What is a task in Zapier? Everything to know about Zapier's task-based pricing

When my husband and I say we're running to the pet store for "a few things," we both know that's hilariously optimistic. We might go in planning to pick up kibble and maybe refill the treat jar, but there's no way we can resist maxing out our budget on dog toys once we're there. "A few things" doesn't actually tell you much about what's happening.

Automation tools can be the same way. They all talk about "tasks" (or executions, or runs, or activities, the list goes on), but if you don't know what a task actually is, it's hard to understand what you're paying for.

In this guide, I'll break down exactly what counts as a task in Zapier, how plan tiers work, and how Zapier's pricing model compares to other automation platforms. By the end, you'll know exactly how to estimate your usage so your automation bill never reaches the outrageous numbers on our PetSmart receipts.

Table of contents:

• How Zapier's task-based pricing works

• Examples of what task usage looks like with Zapier

• How Zapier's task-based pricing model compares to other enterprise automation tools

• Tips for managing task usage costs with Zapier

• Zapier task FAQs

How Zapier's task-based pricing works

Zapier's pricing is built around a simple idea: you only pay for the work the platform actually does for you. Instead of charging by the number of workflows or the number of apps you connect, Zapier uses tasks as the core unit of measurement. Once you know what counts as a task in Zapier and what doesn't, choosing the right plan gets a lot easier.

How Zapier defines a task

A task is anything Zapier successfully completes on your behalf. Think of it like a line item on your automation to-do list: every time Zapier takes an action in another tool for you (like sending an email, creating a row in a spreadsheet, posting a message in Slack), that's a task.

Other activity doesn't count toward your task usage, like:

• Triggers. Zapier's polling triggers can check for new data as often as every minute, but those checks aren't tasks. A task only happens when an action step actually runs.

• Logic steps. Filters and Paths don't eat into your task usage—they help route data, but they're not doing work in an app.

• Errors or halts. If a step attempts to run but fails, Zapier won't charge you for it.

• Zapier apps. If your automation uses Zapier Tables, Zapier Interfaces, or other built-in tools like Delay, Looping, Digest, or Zapier Manager, those steps don't count as tasks because they're inside the Zapier app ecosystem.

It's kind of like when my mom would leave us with a list of chores over summer break. In my mind, watching Family Matters reruns on the couch next to a pile of clean laundry absolutely counted as progress. But for some reason, she only counted the part where I actually folded something. Zapier's pricing structure has that same unreasonably strict approach.

Zapier pricing tiers and task allowances

You can always add more tasks to your plan, but here's the baseline number of tasks you'll get on each Zapier plan.

And if you're an enterprise organization or you expect your automations to run at really high volumes, Zapier can create custom task packages tailored to your usage. That might mean millions of tasks per month, dedicated support, or customized performance and deployment options—whatever your operations require.

What happens if you run out of Zapier tasks?

All of Zapier's paid plans include pay-per-task billing, which allows your business-critical automations to keep running even if you've exceeded your task limit.

When your monthly billing cycle ends and your task limit resets, Zapier adds up any tasks you used beyond your plan's allowance and charges for them separately. These are billed per extra task at a rate of 1.25x your plan's normal task cost. It's basically an overflow buffer, which is handy if one of your Zaps has a busier-than-usual month. And if you're on an annual plan, your subscription is billed yearly, but any extra task usage is still charged monthly so you can keep an eye on it.

You can track all of this activity on your Billing and usage page. The additional task usage counter only shows up if you've actually gone over your limit or have pay-per-task enabled, so don't panic if you don't see it most months.

To avoid a PetSmart-sized mishap, there's also a ceiling to how much overflow you can use. Zapier caps pay-per-task usage at 3x your plan's task limit, including regular tasks and any you buy through pay-per-task.

For example, if you're on the Professional (750 tasks) plan, you get:

• 750 tasks included in your plan

• Up to 1,500 additional tasks through pay-per-task

• For a total maximum of 2,250 tasks for the month

This setup gives you room for growth but also a guardrail to keep your budget in check. After you hit that cap, your Zaps pause until your next billing cycle starts or you upgrade your plan. Your Zaps remain intact—they just stop running until you've got task capacity again.

Examples of what task usage looks like with Zapier

Sometimes the easiest way to understand task usage is to walk through what actually happens inside an automation. Let's look at a simple lead-capture workflow first.

Trigger: New form submission in Typeform

Actions:

• Create a new contact in HubSpot (1 task)

• Use Filter by Zapier to check if the contact is from a specific company

• Use Formatter by Zapier to pull out just the first name of the contact

• Send a confirmation email in Gmail (1 task, only if the Zap isn't filtered in the second step)

What doesn't count as a task:

• The trigger

• Step 2: Filtering the Zap to know if it should continue based on the contact's company

• Step 3: Formatting the data in the Zap to match the desired output

When the Zap passes the filter and runs through all four steps, it uses two tasks per run. When the Zap is filtered and stops at step 2, it uses one task per run. So if the Zap runs 200 times a month, and it passes the filter half the time, your total usage for that month would be:

Next, let's look at a more complex workflow with branching logic.

Trigger: New customer purchase in Shopify

Actions:

• Formatter step to standardize the customer's phone number

• Path A (for VIP orders over $200):

  • Create a high-value deal in the CRM (1 task)

  • Post a message in a Slack channel (1 task)

• Path B (for all other orders):

  • Add the customer to an email list (1 task)

What gets counted:

• Only the actions inside the path that runs

  • If Path A runs: 2 tasks

  • If Path B runs: 1 task

Let's say you get 500 Shopify orders a month. If 100 qualify for Path A, that's 200 tasks, and if 400 go through Path B, that's 400 tasks. Your total monthly usage would be:

In this example, the trigger checking Shopify for new orders isn't counted toward your task usage. The formatter, filter, and path logic steps are also free. These steps are doing real work for your workflow, but they don't affect your task balance. Zapier only charges for the actual actions sent to other apps—not the thinking, routing, or prep work.

How Zapier's task-based pricing model compares to other enterprise automation tools

When you're evaluating automation platforms, the pricing models can feel all over the place. Some tools meter every little operation, some bundle features into complex tiers, and others bury usage costs behind credits or operation-based math you have to reverse-engineer. Understanding those differences—and how they stack up to Zapier's task-based pricing model—makes it much easier to choose the platform that fits the way your team works.

Zapier vs. Make pricing

Make's pricing often looks great at first glance. In a side-by-side comparison, you'll see thousands of operations for a surprisingly low monthly rate. But once you start actually running workflows in Make, the math gets a lot murkier.

Let's just say The Police would be proud of the way Make watches every little move your workflow makes. Internal logic steps, polling triggers, data transformations, and even failed runs burn through credits. And Make recently shifted from operations to a credit-based system, which adds yet another layer to keep track of. Most operations cost one credit, but AI steps can cost several. So the moment you start building anything slightly complex, you're suddenly monitoring credit usage the way you monitor your phone battery at three percent.

Zapier's model is intentionally simpler. You pay only for tasks, and a task is the actual work Zapier does in another app. Everything else—the filtering, the formatting, the looping, the logic, the prep work, the error handling—is unlimited and doesn't cost you anything. And AI steps are the same price as any other task step.

A quick example: if you build a Make workflow that polls an API every five minutes, you'll use 20 operations per hour, even if nothing new happens. Build that same workflow in Zapier using a webhook trigger (free) and a filter (also free), and your usage stays at zero tasks until there's real work to do.

From an enterprise perspective, that difference matters. Zapier's task-based model is easier to forecast, budget for, and live with long-term. You don't need a consultant to tune your workflows for cost efficiency, and your engineers don't have to spend hours figuring out why Scenario #12 suddenly doubled its credit burn. And if you ever outgrow your task allowance, you can simply pay for a bit of overflow using pay-per-task instead of immediately upgrading to a new plan.

Zapier vs. Workato pricing

Workato sits firmly in the premium enterprise software category. Even light usage often starts around $1,000 a month, and full-scale deployments can easily climb into six-figure territory each year. And before you can even try the product, you typically need to go through a full sales process, including demos, scoping calls, and procurement steps.

Its model is usage-based and often involves a base subscription (workspace) plus additional usage costs depending on how much you run. Workato defines a "task" (or "unit of work") more broadly: any recipe jobs that involve data fetching, API calls, or other compute-heavy operations count toward usage. That means workflows with lots of internal logic, data transformations, or API interactions will contribute to your usage tally.

On the other hand, because Zapier charges per task, it's easy to forecast cost. Just approximate how many actions you'll run, multiply by how often, and you've got a reliable budget for the month. You don't have to make a big commitment upfront, and you don't have to guess whether the platform will fit your needs.

That faster time to deployment is part of the savings, too. Start on the free plan with 100 tasks a month, get hands-on with your own automations, and upgrade only when you're ready. Paid plans start at $19.99/month and scale in a simple, linear way as your usage grows. And if you ever need enterprise-level volume or features, you can talk to the sales team for a custom quote once you already know Zapier works for you.

n8n vs. Zapier pricing

n8n charges based on executions (in cloud mode), or can be self-hosted for free, giving you a completely different cost-versus-control tradeoff.

Yes, the self-hosted version is technically free—but "free" can get expensive quickly once you factor in everything you need to run it at scale. A realistic enterprise deployment often requires:

• People: At least one full-time engineer dedicated to scaling, upgrades, deployments, CI/CD, and production stability

• Infrastructure: Servers or cloud resources, monitoring and alerting tools, backup systems, and disaster recovery planning

• Ongoing overhead: Security patching across your entire stack, maintenance when APIs or integrations change, performance tuning and debugging, and preparations for compliance audits

By the time you put all those pieces together, the true cost can easily approach $300K+ per year for a properly maintained enterprise n8n environment.

With Zapier, the subscription is the full package. You also get value fast because there's no operational overhead slowing you down. Every plan includes the essentials enterprises expect:

• Enterprise-grade security and compliance (SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA)

• Fully managed infrastructure—patching, scaling, monitoring, all handled for you

• Built-in server management and maintenance

• Support, training, and tools designed to help teams succeed

But what if you decide to go for n8n's cloud subscription instead of self-hosting? n8n's pricing structure is often framed as more predictable than Zapier's because you pay per workflow instead of per task. But while you might get a fixed cost per workflow, you lose the freedom to scale lots of small, lightweight automations across your company.

On n8n, a simple two-step workflow costs the same as a sprawling, 80-step monster, which pushes teams toward cramming everything into a few mega-workflows that are harder to maintain and nearly impossible for non-technical folks to contribute to. And that's a problem, because the biggest efficiency gains from AI-powered automation usually come from citizen automators.

Zapier flips that incentive structure: if you find an elegant, low-task way to accomplish something, you pay less. Developers can follow modular best practices, and non-technical teams can actually build the small-but-impactful automations that never make it onto IT's backlog. And if usage spikes, that usually means people across the organization found new ways to get more productive—which is the whole point of automation in the first place.

Tips for managing task usage costs with Zapier

If you want to keep your automation costs predictable and efficient, a little Zap design strategy goes a long way. Here are a few simple ways to stay in control of your task spend:

• Design modular, single-purpose Zaps. Instead of building one massive workflow, create focused Zaps that accomplish specific tasks. This makes troubleshooting easier and lets you disable or modify individual automations without affecting others. You can even create sub-Zaps (reusable components) that can be slotted into multiple workflows.

• Use filters strategically. Filters don't count as tasks, and they can prevent unnecessary actions from running. Add filters early in your Zap to stop processing when conditions aren't met.

• Batch actions when possible. Instead of triggering a Zap for every individual record, use scheduled batch processing for non-urgent workflows. That way, you reduce total task consumption while getting the same work done.

• Eliminate redundant steps. Audit your workflows for actions that don't add value. Look for multiple Zaps performing similar functions that could be consolidated, or steps that you needed during development but not in production.

• Optimize trigger conditions. Tighten your trigger criteria to make sure Zaps only run when truly necessary. A trigger that fires too broadly wastes tasks on processing that doesn't require automation.

Ultimately, Zapier's task-based pricing rewards good automation hygiene. When you build with intention and let logic shape when your paid actions run, you can keep costs low while still unlocking huge efficiency gains. And if you ever hit a point where your automations are running more often than you expected, that's usually a sign of success: they're doing real work for you.

Zapier task FAQs

What is a Zapier task vs. Zap?

In Zapier, a task is any successful action performed in a third-party app after it's triggered, such as creating a contact, sending a notification, or updating a record. A Zap is an automated workflow that can execute multiple tasks.

How do multi-step Zaps affect task usage?

Each action in a multi-step Zap counts as a separate task, so a five-step Zap consumes four tasks every time it runs (the trigger doesn't count as a task). The exception is if any of the steps are built-in Zapier tools, which don't count against task usage.

Can I track how many tasks my Zaps consume?

Yes, Zapier provides a usage dashboard in your account where you can monitor task consumption by Zap and across your entire account each billing cycle.

What is the Zapier free plan task limit?

On a Zapier free plan, you'll get 100 tasks/month.

Related reading:

• Zapier pricing: Why Zapier is a better value than Make, n8n, and other automation platforms

• How to optimize your vibe coding spend

• When you should automate a task

• Zapier examples: Ways to use automation at work

• What is AI automation? And how your business can use it