If you run a small business and you are looking at Make.com vs n8n for small business automation, you probably want one thing: stop paying a person to copy data between apps. Both tools can do that. The question is which one fits your budget, your team, and the volume you actually need to push through every month. This guide compares them on the things that decide a $20 to $100 per month tool choice, with real numbers and concrete examples.
Quick Verdict: Which Tool Suits Your Small Business?
Short answer:
- Choose Make.com if your team is non-technical, you want a workflow live this afternoon, and you process under 10,000 operations per month.
- Choose n8n if you have someone comfortable with JSON and a server, you need data to stay on infrastructure you control, or you push more than 25,000 events per month.
Both tools work. The difference is your constraints. A solo founder selling on Shopify does not need the same stack as a 20-person agency with PII to protect. Pick the one that matches where you are now, not where you hope to be in three years.
What Is Make.com?
Make.com is a visual workflow builder, formerly known as Integromat before the 2022 rebrand. You drag colored bubbles, called modules, onto a canvas and connect them with lines. Each module is a step: read a row, send an email, post a Slack message. The platform is cloud-only and hosted by Make.
Pricing is based on credits (formerly called operations). Every module run is one credit. The free plan gives you 1,000 credits per month. Paid plans start at $9 per month for 10,000 credits.
Best for: small teams without a developer, owners who want fast wins on common tasks like form-to-CRM, e-commerce order sync, and social posting.
What Is n8n?
n8n is an open-source workflow tool launched in 2019. You can run it on your own server for free, or pay for n8n Cloud starting at $20 per month. The editor looks similar to Make at first glance, but it leans more technical. You can drop in JavaScript or Python code nodes when the visual approach runs out of room.
Pricing on cloud is based on workflow executions, not individual steps. One workflow run with 50 steps is one execution. That math changes the cost story a lot at higher volume.
Best for: teams with at least one technical person, businesses with privacy or compliance needs, and high-volume use cases that would burn through Make operations quickly.
Feature Comparison
Ease of Use and Onboarding
Make wins on first impression. You sign up, pick a template like "Gmail to Google Sheets", connect two accounts, and you have a working automation in about 10 minutes. The interface holds your hand.
n8n cloud signup is just as fast, but the first workflow takes longer. Plan on 30 to 60 minutes for your first useful build if you have never used a workflow tool before. Self-hosting on Docker adds another 30 minutes if you are comfortable in a terminal, or it adds a week if you are not. The learning curve is steeper because n8n exposes more raw data and expects you to read it.
Plain English: Make feels like Canva. n8n feels like a spreadsheet with macros.
AI Integrations and Capabilities
Both tools shipped AI agents in the last year. Make has 350-plus AI app integrations and an AI Agents feature in beta as of 2026. n8n released AI agents in v2.0 with human-in-the-loop nodes, where the workflow pauses, asks a person on Slack to approve, and continues.
Concrete example: a lead qualification bot that reads inbound form submissions, scores them with GPT, and routes hot leads to a sales rep.
- On Make, you chain a Webhook module to an OpenAI module to a router to a Slack module. Each step is one credit. A single lead costs 4 to 6 credits. At 1,000 leads per month you are at 4,000 to 6,000 credits.
- On n8n, the same flow is one execution per lead. 1,000 leads is 1,000 executions. On the $20 Starter plan you get 2,500 executions, so you are still inside the base price.
If your AI workflows are short and bursty, Make is simpler. If they are long and frequent, n8n is cheaper.
Integrations and API Support
Make publishes 3,000-plus pre-built app modules. Field mapping is mostly dropdowns and pickers. If your stack is mainstream (Shopify, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Airtable, Slack), you will almost never need to touch raw API docs.
n8n has 400-plus core nodes, plus a generic HTTP Request node that talks to anything with an API. The library is smaller, but the HTTP node closes most of the gap if you can read an API reference. Community nodes add hundreds more, with the caveat that quality is uneven.
Rule of thumb: if your apps are listed in Make's directory, Make is faster. If your apps are niche or internal, n8n's HTTP flexibility wins.
Pricing and True Cost of Ownership
Make plans (credits per month, scales up with higher allowances on each tier):
- Free: 1,000 credits/month
- Core: $9/month for 10,000 credits, unlimited active scenarios
- Pro: $16/month for 10,000 credits with priority execution and custom variables
- Teams: $29/month for 10,000 credits with team management and shared templates
- Enterprise: custom pricing with overage protection and dedicated support
Overage runs roughly $0.001 to $0.003 per credit depending on plan. That sounds small until a poorly built workflow loops and burns 50,000 credits overnight. Real story pattern: a founder builds a sync, forgets to add a filter, comes back Monday to a $180 bill. Set hard limits in account settings.
n8n cloud (priced in EUR, billed annually):
- Starter: ā¬20/month for 2,500 workflow executions, 5 concurrent executions
- Pro: ā¬50/month for 10,000 workflow executions, 20 concurrent executions, workflow history, and admin roles
Self-hosted: software is free. A small VPS on Hetzner or DigitalOcean runs $5 to $20 per month. Hidden cost is your time. Plan on 2 to 5 hours per month for updates, backups, and debugging once it is running. If your time is worth $50 per hour, that is $100 to $250 per month in opportunity cost.
Break-even math: under 10,000 simple credits per month, Make Core at $9 is the cheapest path. Above 25,000 credits or 5,000 multi-step workflows per month, self-hosted n8n is the cheapest, assuming you have the technical capacity.
Data Privacy and Hosting
Make is SOC 2 Type II certified and processes all data on its servers in the EU or US. For most SMBs this is fine. For healthcare, legal, or anything with sensitive PII, the cloud-only model is a blocker.
n8n self-hosted runs entirely on your infrastructure. Data never leaves your server. This is the deciding factor for GDPR-strict, HIPAA-adjacent, or contractually private workloads. n8n Cloud is also SOC 2 certified if you want managed hosting without the privacy tradeoff being absolute.
Real-World Use Cases for Small Business
Make.com Best Fit Scenarios
- Lead capture from web form to CRM. Typeform to HubSpot with Slack notification. 15 minutes to build, 3 credits per lead.
- E-commerce order sync. Shopify orders to Google Sheets for accounting, plus a Gmail receipt with custom branding. 10 credits per order, runs reliably.
- Social media scheduling. One post pushed to LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook from a single Airtable row. 5 credits per post.
n8n Best Fit Scenarios
- Multi-step data transformation. Pull 500 rows from Postgres, enrich each with a Clearbit API call, deduplicate, push to Mailchimp. One execution handles the whole batch.
- Webhook handling for custom integrations. Internal tool fires a webhook, n8n routes based on payload contents, hits three different APIs, writes to your database.
- High-frequency processing. 10,000-plus events per day from IoT sensors or POS systems. Self-hosted n8n handles this for $20 in server costs. Make would cost hundreds.
Trying both? Make and n8n both offer free trials. Spin up the same simple workflow on each, time yourself, and watch where you get stuck. Two hours of comparison shopping is cheaper than a year on the wrong tool.
Decision Framework: Which Should You Choose?
Choose Make if:
- Your team has zero developers and no plans to hire one
- You need 5 to 20 automations covering common SaaS apps
- Monthly volume is under 10,000 credits
- You want predictable monthly cost
Choose n8n if:
- You have someone who can read JSON and edit a config file
- Data privacy is contractual, not optional
- Monthly volume is high or workflows have many steps each
- You want to avoid per-credit pricing anxiety
Hybrid approach: many small businesses run Make for the 80 percent of common tasks and n8n for the 20 percent that need custom logic or privacy. Two tools, one bill each, no compromises.
Getting Started: First Steps
Make: Sign up at make.com, pick a template that matches a task you already do manually, connect your two apps, run it once, and watch it work. Total time: 15 minutes.
n8n: Sign up at n8n.cloud or run docker run n8nio/n8n on a server. Watch the 20-minute intro video. Build a webhook-to-Slack workflow as your first project. Total time: 60 minutes, more if self-hosting.
In both cases, start with a real task you already do every week. Do not build a hypothetical workflow. The first automation should save you time the same day you finish it.
Conclusion
Both tools work. Make.com vs n8n for small business automation is not a question of which is better in the abstract. It is a question of which one matches your budget, your technical capacity, and your monthly volume. If you are new and non-technical, Make gets you running today. If you have technical help and want control, n8n scales further on less money.
Need help picking, building, or migrating between the two? Book a consultation with Tiger Media and we will map your current manual work to the right tool, with a working pilot inside a week.