Make vs. Zapier: A Comprehensive Comparison

When it comes to no-code automation platforms, Zapier has held the crown as the industry leader. But within the last few years, Make (formerly Integromat) has quickly emerged as a serious challenger.

While Make initially focused on closing the integration gap, the platform now faces a bigger challenge: catching up with Zapier's comprehensive feature set, which extends far beyond simple app connections. Seriously, I was blown away by the number of features (especially AI-powered ones) Zapier has introduced in the last year.

So, which platform delivers the comprehensive AI automation experience that businesses require in 2025? Let's dive into how these two automation giants stack up against each other to help you decide which one’s best for you.

What Is Zapier?

Zapier is a no-code automation platform that connects your whole app stack and helps you automate workflows without technical expertise. Founded in 2011, it's the first platform to introduce the concept of simple trigger and action-based automations (called “zaps”). When something happens in one app (a trigger), an action in another app is fired. For example, when you receive a new email attachment in Gmail, Zapier can automatically save it to Dropbox, create a task in Trello, and send a notification to Slack.

Today, the platform goes far beyond zap automations with what I would call a fully-featured AI automation OS, boasting features like Chatbots, Agents, Tables, Interfaces, and Canvas.

Zapier’s focus is on user simplicity and providing a complete automation experience from start to finish.

What Is Make?

Make is a visual automation platform that lets you create sophisticated workflows through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Like Zapier, Make connects your favorite apps and services, enabling you to eliminate repetitive manual tasks by automatically passing data between tools and triggering seamless cross-platform actions.

For instance, when a new order comes through Shopify, Make can automatically send order details to your fulfillment center via email, create a shipping label in ShipStation, and add the customer to your email marketing list in Mailchimp. It can even post order notifications in your team's Discord channel.

Make’s focus is on its flexible flowchart, drag-and-drop automation builder and advanced features, including data processing and manipulation, as well as error handling.

Comparing Make and Zapier

Interface and Core Features

Long gone are the days of the rigid, linear step-by-step zaps that earlier Zapier users like me remember. Now you can create sophisticated automations with databases, interfaces, chatbots, and AI agents. Instead of separate tools, you get one integrated system. Zapier’s latest products go beyond traditional automation, embracing the success of functional databases like Airtable and AI tools like chatbots and AI agents.

Here’s an example setup I tested to create a custom support process:

Customer asks Chatbot a question → Ticket created in Tables → Workflow assigns ticket to a free agent → Agent responds via Interface → Tables updated → Workflow sends follow-up survey → Results stored in Tables for reporting

Rather than building everything from scratch, I copied this workflow and pasted it as a prompt in Zapier’s AI-powered visual workflow builder, Canvas. Five seconds later, it responded with a complete visualization of the entire process. Think of this as a mind-map of your process that is functionally connected to Zapier.

You can preview assets on a granular level, essentially reviewing what Zapier plans to build for you. When you click “Build it,” Zapier creates all of the assets. And it's all done automatically. The finished canvas even comes with a guided tutorial with explanatory popups.

One of the zaps created as a part of the process:

Yes, I still had to set up each zap, but the overall process and assets were remarkably well-executed and aligned with my initial prompt. Truly impressive!

While Make continues to excel with its powerful visual workflow builder, the platform has largely stayed in its lane. Don't get me wrong – what they do, they do well. The scenario builder that made Make famous still works beautifully and offers more sophisticated automation capabilities than most competitors.

But here's the thing: Make hasn't really evolved beyond workflows. While Zapier has been busy building databases, custom interfaces, and chatbots, Make has stayed true to its core strengths. You still need separate tools for data storage, custom forms, or any kind of conversational AI. It's like having an incredibly powerful sports car that only drives on one road.

That said, things might be changing. As I'm writing this review, Make just launched Agents in beta. The feature lets you stack multiple scenarios within a single agent and combine them with custom prompt instructions. It's their first real step beyond traditional automation.

But as far as core features and interface variety, we have a clear winner. Not only does Zapier provide an end-to-end platform for automation, but it has also managed to preserve its easy-to-understand UI approach across the entire toolset.

App Integrations

When it comes to integrations, Zapier dominates with 8,000+ native connections compared to Make's 2,400+. This means that Zapier users rarely hit the wall of unsupported apps. Whether you're using Salesforce or some niche industry tool, Zapier probably has it covered.

This trend is unlikely to change anytime soon. Zapier's position as the most popular integration platform means that all vendors integrate with it first.

Make's smaller catalog still covers most mainstream business apps, but the gaps can be deal-breakers for specific use cases. However, Make fights back with superior webhook support that's more robust and easier to implement than Zapier's. If your app isn't natively supported, Make's webhooks often provide a solid workaround, and they're free. It also might be easier to convince a vendor to build webhooks than a native Zapier integration (usually, it’s faster and easier to use).

One caveat here to consider is that while Make supports fewer apps, it generally supports more API endpoints per app. In other words, Make allows you to automate more triggers and actions. Essentially, Zapier has a much wider app coverage, while Make has a much deeper one. In the end, it all comes down to which apps and actions/triggers you need for your use case.

AI Features

When it comes to AI features, Zapier is playing in a completely different league. The platform has AI woven throughout its entire interface, starting with the homepage that’s inviting you to create a workflow with a prompt.

Beyond just integrating with LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, Zapier has built native AI agents and chatbots directly into its ecosystem.

What’s even better is that all these features come with pre-built AI guidelines. For instance, when I was building the support chatbot from my earlier example, I simply named it "Support chatbot," and Zapier automatically generated a complete prompt with appropriate instructions, style, and conversation flow.

Zapier's AI consistently anticipates what you need before you even ask for it. Additionally, workflows and each step within them come with an AI Copilot that guides you, provides suggestions on how to complete and set up steps, assists with troubleshooting, and more.

Workflows also come with an “AI by Zapier” action step, which is an intuitive prompt builder that supports all popular large language model (LLM) models. This is on top of the rest of the LLM native integrations.

Lastly, Zapier offers a whole separate product with Agents that allows you to train virtual AI bots that can connect your tools and operate with them within the instructions you give them.

Make, by comparison, feels like it's still catching up to the AI train. While their AI Assistant is helpful for scenario editing and troubleshooting, it's more of an add-on feature rather than a core part of the experience. That said, I find both AI assistants to be equal in terms of response quality, although Zapier has a smoother UI.

Zapier has made AI feel native and essential. This AI-first approach gives Zapier users an advantage in building smarter, more intuitive automations without needing to configure every detail manually. In the AI automation race, Zapier is lapping the competition.

Advanced Features

Comparing "advanced features" between these platforms was tricky for me because what feels advanced to one user might be basic to another. Plus, the real question is which type of advancement aligns with your team's capabilities and goals.

Generally speaking, Make caters more to technically minded users with developer-oriented skills, such as sophisticated API calls, deep webhook implementations, and powerful data manipulation tools. On top of that, Make’s HTTP module lets you connect virtually any app that has made its API available, even if Make doesn’t officially support it.

As a non-developer, I found these tools quite complex, but tutorials are available to help you understand them (or at least parts of them).

Zapier’s advanced tools prioritize no-code sophistication over developer tools. Features like Tables (databases), Interfaces (custom apps), and Canvas are advanced in the no-code space, but they're designed to be accessible without programming knowledge. Both are advanced in their own right, but they serve completely different user needs and skill levels.

When it comes to advanced features, I think Make and Zapier are tied. Make excels in technical depth while Zapier leads in no-code sophistication, which makes them equally powerful but in different ways.

Ease of Use

When it comes to ease of use, Zapier is the undisputed champion. Its intuitive, step-by-step interface feels like having a helpful guide walk you through each automation. Complete beginners can build working workflows within minutes. Field mapping across steps is particularly smooth. The platform intelligently suggests connections and presents data in user-friendly formats with clear labels.

Make, while powerful, demands a much steeper learning curve. The visual interface can feel overwhelming initially, and field mapping becomes a technical exercise where you're staring at raw data structures without much context. I dive into much more detail about mapping in my Make review, and I encourage you to check it out if you're a first-time user.

Customization

Customization is where Make truly shines. It offers near-limitless flexibility that puts Zapier's linear approach to shame. Make's visual workflow builder lets you create complex branching scenarios with multiple paths, conditional logic, error handlers, and sophisticated data manipulation, almost giving you visual programming capabilities. Need to build intricate if-then scenarios, manipulate collections of data coming from previous workflow steps, or create custom data transformations? Make handles it all natively (though it does come with the steep technical learning curve I mentioned previously).

Zapier, while continuously improving with features like Paths for conditional logic (now the standard UI for building workflows, substituting the old linear interface), still feels constrained by its old step-by-step philosophy. You can customize workflows and add some branching, but you're working within guardrails designed for simplicity rather than flexibility. Custom code options exist on higher-tier plans, but they feel like afterthoughts rather than core features.

That said, Zapier's recently introduced "Formatter" tool represents their effort to catch up with Make's strengths in data customization. Other small features like the ability to write custom step names and add visual notes make customization more pleasant in Zapier.

Make exceeds Zapier when it comes to customization, but there’s a catch: You can only leverage these benefits if you have the technical expertise or energy and time to invest in learning them.

Error Handling

Zapier’s approach to error handling is quite simple. It allows you to create an if/else path that defines what happens if a step fails.

You can do more advanced processes like duplicating the previous step, but with different data. The problem is that I find it hard to predict what might go wrong in such scenarios or think of great alternatives, so there are certainly limitations to this method.

Make takes a more flexible approach to error handling. It allows you to ignore the issue and continue the automation normally (the default recommended options) or Resume with substitute data, among other options.

Like pretty much everything else in Make, understanding and mastering these options requires time and knowledge, especially given the lack of sandbox data for troubleshooting. Even so, Make’s error handling wins out here because it offers greater flexibility to stop or reroute your scenario when things go wrong, something I haven’t seen in other automation tools and visual builders.

Testing and Debugging

Zapier takes a safer and smarter approach to testing and debugging with its sandbox testing environment. This allows you to run workflows with sample data without affecting your live systems. You can test, iterate, and perfect your automations risk-free before going live or having to do any extra work in your apps.

The testing process is straightforward. Hit "Test" on the step setup and see what data gets pulled from the connected app. Zapier takes historical data. For instance, if you work with the “Add New Person” trigger from a CRM platform, testing the step will pull the last record (in this case, a person) added to the CRM with their actual data, including all populated fields.

I find this approach to testing easier than Make’s, which requires you to manually populate live data. You have to create a new person (contact) in your CRM and populate their data in all of the fields to make sure they all work correctly in order to have the data available for testing. This is a serious issue if you have to test many apps.

Some might argue that Make’s approach is better because you work with live data vs. sanitized old data, but I’m doubtful. Also, I've never had issues with Zapier’s test data.

When it comes to debugging, the experience in each platform mirrors its philosophy: Zapier keeps things simple with plain-English error messages and visual indicators. Make provides developer-level detail with raw data outputs and technical logs. Zapier wins for peace of mind and ease of use, but Make's approach ultimately gives you more thorough testing and better insights into what's happening under the hood.

Team Collaboration

Both Make and Zapier offer a dedicated “Team” plan, starting at $103 per month for Zapier and $34 per month for Make, respectively.

Zapier offers shared folders for organizing automations, role-based permissions to control who can edit what, team workspaces for collaboration, and detailed activity logs to track changes. Multiple team members can work on the same zaps without stepping on each other's toes, and managers get visibility into team automation usage and performance.

Make also offers teams and team roles, as well as the option to share scenario templates. That said, there's limited permission management, no sophisticated workspace organization, and tracking team activity requires manual effort.

For organizations where multiple people need to build, maintain, and monitor automations together, Zapier's team-first approach is more suitable.

Templates

Zapier boasts thousands of pre-built templates covering virtually every app combination and business use case imaginable.

Make offers a respectable collection of templates, and I’d argue a better template guide with their guided setup. However, they lack the detailed descriptions and underlying design explanations, as well as the business context, that some of the zap templates provide.

Pricing

Pricing is where Make delivers a knockout punch that's hard to ignore. It's roughly 3-4 (or more) times cheaper than Zapier across every tier.

While Zapier's Starter plan gives you 750 tasks for $19.99/month, Make's Core plan provides 10,000 operations for just $9/month. The value proposition becomes even starker at higher volumes: $116/mo for 150,000 operations in Make vs. $733/mo for 100,000 tasks in Zapier on paired Core and Professional plans, respectively.

There’s a difference in how both platforms track their credits. Zapier only counts successfully executed action steps (trigger and filter steps are not counted) as tasks, while Make counts everything as an operation. But even then, Make is still much cheaper.

Zapier's higher cost often translates to faster implementation and lower learning curves, which can offset the price difference by saving time and reducing the need for costly developer support. But purely from a dollars-per-automation perspective, Make wins decisively.

Free Plans

Zapier's free tier feels restrictive with just 100 tasks per month, 5 zaps, and limitations to basic two-step workflows. It’s essentially a taste test designed to push you toward paid plans quickly.

Unfortunately, Make is not much different. It offers 1,000 operations per month and full access to Pro features, but only two active scenarios. You can “game” the system by trying to cram more workflows in each scenario, but it’s probably not worth your while.

Either way, you’d have to buy a subscription sooner rather than later, as both plans are more of a trial instead of a genuine freemium model.

Decision Guide: Which One is Best for You?

I'll make it easier for you!

Choose Zapier if...

• You're new to automation and want a quick setup that's easy to understand.
• You need extensive app integrations or to work with niche tools.
• AI features are important to you. You want built-in agents, chatbots, and AI assistance throughout.
• You want an all-in-one solution with databases, custom apps, and visual planning beyond workflows.
• Team collaboration is important. Shared folders, permissions, and team management features matter to you.
• You prefer safe testing with sandbox environments instead of risking live data.
• Budget isn't the primary concern, and you value a polished user experience over cost savings.
• You can’t stand complex data mapping.

Choose Make if...

• Budget is a primary concern. You need automation at 3-4x lower cost than Zapier.
• You have technical skills or the patience to learn advanced automation concepts.
• You want deep customization, like complex branching, data manipulation, coding, and visual programming.
• You work with APIs frequently and need robust webhooks and HTTP modules.
• You need advanced data processing, including arrays, text parsing, formulas, and sophisticated transformations.
• You prefer a visual drag-and-drop workflow building over linear processes.
• Developer-level control matters more than user-friendly simplicity.
• You don't need extras like databases or custom interfaces, just powerful workflows.

Other Automation Tools

n8n

n8n is an open-source automation platform that combines advanced AI capabilities with complete self-hosting control. What sets n8n apart is its cutting-edge AI agents and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. These can make autonomous decisions and work with your own data in sophisticated ways.

While the learning curve is steeper than traditional no-code platforms, n8n's free Community Edition offers unlimited automations for those willing to self-host. It's the perfect choice for technically-minded users who want Make-level functionality without recurring costs or vendor lock-in.

Pabbly Connect

Pabbly Connect positions itself as a budget-friendly alternative to Zapier with unlimited automations on all paid plans. While it lacks the advanced features and app ecosystem of the major players, Pabbly covers most mainstream business tools at a fraction of the cost (as cheap as $119/mo for 100,00 tasks on its highest plan).

The interface is straightforward but feels dated compared to modern platforms. It's a solid choice for small businesses that need basic automation without breaking the bank. Keep an eye out for the lifetime deals they occasionally offer on subscriptions.

Integrately

Integrately focuses on one-click automation templates with more than 20+ million pre-built automations between popular apps (1,200 supported, at the moment). It's designed for users who want automation without any setup complexity; just browse templates and activate them instantly. While it lacks the customization depth of other platforms, Integrately excels at making automation accessible to complete beginners who just want things to work.