Best automation tools
These tools price by task, operation or execution rather than by seat, so the plan you need depends on how often your workflows run, not how many people use them. Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on the date beside it. The ordering is cheapest entry price first — a basis you can check rather than a ranking you have to trust.
What “best” means on this page
“Best” is not a mood — it is whichever axis you actually care about, measured. Our record can say which tool is cheapest to start, whose free plan is real, who bills local currency and whose prices just moved; it cannot say which tool fits your work, which is what the full comparisons are for. Cheapest never means best — it means cheapest. Each verdict below names its axis, and every tool links to its own site so you can check us against the source. No vendor paid for any position.
Entry at $16/mo — the lowest published paid plan in this set. Cheap is a fact, not a verdict; the profile below says what you get for it.
site ↗pricing ↗A plan priced at zero on the vendor’s own page — trials not counted. What each one caps differs; the profiles say.
Showed us different money in different countries on the same day — measured, not assumed. The profiles carry the figures.
Tool by tool
Makesite ↗pricing ↗
A visual automation platform where workflows are drawn as connected modules, favoured for branching logic Zapier finds awkward. Paid plans start at $16/mo (Core); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $51/mo (Teams). It bills by country — entry $10.59/mo to a UK reader and $10.59/mo in the eurozone, from our same-day reads.
Zapiersite ↗pricing ↗
An automation service that connects apps without code — when something happens in one tool, do something in another. Paid plans start at $19.99/mo (Professional); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 2 paid tiers, topping out at $69/mo (Team). We read the same $19.99/mo in every market we check, so this vendor does not price by country.
n8nsite ↗pricing ↗
A workflow automation tool that can be self-hosted, favoured by teams who want their automations on their own infrastructure. Paid plans start at $20/mo (Starter); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $800/mo (Business). It bills by country — entry £20/mo to a UK reader, from our same-day reads.
Side by side
| Tool | Paid from | Free plan | Currency | Read | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Make | $16/mo | Yes | USD | 2026-09-28 | page |
| Zapier | $19.99/mo | Yes | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
| n8n | $20/mo | — | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
How to choose in this category
- Estimate your monthly runs first: the cheapest row is only the cheapest at a particular volume.
- Free rows here cap runs rather than features — read the allowance, not the label.
- A workflow that fires on every record multiplies quickly; count the triggers, not the scenarios.
Questions the record can answer
How much do automation tools cost?
Between $16/mo and $20/mo. The lowest entry price we hold for any of the 3 automation tools we track is Make, at $16/mo; the highest is n8n, at $20/mo. Both are the vendor's own published list price, read on 2026-10-13. Cheapest is not best; it is cheapest, and it is the one axis a price record can settle on its own.
Which automation tools publish a plan priced at zero?
2 of the 3 we track: Make (Free) and Zapier (Free) — the entry each zero price sits on is named beside it. A free trial is not counted here: a trial is a deadline, not a price.
Do automation tools charge in my own currency?
Some do. We read every pricing page from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany on the same day, and 1 of the 3 automation tools we track showed us a different currency in at least two of those three markets: n8n. The rest billed the same money to all three.
How many automation tools does Wicketry track?
6 in this category, last read on 2026-10-13. 3 of them publish a plan ladder we can put in the table; we also track Activepieces, IFTTT and Pabbly, but hold no named ladder for them in US dollars yet, so they are absent rather than converted or guessed.