n8n vs Make: which automation tool actually fits your business

We use both n8n and Make regularly. After building automations for dozens of clients, here's the honest comparison.

Make: best for fast deployment

Make (formerly Integromat) has the most polished visual editor and the deepest library of pre-built app connectors. If your automation needs to connect to Salesforce, Shopify, Notion, and Slack — Make probably has native modules for all of them.

It's the right choice when speed matters more than cost, or when the team who will manage the workflow is non-technical.

Pricing is based on operations, which is intuitive but can surprise you. A workflow that runs 1,000 times a day with 10 steps is 10,000 operations/day. At scale, this adds up fast.

n8n: best for control and cost

n8n is open-source and self-hostable. For a client processing 50,000+ automation runs per month, the difference between Make pricing and running n8n on a €20/month VPS is significant.

The editor is less polished, the learning curve is steeper, and you're responsible for infrastructure. But the tradeoff is complete control — you can write custom JavaScript nodes, query databases directly, and build workflows that Make simply can't do.

How we choose

We default to Make when: the client's team will manage the automations themselves, the workflow connects many different SaaS apps, or the project is time-sensitive.

We default to n8n when: volume is high enough that Make costs become a concern, the workflow needs custom logic, or the client wants to self-host their infrastructure.

The honest answer

For most small businesses starting out with automation, Make is faster and safer. For businesses already running at scale, n8n usually wins on economics alone.

The tool matters less than the design of the workflow itself. We've seen beautiful automations in both and broken ones in both.