Free · No signup · Live vendor pricing

What will automation actually cost you?

Answer 4 quick questions and we'll price Zapier, Make, n8n, Pipedream & more at your real volume — then rank them by fit, not by who pays us. About 30 seconds.

No paid placement 7 tools · prices re-checked weekly Cloud, self-host & GDPR aware
1
Company size
2
Your role
3
Workflow type
4
Volume & budget
5
Results
Step 1 of 4

Tell us about your company

Your size and business type let us pre-estimate your likely volume and budget — so the sliders later start at a sensible default instead of zero. You can always adjust them.

How big is your team?
Just me
Solo founder, freelancer or a personal side-project
1 person
Small team
A startup or small department running shared automations
2–10 people
Growing
Scaling fast — several teams automating in parallel
11–50 people
Mid-market
Established company with high-volume, cross-team flows
51–200 people
Enterprise
Large org with heavy throughput and compliance needs
200+ people
What kind of company?
Services / Consulting
Consulting, legal, accounting, professional services
SaaS / Software
Software products, apps, digital platforms
E-commerce / Retail
Online store, DTC brand, marketplace
Agency
Marketing / creative — many client accounts
Manufacturing / Logistics
Production, supply chain, IoT, warehousing
Finance / Healthcare
Regulated: fintech, banking, insurance, health
Other / Mixed
Something else or a mix of the above
Step 2 of 4

What's your role?

This helps us weight features that matter most to you — AI nodes, no-code UI, code access, compliance, and more.

Marketing
Email sequences, lead flows, social posting, CRM sync
Operations
Process automation, approvals, reporting, cross-team data sync
Developer
APIs, webhooks, custom code steps, backend pipelines
Finance / Accounting
Invoice processing, expense sync, payment notifications
Legal / Compliance
Document flows, GDPR-sensitive data, audit trails
HR / People Ops
Onboarding, offboarding, Slack notifications, HRIS sync
E-commerce
Order processing, inventory sync, customer notifications
Sales
Lead routing, CRM sync, outreach sequences, deal-stage automation
Customer Support
Ticket routing, AI deflection, SLA monitoring, CSAT surveys
Other / Mixed
Multiple use-cases or not sure yet
Step 3 of 4

What will you automate?

Pipelines for your role — pick one.

Step 4 of 4

Volume & budget

We'll calculate the exact cost per tool and factor it into your match score.

5,000
runs/mo · How many times your automations fire. Each tool bills this differently — we convert it per vendor (see results).
3
steps · Actions per run. Matters because Make bills every step, Zapier skips triggers/filters, n8n & Pipedream bill per run.
5
workflows · How many separate automations you run in parallel.
$50
Tools above this will be marked as over-budget, not hidden
Not set
Set your current monthly automation bill and we'll show the projected savings of your top pick.
Required integrations (optional — filters tools that don't support them)

Your personalized recommendations

Four ways to choose — pick the priority that fits you, then see the full ranked breakdown below. The same formula ranks every tool — no paid placement.

Match scores blend feature fit (52%), price vs your budget (26%) and ecosystem maturity (12%), plus a small workflow-fit bonus. The per-feature ratings (0–100) are WizardCost's own editorial assessment from public sources — not measured benchmarks or vendor-supplied figures. How we score →

Estimates derived from each vendor's public pricing (verified June 2026); your real cost depends on workflow shape. WizardCost is editorially independent — some links are affiliate links that never affect the ranking. Method & full disclosure: wizardcost.com/automation/ · generated by the free calculator at wizardcost.com/automation/calculator.html
Next: compare plans head-to-head
See the cheapest plan at your exact volume — your answers carry over automatically.
Compare plans

Wondering if automation is worth the cost at all? Calculate your ROI and break-even →

Frequently asked questions

How the calculator works, where the data comes from, and what the estimates mean.
We project a starting volume from your company size, business type, role and the workflow types you select — each workflow type carries a typical monthly runs baseline, and picking several scales the estimate sublinearly rather than just adding them up. The auto-estimate is only a starting point: you can override the runs, workflows and budget sliders in the Volume & budget step at any time.
From each tool's official public pricing page, verified by hand. Every change we record is dated and published in our price changelog, and the footer shows the month prices were last verified.
Enterprise and custom tiers have no public price. When your volume goes beyond the biggest public plan, we estimate the custom tier by scaling the largest public plan's price sublinearly, calibrated against published price points. Estimated prices are marked with ~ and a disclaimer: treat them as a ballpark and confirm the real quote with the vendor's sales team.
n8n, Make, Zapier, Pipedream, Activepieces, Automatisch and Node-RED — cloud plans and self-hosted options alike. You can also put them side by side on the compare page.
Each tool gets a 0–100 rating on seven features — no-code UI, code access, AI nodes, self-hosting, GDPR, integrations and ecosystem maturity. We weight those to your selected role, then blend feature fit (52%), price against your budget (26%) and ecosystem maturity (12%), plus a small workflow-fit bonus. The per-feature ratings are WizardCost's own editorial assessment, based on public documentation and sources we record internally — they are considered judgements, not measured benchmarks or vendor-supplied numbers. Treat the scores as guidance for comparison, not exact metrics.
No — we're editorially independent. Some outbound links are affiliate links (marked as sponsored) and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, but affiliate status never affects match scores or rankings: every tool is ranked by the same formula, and the per-feature scores are our own editorial judgement applied equally to all of them. See the affiliate disclosure.
Because n8n can be self-hosted — the Community Edition software is free, so the only cost is the infrastructure it runs on. That is server cost, not a tool fee, and it scales with volume: roughly $8/mo for a small VPS at low volume, rising to ~$45/mo at 100k runs (you'll need Postgres and Redis by then) and ~$150/mo at very high volume. Two caveats: this assumes lightweight workflows — heavy data processing needs a bigger box — and it does NOT include your time to set up, patch, monitor and back up the server. If self-hosting isn't realistic for you, switch Hosting preference to “Cloud only” in the Volume & budget step and the ranking recalculates with cloud plans only.