How we verify automation pricing

Every price here is taken by hand from the tool's official pricing page, verified on a dated pass, and turned into a real monthly figure by the same engine as the calculator — never quoted from memory or a third party. Here is exactly where each tool's numbers come from, what they mean, and what we don't claim.

Find my cheapest tool → Compare all 7 tools

Prices generated live from our data · verified June 2026 · all figures per run, 3-step workflows

How we price automation tools

Four rules, the same for every tool.

One source of truth per tool. Every plan price and limit comes from the vendor's own official pricing page (listed below) — not a blog, aggregator or screenshot.
Verified by hand, then promoted. A scrape or research pass is only evidence; a number reaches our data file only after a human confirms it against the official page. Raw dumps are kept dated for audit.
Computed, not quoted. The cost you see is calculated by our engine from each plan's price, included runs and overage at a stated workload — so tools compare on one number. We never invent a monthly price.
Every change is logged. Prices are committed before the site rebuilds, so each change is dated in the public changelog with the tool it came from.

Sources — every number traces to an official page

7 tools, cloud and self-hosted. Last full verification: 2026-06-15.

Tool	Paid plans tracked	Official pricing source	Last verified
Zapier	19	zapier.com	2026-06-15
Make	19	www.make.com	2026-06-15
n8n	13	n8n.io	2026-06-15
Pipedream	4	pipedream.com	2026-06-15
Activepieces	2	www.activepieces.com	2026-06-15
Automatisch	1	automatisch.io	2026-06-15
Node-RED	1	nodered.org	2026-06-15

Self-hosted figures (n8n, Activepieces, Automatisch, Node-RED) are the server bill our engine models from VPS list prices — the software itself is free to self-host.

Is a "run" the same across tools? No — and it matters

A "run" is not a fixed unit. Each tool meters work differently: Zapier bills per task (one action step), Make per operation (one module call, renamed "credits" in 2026), n8n per workflow execution (a whole run, regardless of steps), and Pipedream per credit (compute time). The same automation can therefore consume a very different billed quantity from one tool to the next — a multi-step workflow is one n8n execution but many Zapier tasks.

What this means for our numbers: we model a realistic multi-step workflow and convert your monthly run volume into each tool's own billed unit, so the cost column is apples-to-apples on the same work — not on a raw "runs" number that means something different per tool. Treat small cross-tool gaps as a tie until you map your real workflows; the calculator lets you set your exact volume and steps.

What each number means

Field	Definition
Monthly cost	The cheapest qualifying plan for your volume, computed by the engine — the plan whose included allowance covers your runs, or the next tier up.
Included runs	The run / task / operation allowance bundled in a paid plan (range shown across tiers).
Overage	What happens past the limit: most tools require upgrading to the next volume tier (no pay-as-you-go); some bill a per-unit rate.
Self-host	For self-hostable tools, the modelled VPS (plus a database at scale) — infrastructure only, not a tool fee.
~ (tilde)	An estimate for a custom / enterprise tier the vendor doesn't price publicly — held as an estimate rather than a quoted fact.

Known limits & confidence

We would rather show a gap than a guess:

Enterprise tiers with "contact sales" pricing are marked ~ and estimated — they are not vendor-quoted facts.
Self-host VPS cost is modelled from public VPS list prices (Elestio / Netcup tiers); your real server bill depends on provider, region and add-ons, and excludes your own time to install, secure and maintain the stack.
Annual vs monthly billing differs per tool; we show the monthly-billing figure unless noted, and the annual premium is broken out on the hidden-cost page.
Our example workflow is an assumption, not a vendor fact — change volume and steps in the calculator for your case.

How we keep it current

An automated job re-reads every official pricing page each morning and flags any change; a second job watches plan limits, licensing and feature facts. Those flags are evidence — a human still confirms before a number changes. Confirmed changes are dated in the changelog (with an RSS feed), and we take a commission only from a single optional affiliate link that never affects rankings — so nothing here is pay-to-rank.

See it on your own numbers

The calculator uses these exact prices — set your volume, workflow type and budget, and it re-ranks every tool live.

Open calculator → Price changelog LLM pricing methodology

Frequently asked questions

Each plan price and limit is taken by hand from the tool's official pricing page (listed in the sources table above) and confirmed by a person before it enters our data. The monthly figure is computed by our engine, not quoted.

Because a run isn't one unit: Zapier bills per task, Make per operation/credit, n8n per workflow execution and Pipedream per credit. One multi-step workflow is a single n8n execution but many Zapier tasks. We model a realistic workflow and convert to each tool's own unit so costs compare on the same work.

Only one tool has an optional affiliate link, clearly disclosed, and it never affects rankings — those are by objective cost only. Self-hosted tools, which we often rank cheapest, have no affiliate at all.

An automated job re-reads every official pricing page daily and flags changes; a human confirms before any number moves. The last full hand-verification was 2026-06-15, and every change is dated in the changelog.