Zapier vs. Make: Which is best? [2025]

Start small, then scale. It's good advice when you're automating processes in your business; most enterprise organizations start with a pilot project to figure out how much time they can actually save. But automation pilots tend to be run by technical staff, which means that scaling to non-technical departments is the first "real world" test your workflows will face.

What happens next? It depends on your automation platform. If it's intimidating to non-technical users, then rolling out automations to your marketing, sales, and HR teams will create a permanent surge in IT support tickets—and you'll probably need to hire specialists and more IT staff as you scale. But with the right automation platform, you can empower your existing teams to create, modify, and maintain workflows themselves.

Make and Zapier are both leaders in the no-code automation category. You can use either platform to create sophisticated workflows, but there are meaningful differences in ease of use, ability to scale, AI features, and total cost of ownership. Here's how they compare in the ways that matter for enterprise-scale automation.

Table des matières:

• Make vs. Zapier at a glance

• Zapier is built for broad enterprise adoption; Make caters to technical specialists

• Zapier's total cost of ownership is lower than Make's

• Zapier integrates with 3x more apps than Make

• Zapier is a full-featured AI orchestration and automation platform

• Zapier has more proven ability to scale

• Zapier and Make both have enterprise-level security

• Which platform is right for your enterprise?

Make vs. Zapier at a glance

Voici un récapitulatif des différences dans les grandes lignes, mais poursuivez la lecture pour obtenir davantage de précisions.

Zapier is built for broad enterprise adoption; Make caters to technical specialists

Zapier has always been straightforward to use, even for non-technical employees. Now, with Zapier Copilot, it's even easier: just tell Zapier what you want to automate, and the rest happens automatically.

Why does accessibility matter? It means non-technical employees can build sophisticated automations in minutes, from marketing teams automating lead nurturing to sales teams connecting CRM data across multiple systems.

"I can get someone who's only been here for a few weeks to set up an automation in Zapier, that's huge," says Korey Marciniak, Senior Manager of Customer Support Strategy and Operations at Okta. "Zapier makes it to where I can just go in and change one small thing when something changes versus opening a ticket and waiting for engineering support. "

Make's visual builder, while powerful, comes with a steeper learning curve. While you can use templates to launch basic automations quickly, there's no AI assistant to help you create custom workflows. Make's own support agents suggest you should complete Make Academy before attempting to build a custom scenario—or just hire an expensive consultant to do it.

Make was historically the "power user" favorite thanks to unlimited Routers, robust Iterators, and powerful Aggregators for data merging. Its HTTP module is flexible for calling APIs directly, and its visual map makes complex multi-branch logic easy to see at a glance.

But Zapier has invested heavily in closing that gap, adding Looping, improved Paths, Sub-Zaps, and Custom Actions (with AI-assisted API setup), plus the ability to create complex custom-coded automations using Zapier Functions. The AI by Zapier suite bakes in capabilities like natural language formatting, AI-first templates, and AI agents that can adapt workflows dynamically. And using Zapier Canvas, you can map out entire business processes using a visual builder.

With Zapier, power users can still tap advanced features—without alienating the marketing manager or HR lead who needs to adjust a workflow.

Zapier's total cost of ownership is lower than Make's

Make's pricing looks attractive in head-to-head plan comparisons, offering thousands of operations for a low monthly rate. Despite this lower headline rate, you might not actually be saving money.

Voici pourquoi :

• Every step in your Make workflows counts against your budget, including internal logic, polling triggers, and even failed runs.

• Make's billing is now based around credits, not operations. Most operations use one credit, but many AI-based operations use multiple credits.

• As a consequence, tracking, diagnosing, and optimizing credit usage imposes a hidden cost. Make's support forum is full of users trying to figure out why their workflows are using more credits than expected, and discussing workaround strategies (like using external cron jobs) to avoid burning through credits unnecessarily.

By contrast, Zapier's task-based model is transparent and easy to understand. You're charged only for "work" actions, with unlimited use of platform features like filtering, formatting, looping, and error handling. And Zapier's tasks—regardless of whether they involve AI—are billed the same.

Let's look at an example. A Make workflow that polls an API every 5 minutes burns 20 operations per hour whether or not it finds new data; the same workflow in Zapier could run on a webhook trigger (free) and filter (free), using zero tasks until there's work to do.

From an enterprise perspective, Zapier's model is easier to forecast for budgeting and procurement. It also requires less overhead: you don't need consultants to build and maintain complex workflows, and you won't burden your technical staff with cost management tasks (like optimizing workflows to use fewer credits). And if you ever go over your Zapier task limit, you have the option to pay for a few more tasks incrementally using pay-per-task billing rather than upgrading your plan.

Add to that the fact that Zapier also includes unlimited Tables and Interfaces on every plan, and it's clear that you're getting more value from Zapier.

Zapier integrates with 3x more apps than Make

Zapier connects to 8,000+ apps, and they're all pre-built and maintained. That means you get apps crossing all categories, including core business systems, productivity platforms, marketing and sales tools, finance and operations, and emerging AI and data platforms. No matter what niche apps your teams use, Zapier likely integrates with them. And when APIs change, Zapier maintains the connector, so workflows keep running without intervention.

Make's ~2,800 integrations sometimes go deep into app-specific actions, which is appealing if you rely heavily on a single system with advanced needs. But breadth matters when enterprises need to connect dozens of apps across departments, or when testing and adopting new tools is part of your strategy.

For example, Zapier offers over 260 HR apps while Make has about 90. If you use an established HR platform, like Workday, you'll have no problem finding an integration with either Zapier or Make. But if you want to switch to a newer product, like Ashby, or a niche, industry-specific solution, like Double Nickel (a recruitment platform for trucking companies), Zapier is much more likely to have what you need.

Zapier is a full-featured AI orchestration and automation platform

For many enterprises, automation is just the first step. The real opportunity lies in orchestrating not just workflows, but the entire set of systems that support them. Zapier has grown beyond app-to-app integrations to include native tools that let teams centralize data, build user-facing interfaces, and incorporate AI—all without leaving the platform.

While Make offers data storage and has recently launched AI agents, it's missing many of Zapier's most powerful features.

With Zapier Tables, you can store, manage, and query structured data right inside Zapier. Instead of relying on an external database or spreadsheet, enterprises can maintain a single source of truth for records that power multiple workflows.

Zapier Interfaces lets you design branded forms, dashboards, and other user-friendly front ends that connect directly to your Zaps. Create intake forms for requests, leads, or support tickets that feed data directly into workflows and build lightweight internal tools without pulling engineering resources into a full app development cycle.

And with Zapier's chatbot builder, you can embed AI into websites, portals, or internal systems. These chatbots can answer customer or employee questions instantly using connected data sources, kick off automated workflows based on chat inputs—like creating tasks, updating CRM records, or escalating issues—and use AI to parse natural language, match intent, and trigger the right sequence of actions.

Zapier Agents take this a step further by integrating AI directly into your workflows, so your systems can intelligently adapt rather than just following instructions. This gives you the best of both worlds: structured automation for what's predictable, and smart AI decision-making when things aren't. You can also enable human-in-the-loop controls via Slack approvals so your team stays involved in critical decisions.

Zapier Agents are simple enough that anyone can build them—just describe what you want with a prompt.

Building a Make AI agent workflow is a manual, multi-step process. You need to create an agent, design a Make scenario, add your agent into the appropriate place in the workflow, and make sure everything works together as you intended.

Zapier has more proven ability to scale

Zapier helps fast-growing teams like Okta, Remote, and Vendasta scale automation across their organizations, reduce hiring costs, and free up thousands of hours of employee time each year. 3.4 million companies use Zapier. Make has around a tenth as many customers and fewer enterprise users, which means it simply hasn't been stress-tested at the same scale.

Here's how Zapier is designed for enterprise workflows:

• Outage detection: Zapier keeps your data safe if one of your connected apps has downtime.

• Intelligent throttling: Never lose data, even when traffic spikes.

• API change management: When APIs update, Zapier manages those changes automatically so your workflows stay intact.

• Data checkpoints: Built-in guardrails ensure automations finish what they start.

• Horizontal scalability: Zapier can manage spikes in workflow volume without slowing down.

As you scale, Zapier's ease of use is another asset. Because Zapier's automations require less technical knowledge, it's faster to roll them out across your organization and less resource-intensive to maintain them. In Make, deeply nested scenarios can be harder to debug or modify. Zapier's straightforward design can translate to lower ongoing maintenance costs and fewer specialized personnel needed to manage automations.

Zapier and Make both have enterprise-level security

Both Zapier and Make are SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant, with encrypted data transit and storage. But governance differs:

• Zapier Enterprise: SSO (SAML/SCIM), granular permissions, detailed audit logs, centralized admin dashboard, and workspace separation—managed for you.

• Make Enterprise: SSO, SOC 2, GDPR, and admin roles, but governance relies more on user discipline. In large orgs, that can lead to inconsistent practices across departments.

With Zapier's managed security model, IT leaders at enterprise orgs have less to worry about. Enterprises are automatically opted out of AI model training, compliance is handled automatically, and it's easy for IT teams to set detailed role-based privileges and get granular access over who's automating what. This means lower IT overhead and better security outcomes.

Make vs. Zapier: Which platform is right for your enterprise?

For most enterprises looking to empower business units while maintaining IT oversight, Zapier's combination of ease-of-use, breadth, security, and evolving advanced capabilities delivers faster time-to-value and sustainable scale.

Choose Zapier if:

• You want to scale automation across multiple teams and skill levels quickly

• Predictable costs and minimal optimization overhead are important

• You need both breadth (8,000+ apps) and governance for enterprise compliance

• You want intuitive AI capabilities and managed connector maintenance

• Your goal is centralized control with distributed building

Choose Make if:

• You have a dedicated technical automation team managing all workflows

• You can commit to active scenario optimization to control operations costs

• You need deep module control for a narrow set of systems

• Visual, drag-and-drop mapping is your top priority

If you want to see how Zapier could fit into your automation strategy, connect with our enterprise team for a tailored consultation and demo. Or start building right now.

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