Not to get all "back in my day" about it, but texting etiquette today is so different from when I was in high school. Gen Z seems to have an aversion to long text blocks, so instead, it's multiple messages with one idea per text (sometimes in quick succession). But if you had a cell phone in 2009, you remember phone plans that charged per text, not per month. When you don't have unlimited texting, every message has a cost—so you make sure every text counts.
Make's credit model will feel familiar if you lived through that era. Every trigger, filter, action, or other step in a scenario costs one credit, so when you're building, you're always at least a little aware of the meter.
In this guide, I'll walk through how Make.com pricing actually works, what each plan includes, and where the model works in your favor (and where it doesn't). Then I'll compare it to Zapier, so you can see how the two approaches differ and figure out which one fits how your team actually builds.
Table of contents:
What is Make.com?
Make (formerly Integromat) is a visual automation platform that lets you build workflows—called scenarios—by connecting modules on a canvas. You drag and drop steps, connect your apps (Gmail, Slack, Google Sheets, and 3,000+ others), and run automations on a schedule or from a trigger.
The interface is flexible and powerful: you can add routers, filters, and custom logic, and more advanced users can run JavaScript or Python via the Make Code app. Make also offers AI features, with AI agents, an AI toolkit, and connections to over 350 AI apps, so you can add intelligence into your scenarios.
Make's pricing is based on how many operations you run per month, measured in credits. Every trigger, filter, action, or other step in a scenario costs one credit—so a scenario with 10 steps uses 10 credits per run. That makes the cost of each automation transparent in one sense (you can count the modules), but it also means complex or frequently running scenarios can burn through your credit pack quickly.
How Make.com pricing works: credits and operations
Make uses a credit-based system. Each step in a scenario counts as one credit, so every step that triggers or executes when a scenario runs draws down one credit.
Trigger a workflow? One credit. Then, every subsequent action is an additional credit—like adding a row to a Google Sheet, or fetching data from Gmail. Running a filter or router step costs one credit per execution (even the conditional steps that don't produce an output). A five-step scenario running 100 times a month uses 500 credits, and a 20-step scenario running 500 times burns through 10,000.
Some actions even cost more than one credit. For example, the Make Code app uses two credits per second of execution time. AI-related actions can also consume more credits depending on the feature. Make's pricing page and help docs spell out the exact cost for each module type, so you can estimate before you build.
The important thing to remember is that the more steps you have and the more often the scenario runs, the faster you go through your monthly credit allowance. If you run out, scenarios stop until the next billing cycle or until you upgrade or buy more credits, depending on your plan.
Make offers a free plan with 1,000 credits per month, enough to try the product and run a few light automations. Paid plans start at $9/month for 10,000 credits (Core) and scale up with higher credit packs and extra features like priority execution, team roles, and enterprise security. Annual billing saves around 15% or more compared to paying monthly.
So the model is predictable in the sense that you know the price per plan—but your actual usage depends on how many scenarios you have, how many steps each has, and how often they run.
Make.com pricing overview
Here are Make's main plans and what you get. Pricing changes from time to time, so check the Make pricing page for current numbers.
Free plan: Up to 1,000 credits per month, with a limit of 2 active scenarios. You get the visual workflow builder, 3,000+ apps, routers and filters, and a 15-minute minimum interval between scheduled scenario runs. The free plan is good for learning the product and testing simple automations, though the scenario cap means you'll hit the ceiling quickly if you want to run more than a couple workflows at once.
Core ($9/month, billed annually): 10,000 credits per month. Everything in Free, plus access to the Make API, higher data transfer limits, unlimited active scenarios, and scheduled scenarios down to a 1-minute interval. This plan is aimed at individuals or freelancers with moderate automation needs.
Pro ($16/month, billed annually): 10,000 credits per month (with options to add more). Everything in Core, plus full-text execution log search, custom variables, and priority scenario execution, so your runs get through faster during peak times. The Pro plan works for users who need better visibility into runs and a bit more control.
Teams ($29/month, billed annually): 10,000 credits per month (scalable). Everything in Pro, plus team collaboration. You can create and share scenario templates, as well as manage team roles. The Teams plan is for groups that want to build and maintain workflows together.
Enterprise (custom pricing): Custom credit allocation and capacity. Everything in Teams, plus advanced security, 24/7 enterprise support, access to the Value Engineering team, enterprise app integrations, and custom functions. This is for organizations that need governance, compliance, and scale.
You can scale credit packs on most paid plans—Make offers tiers with 20k, 40k, 80k, and higher credit volumes per month, so your bill grows with your usage. There's a little slider tool on Make's website to help you figure out your exact price based on the number of credits you need. If you're considering Make, map out a few real scenarios (step count × runs per month) to see which plan and credit pack you'd need.
Who Make is best for
Make appeals most to people who want to work close to the logic. Ideal users like seeing every connection laid out visually, adding custom code where needed, and building scenarios that branch and loop in ways a simple trigger-action chain can't.
Solo operators, freelancers, and small technical teams with a manageable number of workflows often find the credit model refreshingly transparent (you know how many steps your scenarios have, so estimating costs isn't hard). The free tier is also useful for kicking the tires, which makes it easy to try before you commit.
Make is less ideal if you want to avoid thinking about usage at all. Because every step costs a credit, complex or high-frequency scenarios can push you into higher tiers or leave you watching the meter. Teams that just want automations to run without monitoring credit consumption will find Zapier's task-based model easier to work with.
Zapier charges for completed actions rather than individual steps, so what you pay has a more direct relationship to what your automations actually accomplish. Make also has fewer native integrations than Zapier (3,000+ vs. 8,000+), so if your stack includes niche or legacy apps, you'll want to confirm Make supports them before you commit.
Make is a good tool for technical users who like building close to the logic and don't mind managing usage. For everyone else, you might want to keep looking.
Make vs. Zapier pricing
On paper, Make looks like the budget option. Its Core plan starts at $9/month, while Zapier's lowest paid plan starts at $19.99. But the sticker price is only part of the story.
The billing models work differently in ways that aren't obvious at first glance. Make bills for every credit consumed: triggers, filters, routers, and each action all count. Zapier bills only for completed tasks, and advanced logic steps like Filters and Paths don't count toward your task total at all. So you can build smarter, more branching workflows on Zapier without watching the usage meter climb with every conditional step. For teams automating across a large app stack, Zapier's integration library is also considerably wider (8,000+ apps versus Make's few thousand), which matters when your tools aren't all household names.
Make's workflow builder also comes with a steep enough learning curve that Make's own support team has suggested users complete roughly 19 hours of Make Academy training before even trying to build production workflows. That can make implementation tricky for businesses that want automations running this week rather than next quarter. And if your team doesn't have the technical depth to get there on their own, you're often looking at hiring a specialist—which can quickly outpace whatever you saved on the monthly subscription.
There's also a platform value question worth considering. Zapier's paid plans include Tables, Forms, Copilot, and AI orchestration built in. You're paying for a full system your whole team can use, not just a workflow builder like you are with Make.
Make is a good fit for technical users who have the time to master the canvas (and the discipline to monitor usage). But for most teams—especially those that need automations running fast, across a broad app ecosystem, without a dedicated automation specialist on staff—Zapier is the better choice.
Find your automation sweet spot
Make.com pricing is built around a trade-off: more granular control over what you pay per operation, in exchange for more active attention required to manage it. At $9/month for Core, the entry price is low, and the free tier is useful for testing. But just like budgeting texts on a per-message plan, the credit math demands more of your attention as your scenarios grow—and the consequences of miscalculating (scenarios stopping mid-month, bills climbing faster than expected) are real. At least, unlike my high-school texting days, you're not at risk of sending embarrassing texts meant for your BFF to your crush instead.
If you're a technical builder who has the time and appetite to master the platform and monitor usage, Make delivers a lot of potential. If you'd rather spend that energy building things than tracking credits, Zapier's task-based model is the better choice.
Learn more about how Zapier's task-based pricing works, or see our full breakdown of how Zapier and Make stack up. Or if you want to skip the credit math and get started with a platform built for your whole team, try Zapier free and see how it fits.
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