Make vs n8n in 2026: Which Automation Tool Should a Small UK Business Actually Buy?

Make and n8n both let you wire apps together without writing much code. They look similar in a demo. They bill on completely different units, and that one difference decides most buying decisions.

Make charges per module step. A workflow with twelve steps burns twelve credits every time it runs.

n8n charges per workflow run. That same twelve-step workflow burns one execution.

Once you understand that, the rest of this comparison mostly falls out of it.

This piece is based on both vendors’ published pricing and documentation plus independent 2026 pricing analyses. We haven’t run a controlled head-to-head build on both platforms, so treat the cost modelling below as arithmetic on published rates rather than measured bills.

Quick Answer

Buy Make if you want a genuinely polished drag-and-drop scenario builder, you’re connecting mainstream SaaS apps in fairly linear workflows, and you never want to think about servers. It starts at $9/month (roughly £7/month) on the Core plan.

Buy n8n if you’re building AI agents, your workflows have a lot of steps, you want your data on your own infrastructure, or you expect volume to grow. Cloud starts at €24/month (roughly £21/month) on Starter, or free if you self-host the Community Edition and pay only for a small server — realistically £4–17/month.

Buy n8n specifically for AI agents. This isn’t close in 2026, and we’ll explain why below.

Pricing (checked August 2026)

Make

Make moved from counting “operations” to counting “credits” in August 2025. Each module run inside a scenario consumes credits, and AI-related modules can consume them at a different rate to standard ones.

Annual billing saves roughly 15%.

n8n

Every n8n cloud plan includes unlimited workflows and unlimited users — only execution volume moves your bill. There’s no permanent free cloud tier, but there is a 14-day trial with no card required.

What that actually means in practice

Take a realistic small-business workflow: a new form submission triggers a lookup, a conditional branch, an enrichment call, a CRM write, a Slack notification and a spreadsheet append. Call it ten module steps.

Run it 1,000 times a month and Make bills roughly 10,000 credits — you’ve consumed your entire Core allowance. The same 1,000 runs cost n8n 1,000 executions, comfortably inside Starter’s 2,500.

Now make the workflow twenty steps instead of ten. Make’s cost doubles. n8n’s doesn’t move.

That’s the whole pricing story: Make gets more expensive as your workflows get more complex; n8n only gets more expensive as they get more frequent. Independent 2026 analyses put n8n at 5–10x cheaper at scale for multi-step work, which matches the arithmetic.

The flip side is real too. If your automations are genuinely simple — three or four steps, a few hundred runs a month — Make’s £7 entry point beats n8n’s £21 and you get a better builder for the money.

AI Agents: n8n Wins, Clearly

This is where the two platforms have properly diverged in 2026.

n8n treats AI as infrastructure. It ships 70+ dedicated AI nodes built on LangChain, with native AI Agent nodes supporting tool-calling, multiple memory backends, RAG pipelines and multi-agent orchestration. Agents can loop, make decisions and call tools autonomously. You can build something that genuinely reasons its way through a task rather than following a fixed path.

Make treats AI as a feature. It has solid AI app connectors and built-in modules for text generation, summarisation and image analysis. But these are prompt-in, response-out steps inside a predetermined scenario. Make does not support agent loops or autonomous decision-making between steps.

The billing model compounds this. An AI agent execution might involve a dozen tool calls, a RAG retrieval and several LLM roundtrips. Under per-module billing, that’s a dozen-plus credits every single time. Under per-execution billing, it’s one. If AI agents are your use case, n8n’s pricing model isn’t just cheaper — it’s the only one that stays predictable.

Self-Hosting and Data Control

Make is cloud-only. No self-hosted option, no on-premise deployment, no way to run it inside your own infrastructure. If your data can’t leave your control for compliance or client-contract reasons, Make is out of the conversation.

n8n’s Community Edition is free and self-hostable with unlimited executions — you pay only for the server. That’s around £4–17/month depending on whether you use a managed host like PikaPods or administer a raw VPS yourself. n8n also sells self-hosted Business licences with SSO, Git integration and multi-environment support for teams that want enterprise features on their own hardware.

Be honest with yourself about the trade here. “Free” self-hosting means you own updates, backups, uptime and debugging. For a solo operator whose time is the scarce resource, £21/month for n8n Cloud is often the better deal than £6/month plus your weekends.

Head to Head

Which Should You Pick?

Pick Make if you’re automating mainstream SaaS apps in fairly linear ways, you value the builder experience, and you want to be running today rather than after a setup session. The visual scenario editor is the best in the category and the £7 entry price is hard to argue with for simple work. It’s also the safer recommendation if you’re handing the tool to a non-technical colleague.

Pick n8n if any of these are true: you’re building AI agents, your workflows routinely exceed ten steps, you expect run volume to grow past a few thousand a month, or you need data on your own infrastructure. Unlimited users on every cloud plan also matters more than it sounds if you’re a growing team — Make’s per-seat structure adds up.

Pick n8n self-hosted if you’re technical, cost-sensitive, and comfortable owning a small server. It’s the cheapest serious automation setup available, full stop. Just cost in your own maintenance time honestly.

Pick neither yet if you’re automating fewer than five things and they’re all inside tools you already pay for. Check whether your existing stack has native automation before adding a subscription — see our Zapier vs Make comparison for where the mainstream option fits, and our content creation stack for what a lean setup looks like.

FAQ

Is n8n really free?

The self-hosted Community Edition is genuinely free software with unlimited executions. You pay for the server it runs on — around £4–17/month — plus your own time maintaining it. n8n Cloud is not free beyond the 14-day trial.

Why did Make switch from operations to credits?

Make changed its counting unit in August 2025. The practical effect is that AI-related modules can consume credits at a different rate to standard modules, which makes AI-heavy scenarios harder to forecast than they were under flat operation counting.

Can I migrate workflows between them?

Not directly. n8n stores workflows as transparent JSON, which makes them portable and version-controllable; Make’s format is proprietary. Moving in either direction means rebuilding, so factor switching cost into the decision rather than assuming you can change your mind cheaply.

Which is better for a non-technical person?

Make, comfortably. The scenario builder is more forgiving, the error messages are friendlier, and there’s no infrastructure to think about. n8n rewards technical comfort — if the phrase “environment variable” makes you uneasy, start with Make.

What happens if I hit my limit?

On n8n Starter and Pro, workflows may be paused when you exhaust your executions. On Make, you can top up credits or move up a tier. Neither is catastrophic, but n8n’s pause behaviour means you should watch your execution count if you’re running anything time-sensitive.

Does either one handle GDPR properly for a UK business?

Both can be used compliantly, but n8n’s self-hosting option gives you a materially stronger position on data residency because the data never leaves infrastructure you control. If you’re handling client personal data under contractual restrictions, that’s the deciding factor. This isn’t legal advice — check with whoever handles your data protection.

The Verdict

The billing unit is the decision. Make charges for every step, n8n charges for every run. Simple workflows run rarely favour Make; complex workflows run often favour n8n, and it isn’t close.

For most UK small businesses just starting to automate, Make at ~£7/month is the right first purchase — better builder, lower entry cost, nothing to maintain.

For anyone building AI agents, running genuinely complex logic, or worrying about where their data lives, n8n is the right answer and you’ll save money as you scale rather than watching your bill climb with every module you add.

The honest middle path: start on Make’s free tier to learn what you actually want to automate, then re-evaluate once you know whether your workflows are three steps or thirty.