Zapier Pricing Explained (2026): What You'll Actually Pay, and When a Cheaper Alternative Makes Sense

Pricing checked: all Zapier prices and rules below come from zapier.com/pricing, fetched October 12, 2026. Zapier changes pricing often; check the live page before you buy.

Zapier's sticker price looks simple ("Pro from $19.99/month"), but what you actually pay depends on three things most people skim past: how many tasks your workflows use, whether you pay monthly or annually, and what happens when you go over. This guide walks through each one, then prices out three real small-business setups.

Short version:

• Zapier charges per task, which is one successful action step. Triggers don't count, and neither do Zapier's built-in tools like Filter, Formatter, Paths, and Delay (source).
• The Free plan gives you 100 tasks/month and only two-step Zaps (one trigger, one action).
• Pro starts at $19.99/month billed annually ($29.99 monthly) for 750 tasks. Team starts at $69/month annually for 2,000 tasks with up to 25 users.
• Annual billing is about 33% cheaper, and its overage rate is much lower too (1.25× vs 2.5× the base task rate).
• If you run more than a few thousand tasks a month, Make or self-hosted n8n will usually cost less, but Zapier still wins on app coverage and ease of use.

How Zapier pricing works: plan + task tier

Every self-serve Zapier subscription has two parts (Zapier):

1. A plan level (Free, Professional, or Team), which decides your features.
2. A task tier, which is your monthly task allowance. Bigger tiers cost more in total but less per task.

The plans

Source: zapier.com/pricing, October 12, 2026.

The Free plan's biggest limitation isn't the 100 tasks; it's that every Zap can have only one action. "New web-form lead → add to CRM" works. "New lead → add to CRM → text the owner → add to a spreadsheet" needs Pro. Filters and Paths are also paid-only, so you can't say "only run this when the lead is in our service area" on Free.

The task tiers (what most people actually need)

These are the lower tiers most small businesses will land in. Prices are per month.

Source: zapier.com/pricing, fetched October 12, 2026. Self-serve tiers go up to 2M tasks/month; Team starts at 2,000 tasks.

Two things jump out:

• Per-task cost falls fast as you scale. On annual Pro, 750 tasks for $19.99 works out to about 2.7¢ per task; 10,000 tasks for $129 is about 1.3¢ (our arithmetic from the table above).
• Monthly billing costs 50% more than annual at every tier shown (for example $29.99 vs $19.99). Zapier describes this as annual being "33% off the monthly rate", which is the same gap viewed from the other side.

What counts as a task (and what doesn't)

This is where people over- or under-estimate their bill. Per Zapier's pricing page:

Counts as a task:

• Each successful action step in a Zap (create a CRM contact, send an email, add a row).
• AI by Zapier steps and Code by Zapier steps (AI steps can cost more than one task depending on the model tier; see zapier.com/pricing/rates).
• Zapier MCP tool calls (the example given is one MCP tool call = 2 tasks).

Does not count:

• Triggers and polling for new data.
• Failed actions.
• Zapier's built-in tools: Formatter, Paths, Filter, Delay, Looping, Sub-Zap, Digest, Storage, Zapier Manager, Tables, and Forms.

Practical rule of thumb: count the action steps that touch another app. A Zap that goes web form → Filter (in service area?) → Formatter (clean phone number) → create HubSpot contact → send Slack message uses 2 tasks per run, not 5.

Also note that the task allowance resets monthly even if you pay annually on self-serve plans; unused tasks don't roll over (Zapier).

What happens when you go over your task limit

On paid plans you choose with a pay-per-task toggle (Zapier):

• Pay-per-task on: your Zaps keep running and extra tasks are billed at an overage rate: 1.25× your base task rate on annual plans, 2.5× on monthly plans.
• Pay-per-task off: your Zaps stop when you hit the limit, until the next cycle.
• Even with pay-per-task on, usage stops at 3× your task subscription.

Zapier itself notes that pay-per-task "costs about 3× more on a monthly plan than on an annual one." If your volume is spiky (seasonal businesses, product launches), that's a real reason to pick annual billing or a tier with headroom.

For a lead-capture Zap, stopping is the worst outcome: leads go unanswered. We'd generally leave pay-per-task on and set an alert, rather than risk silent failures.

Worked examples: what three small businesses would pay

These are illustrative models based on the official prices above, not measurements from real accounts. We count only billable action steps.

Example 1: Solo consultant, simple lead capture

• Workflow: Website form → add to Google Sheet → send yourself an email. 2 tasks per lead.
• Volume: 40 leads/month = 80 tasks.
• Cost: $0 (Free plan), as long as each Zap needs only one action. Here that means two separate two-step Zaps (form → sheet, form → email), each using one task per lead. Still 80 tasks.

Example 2: Home-services company (HVAC/plumbing), 5 people

• Workflow A, lead follow-up: form → Filter (service area) → create CRM contact → SMS to customer → Slack alert to dispatcher. 3 tasks per lead (Filter is free).
• Workflow B, review request: job marked complete → wait 2 hours (Delay, free) → send review-request SMS. 1 task per job.
• Workflow C, invoice reminder: invoice overdue → email reminder. 1 task per reminder.
• Volume: 150 leads, 120 jobs, 40 reminders = 450 + 120 + 40 = 610 tasks/month.
• Cost: Pro 750 tier, $19.99/mo annual or $29.99/mo monthly. Leaves ~140 tasks of headroom. If the owner and office manager both need to edit Zaps, Team starts at $69/mo annual.

Example 3: Growing agency, 15 people

• Around 12 Zaps (lead routing, client onboarding, reporting, invoicing) totalling roughly 6,000 tasks/month.
• Cost: that's above the 5,000 tier, so Pro 10,000 at $129/mo annual, or Team 10,000 at $169/mo annual for shared workspaces and SSO.

Use the free calculator template at the top of this page to plug in your own workflows.

What we found when we built it. We built a version of Workflow A in Zapier on October 12, 2026 (webhook → Filter → Formatter → Zapier Tables → two emails). Because Zapier Tables, Filter, and Formatter don't count as tasks (Zapier's pricing FAQ), it bills 2 tasks per lead, the two emails. We tested each step but never turned the Zap on, so this figure is from the FAQ rather than Zap history. Two catches: Webhooks and multi-step Zaps need a paid plan (we used the Pro trial), and Email by Zapier sends only 5 emails a day on Free or Trial plans. Full notes are in our Make vs n8n vs Zapier build.

We later measured a looping Zap directly: a weekly invoice sweep that ran two Code steps for each of 10 invoices used 20 tasks on the plan counter. Steps inside a loop bill once per item. Details are in the same comparison.

Is the annual plan worth it?

If you're confident you'll use Zapier for at least a year, yes: at the 750-task tier you'd pay $239.88/year annually versus $359.88 paying monthly ($19.99 × 12 vs $29.99 × 12). Overage on annual is also half the multiplier. New accounts get a 14-day free trial of Professional, no credit card required (Zapier), so build your real Zaps during the trial and measure your task usage before committing.

Discounts worth knowing about

• Non-profits: an additional 15% off (excluding pay-per-task charges) (Zapier).
• Annual billing: 33% off the monthly rate.

When a cheaper alternative makes sense

Zapier's strengths are real: it connects 9,000+ apps (Zapier), its editor is the easiest of the big three, and its Tables and Forms don't consume tasks. But its per-step billing gets expensive as workflows grow. Two alternatives charge differently:

• Make bills in credits: most module actions consume 1 credit, and its Free plan includes 1,000 credits per month (make.com/pricing, fetched October 12, 2026). Notably, Make's Router module and error-handler modules don't consume credits. Businesses with fewer than 20 employees may qualify for Make's Start-up Plan, 50% off its Business plan (same source).
• n8n bills per execution: one full run of a workflow counts once no matter how many steps it has (n8n.io/pricing, fetched October 12, 2026). n8n Cloud's Starter plan is €20/month billed annually and Pro is €50/month billed annually, and all plans include unlimited users and workflows. There is also a free, self-hosted Community Edition if you're comfortable running a server.

Make's paid plans (checked on make.com/pricing, October 12, 2026, at 10,000 credits/month): Core $9/mo, Pro $16/mo, Teams $29/mo billed annually ($10.59, $18.82, and $34.12 billed monthly). Free includes 1,000 credits.

n8n's execution allowance depends on the plan tier you pick; check n8n's pricing page for the current numbers.

Where the math flips. Take Example 2 above (610 tasks across 3 workflows, about 310 runs a month). On Zapier that's the $19.99 tier. On n8n, the same work is about 310 executions, because a 5-step lead workflow is still one execution. On Make, it's roughly one credit per module (our Workflow 1 build used 5 credits per lead), so similar to Zapier's task count but at a lower price per unit. The bigger and more multi-step your workflows get, the more n8n's per-execution model pulls ahead.

When to stay on Zapier: you need an app only Zapier connects to, nobody on your team wants to learn a more technical tool, or you're under ~750 tasks a month where the price difference is a few dollars.

When to look at Make: you're paying for 2,000+ Zapier tasks a month, or you need branching logic (routers) on a budget. Try Make free.

When to look at n8n: your workflows have many steps, you'd like to use AI agents inside workflows, or someone on your team is technical enough to self-host. Try n8n Cloud.

We built the same three workflows in all three tools and compared setup time and cost in Make vs n8n vs Zapier: the same 3 workflows built in each.

FAQ

Does Zapier have a free plan? Yes: 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps, one user (Zapier).

What is the cheapest paid Zapier plan? Professional at 750 tasks/month: $19.99/month billed annually or $29.99 billed monthly (October 12, 2026).

Do triggers count as tasks? No. Only successful actions count. Filters, Formatter, Paths, Delay, and several other built-in tools are free.

Can I cancel anytime? Yes. You keep access through the end of the current billing cycle (Zapier).

Does Zapier have an affiliate program? Not a public one, as far as we could find. We don't earn anything if you choose Zapier.