Hosted or self-hosted
With a hosted service you pay in tasks: every run of a workflow uses up part of a monthly allowance, and the free plans are small. Zapier's free tier is 100 tasks per month, Make's free plan has 1,000 credits per month, IFTTT's free plan allows 2 Applets, and the Activepieces cloud gives 1,000 credits a month for up to 5 users.
With a self-hosted tool you pay in server time instead: n8n, Activepieces, Huginn, Node-RED and Windmill run on your own machine or a small server, with no task counter. The trade is maintenance. n8n's docs put it plainly: when you self-host, you must provide and manage infrastructure. Node-RED is the lightest start, since it runs on a local computer, a Raspberry Pi or in Docker. Google Apps Script sits in between: it runs on Google's servers, needs only a Gmail account, and is limited by daily quotas rather than a task count.
How free limits are counted
Each service counts something different, and the names matter when you compare 100 of one with 1,000 of another:
| Service | Unit | How it is counted, per the official page |
|---|---|---|
| Zapier | Task | "A task is counted whenever Zapier successfully completes a unit of work for you." Triggers, polling and built-in tools like Filter, Paths and Formatter never use tasks; each successful action step is one task per run |
| Make | Credit | "Every time a module in a scenario performs an action, it consumes credits." For non-AI apps 1 operation equals 1 credit; a trigger module runs once per check, and later modules run once for each bundle the trigger returns |
| IFTTT | Applet | The cap is the number of Applets you can have, not runs: 2 on Free, 20 on Pro, unlimited on Pro+ |
| n8n cloud | Execution | "An execution is a single run of your entire workflow." It does not matter how many steps the workflow has |
| Activepieces cloud | Credit | A run counts as one credit regardless of step count; AI steps cost extra |
| Pipedream | Credit | One credit per 30 seconds of compute time at 256 MB of memory per workflow segment; free workspaces have a daily credit limit |
| Google Apps Script | Quota | Daily quotas per account, for example 90 minutes of trigger runtime per day on a consumer account; a script that exceeds a quota throws an exception and stops |
A worked example
A form answer arrives, a row goes into a spreadsheet, and a confirmation email goes out. That is one trigger and two actions.
- Zapier: the trigger is free, each of the two action steps is one task, so one run costs 2 tasks. The help article's own example says a Zap with two action steps that runs ten times uses 20 tasks. The free plan's 100 tasks cover 50 form answers a month. Note that the free plan supports two-step Zaps; a trigger plus two actions is a multi-step Zap, which the pricing page lists under Professional.
- Make: the trigger module runs once per check and counts as one operation, and each of the two following modules runs once per bundle. For one form answer that is 3 operations, which is 3 credits for non-AI apps. The free plan's 1,000 credits cover about 333 such runs, before counting the trigger's empty checks, which the operations article does not spell out.
- n8n cloud or Activepieces cloud: one run is one execution or one credit, however many steps it has.
The counting rules above come from the linked help pages. For any service not in the table, read its own definition before you compare numbers.
What to check
- Polling interval. Zapier's pricing table lists the polling time as 15 minutes on Free, 2 minutes on Pro and 1 minute on Team, so a free Zap can react up to a quarter of an hour after the event. IFTTT names only "Standard Applet speeds" on Free and "Fastest Applet speeds" on Pro, without minutes.
- Step count. Zapier Free is limited to two-step Zaps. Make, n8n and Activepieces count a run regardless of the number of steps.
- License wording. n8n is "fair-code distributed under the Sustainable Use License and n8n Enterprise License"; the license lets you use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. Windmill's Community Edition is free to use internally under AGPLv3 and contains non-open-source parts. Activepieces splits an MIT Community Edition from enterprise features under a commercial license.
- Production use. Pipedream's free tier limits Connect to development mode; production use of Connect needs a paid plan.
- Quotas that stop a script. On Apps Script, a consumer account gets 100 email recipients per day and 6 minutes per execution; exceeding a quota throws an exception.
Where our tools help
Most automation failures are data problems, not logic problems. Before you connect a step, clean what goes in:
- Turn a spreadsheet export into clean records with CSV to JSON, and send a webhook's output back to a sheet with JSON to CSV. The guide on JSON, YAML and CSV explains which format fits where.
- Paste a payload into the JSON formatter to validate it and find the field you need for the next step.
- Schedules in n8n, Huginn, Node-RED, Pipedream and Windmill use cron syntax. Build and check the expression, with the next run times in your time zone, in the cron expression builder. Dates that pass between services are safest in the format from our guide on ISO 8601.
- For marketing flows that create links, build them once with the UTM builder so every automated post carries the same lowercase tags.
Frequently asked questions
Which automation tool has the most generous free plan?
It depends on the unit. Zapier's free tier is 100 tasks per month with two-step Zaps, Make's free plan has 1,000 credits per month, the Activepieces cloud gives 1,000 credits a month for up to 5 users, and IFTTT allows 2 Applets. Self-hosted tools like n8n, Node-RED and Huginn have no run counter at all.
Is n8n open source?
n8n's README says it is fair-code distributed under the Sustainable Use License and n8n Enterprise License. The license allows use or modification only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use, and distribution only free of charge for non-commercial purposes. The docs list the self-hosted Community edition as free.
Which automation tools can I run on my own server?
n8n, Activepieces, Huginn, Node-RED and Windmill all publish self-hosting instructions, mostly with Docker. Node-RED also runs on a Raspberry Pi, and Huginn's README lists Docker Compose, Render, Fly.io, Railway and DigitalOcean.
Is Google Apps Script free?
Google's Apps Script page says you only need a Gmail account and no paid Workspace subscription. Daily quotas apply: on a consumer account, for example, 90 minutes of trigger runtime per day, 100 email recipients per day and 6 minutes per execution. A script that exceeds a quota throws an exception and stops.
Does Microsoft Power Automate have a free plan?
Its pricing page lists a 30-day free trial and paid plans from $15 per user per month, with no permanent free plan, so it is not in this list.
How often does a free Zap check for new data?
Zapier's pricing table lists a polling time of 15 minutes on the Free plan, 2 minutes on Pro and 1 minute on Team and Enterprise. Polling itself never uses tasks.