively, when your team is non-technical and wants the gentlest possible learning curve, when you’re running under 10,000 operations a month where Make’s pricing is genuinely competitive, or when EU cloud hosting is sufficient for your compliance needs without the overhead of self-hosting.

When Should You Pick n8n?

n8n is the stronger choice when cost matters and you’re scaling past 10,000 operations a month, when you need self-hosting for GDPR, regulated-industry compliance, or air-gapped deployment, when you’re building AI-powered automation with agents or RAG, when your workflows involve real branching complexity, when you value open source and want to avoid vendor lock-in, or when you run an automation agency where unlimited self-hosted executions are what makes the margins work.

How Do You Migrate from Make to n8n?

There’s no automatic import tool, migration is manual recreation, but the process is straightforward. Audit every active Make scenario: trigger, modules, conditional logic, monthly operation count, and flag what’s critical versus nice-to-have. Set up n8n, either Cloud or a self-hosted Docker instance (about 30 minutes to stand up). Verify integration coverage for every app your scenarios touch, using the HTTP Request node for anything without a native connector. Recreate scenarios as workflows, simple ones take 10 to 15 minutes, complex ones an hour. Run both in parallel and compare outputs before cutting over, then cancel Make once everything’s been stable on n8n for a week or two. A typical small business with 15 to 25 active scenarios needs about 2 to 3 days of focused work.

The Final Verdict

Choose n8n if you value cost savings at scale, need self-hosting for data sovereignty or compliance, want advanced AI capabilities, build complex multi-branch workflows, or run an agency where unlimited executions matter. n8n is the power user’s choice.

Choose Make if you want a polished cloud experience without server management, need specific native integrations n8n doesn’t have, prefer a slightly easier initial learning curve, or run low-volume automations where the pricing gap barely matters.

For most technical teams and growing agencies, n8n is the better long-term choice. The cost savings compound over time, the AI capabilities future-proof your automation stack, and the self-hosting option provides guarantees cloud-only platforms cannot match. Make is a genuinely good platform at what it does, but n8n’s combination of open source, self-hosting, advanced features, and compelling economics makes it the default for serious automation work.

Ready to build your automation engine? If you need an expert to design and implement the workflows that will save you hundreds of hours a year, let’s talk.