Make vs Zapier

A Zap is a simple top-to-bottom list of steps, and Zapier Copilot builds one from a plain-language description, even on the free plan. Make's canvas is clear once you know it, but routers, iterators and data mapping take an afternoon to learn.

Make shows the whole scenario as a map, with routers for branches, iterators and aggregators for lists, and error handlers on each module, and routers and error handlers cost no credits. Zapier has Paths, filters and loops, but long branching Zaps get hard to read, and its free plan only runs two-step Zaps.

Make Core is about $9 to $12 a month billed yearly for 10,000 credits, and most actions use 1 credit. Zapier Professional is $19.99 a month billed yearly ($29.99 monthly) for 750 tasks, and 10,000 tasks cost $129 a month billed yearly. Make does charge a credit for each trigger check, even when nothing new is found.

Make Free gives 1,000 credits a month with multi-step scenarios, two of them active. Zapier Free gives 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps.

Zapier connects more than 9,000 apps, more than twice the size of Make's catalog, so a niche tool is more likely to have a ready-made Zapier connection. Both have HTTP and webhook steps for anything else.

Zapier bundles Agents, Chatbots, AI steps, Copilot and an MCP server that lets AI assistants run Zapier actions, all drawing on the same task pool. Make has AI agents and AI modules inside scenarios, and some AI actions use more than 1 credit.