n8n, Make or Zapier for your CRM? An honest comparison
All three can push a web form into a CRM. The differences show up later: at volume, when personal data has to stay in the EU, and on the day a flow breaks. A comparison built from the vendors’ own pages.
The question comes up in almost every first call: should the CRM be connected with n8n, Make or Zapier? All three will move a web form into a CRM in an afternoon, and for a single simple flow the choice barely matters. It starts to matter when the flows have ten steps instead of two, when call logs and client details have to stay in the EU, and when a flow stops at 9 a.m. on a Monday and someone has to find out why.
Every fact in the table below comes from the vendor’s own pricing, help or legal page, read on 17 October 2026. Prices change several times a year, so the table names the unit each tool bills on rather than a price. The unit is what decides your bill at volume, and it changes far less often than the figures next to it.
The comparison
| Question | n8n | Make | Zapier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can you host it yourself? | Yes. A standard self-hosted version is published on GitHub, and the Business plan is self-hosted only. | Cloud service. Its pricing page lists no self-hosted edition. | Cloud service. Its pricing page lists no self-hosted edition. |
| What you pay for | Workflow executions: one run counts once, however many steps the workflow has. | Credits, Make’s billing unit according to its pricing page. | Tasks: every step in a Zap uses tasks, and rates vary with the type of step. |
| Where data is stored | Hosted plans: in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt. Self-hosted: wherever you run it. | A US or an EU data centre, chosen when the organisation is created. It cannot be changed afterwards. | AWS servers in the United States, according to Zapier’s data privacy page. |
| Free entry point | A free trial on the hosted plans, no card required; the self-hosted version runs on your own server. | Free plan: 1,000 credits a month, with at least 15 minutes between scheduled runs. | Free plan: 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps only, checking for new data every 15 minutes. |
| Plan names | Hosted: Starter, Pro. Self-hosted: Business. Enterprise: either. | Free, Core, Pro, Teams, Enterprise. | Free, Professional, Team, Enterprise. |
| Volume on the first paid plans | Starter: 2,500 executions a month. Pro: 10,000. | Sold by credit volume; the pricing page lets you pick the monthly credits. | Sold by task tier; above the tier you move to pay-per-task unless you turn it off. |
What the pricing unit means for a CRM flow
A CRM flow is rarely two steps. A typical inbound-call flow receives the event, rewrites the phone number in international format, looks the contact up, branches on whether it exists, creates or updates the record, logs the call, checks for an open deal and alerts the owner. That is eight to ten steps, and it runs every time the phone rings.
Take 2,000 calls a month through a ten-step flow. On n8n’s hosted plans, that is 2,000 executions, because n8n counts the run, not the steps. On Zapier, every step uses tasks, so the same month is counted step by step, in the order of 20,000 tasks before any rate adjustment. Make bills in credits; before projecting a volume, check on its pricing page how many credits your scenario will use. None of this makes one tool cheap and another expensive in every case. It means the same flow can land in very different price bands, and the only way to know is to multiply your own monthly volume by the unit each tool counts.
Where the data goes
A call log is personal data: a phone number, a name, a time, sometimes a recording link. For a business in France or elsewhere in the EU, where that data is processed belongs in your GDPR records, and some clients ask the question outright in their contracts.
- n8n: its hosted plans store data in the EU, in Frankfurt. Self-hosting puts it on a server you choose, in the region you choose.
- Make: you choose a US or an EU data centre when you create the organisation, and you cannot move it later. Choose EU on day one if it matters.
- Zapier: its data privacy page says it hosts data on AWS servers in the United States, including the data it processes for customers.
Hosting in the US is not forbidden for an EU business; it means a transfer outside the EU that you have to document. Whether that is acceptable is a decision for you and whoever handles your data protection, not for the automation tool. What the table does is make the question visible before the flows are built, rather than after a client asks.
The day a flow breaks
Flows break. A CRM field gets renamed, a login expires, a phone system changes the shape of an event. What matters is how fast someone notices and how easily they can read what happened. All three tools keep a history of runs. In n8n we attach an error workflow to every production flow, so a failed run sends an alert with the step that failed and the data it received, and the fix starts from facts instead of guesses. Whatever tool you pick, ask who receives that alert and who is expected to act on it. A flow nobody watches is the most expensive kind.
When each one is the right choice
- Zapier: one person, a handful of short automations between two tools, low volume, and no constraint on where the data lives. It is quick to set up and the free plan is enough to test an idea.
- Make: a team that wants a visual builder, moderate volume and an EU data centre, without running any software itself.
- n8n: CRM flows with many steps, call volume, personal data that should stay in the EU or on your own server, and someone, in-house or an agency, to look after the flows month after month.
What we use, and why
For CRM, telephony and invoicing work we build on n8n: per-execution billing suits long flows, the hosted plans keep data in the EU, the self-hosted option is there when a client wants the server in its own name, and the workflows export as files that belong to the client. n8n’s licence, the Sustainable Use License, allows use for your own internal business purposes, which is the case for a company automating its own CRM. It is not a matter of principle. When a client already runs its flows well on Make or Zapier, we do not move them for the sake of it; we fix what is broken where it is.
If you want to see the flows written out step by step for forms, calls, quotes, invoices and payments: n8n automation for your CRM →
Call data is the case where the pricing unit matters most. The integration, flow by flow: Phone to CRM integration →
Before deciding, open the three pricing pages listed below and redo the sum with your own monthly volume. The figures will have moved by the time you read this; the unit each tool bills on, and where it keeps your data, will not have moved as fast.
- n8n pricing and data location: n8n.io/pricing
- Make pricing: make.com/en/pricing; data centres: help.make.com/organizations
- Zapier pricing: zapier.com/pricing; data location: zapier.com/legal/data-privacy
Every offer, from one flow to a monthly care plan, quoted in writing within 48 hours: Services →