Make vs n8n
Both are automation tools. Here is what separates them.
What Make is
Make is a visual automation platform for connecting apps, data sources and AI models into scenarios, its name for a workflow drawn on a canvas. Alongside scenarios, Make AI Agents can act and orchestrate workflows across the connected app catalogue. A scenario is assembled from modules and control blocks: routers for branching, iterators for stepping through lists, error handlers for when a call fails, and notes for documenting the canvas in place. HTTP and webhook modules let a scenario call any API and be triggered by an external system, so a missing connector is not a dead end. Make Code runs custom JavaScript or Python inside a scenario, AI Mapping transforms and maps data between apps, and custom apps can be built to reach proprietary in house systems. A templates library provides prebuilt scenarios to start from, and an analytics dashboard tracks scenario performance and provides observability. More than 3,000 verified prebuilt integrations are available, grouped into categories including AI and automation, commerce, communication, CRM and sales, marketing, HR and operations, and finance and accounting. More than 300 of those are generative AI apps. Maia builds automations and agents from a natural language conversation, and the Make MCP Server exposes existing scenarios as callable actions to AI clients, which turns work already built into tools an AI client can invoke. Make Grid gives a single view across an organisation's whole automation estate. Billing runs on credits, and each module action, adding a row to a Google Sheet for instance, counts as one credit. The Free plan costs 0 USD a month and includes up to 1,000 credits, but holds a team to 2 active scenarios, a minimum interval of 15 minutes between runs, 5 minutes of execution per run and 5 MB file transfers. The Make plan starts at 9 USD a month for 5,000 credits and lifts all four: unlimited active scenarios, a 1 minute minimum interval, 40 minutes of execution per run and 500 MB file transfers. The Company tier is custom priced and raises the file transfer cap to 1,000 MB. Annual billing saves 15 percent or more against monthly. Credits are the number to watch, because scenarios stop running once a team's credits are exhausted and stay stopped until more are added. Account owners are notified at 75 percent and 90 percent of consumption, and credits can be topped up automatically. Make holds SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 attestations, supports GDPR obligations, and offers single sign on, encryption and role based access control.
What n8n is
n8n is a workflow automation tool. You build a process as a chain of connected nodes that pass data between applications, and you can either run it on n8n's cloud or host it yourself under a fair-code licence. The node library covers more than 500 integrations, and an HTTP request node handles anything outside that list, including importing a curl command directly to build the request. Data transformation nodes provide merge, loop, filter, switch, if, deduplicate, aggregate and split operations. Where the visual editor runs out, the Code node runs JavaScript and Python, self-hosted instances can pull in npm packages, and expressions are written in JavaScript using the Tournament templating language. The AI nodes are built on LangChain and can call local LLMs as well as hosted models. More than 10,000 workflow templates are published as starting points. Debugging happens inside the editor rather than through logs after the fact. There are inline logs for each line of output, the ability to load a previous execution's data back into the editor, data pinning so a node returns the same result across repeated tests, and single step execution. Self-hosting is free through the Community Edition. Deployment is by Docker or Kubernetes, including inside air-gapped private networks, and queue mode lets a self-hosted deployment reach up to 220 workflow executions per second. Self-hosted instances ping the n8n licence server daily to report execution usage. Cloud plans are separated by execution volume rather than by seats, because every plan includes unlimited users and unlimited workflows. Billed annually, Starter costs 20 EUR per month and covers 2,500 executions with unlimited steps each, one shared project and five concurrent executions. Pro costs 50 EUR per month for 10,000 executions, three shared projects and twenty concurrent executions, and adds admin roles, global variables, workflow history and execution search. Business costs 667 EUR per month for 40,000 executions and six shared projects, and adds SSO through SAML and LDAP, 30 day insights, multiple environments and Git based version control. Enterprise is quoted individually. Paying annually rather than monthly saves 17 percent, and Starter and Pro instances are hosted in Frankfurt, Germany. The enterprise tier is aimed at teams with compliance obligations. It covers identity provider user provisioning, enforced two-factor authentication, custom project roles, external secrets read from HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager or Azure Key Vault, and workflow logs streamed to observability or SIEM stacks by direct integration or webhook. Source control follows a Git push and pull pattern between development and production environments. n8n is SOC 2 audited and undergoes regular external penetration testing.
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