Pabbly Connect pricing explained: unit math and lock-in

Pabbly Connect’s headline prices look like a clear win against Zapier, Make and n8n, but the four vendors do not bill the same thing. Pabbly counts action steps, Zapier counts successful actions, Make counts credits per module run, and n8n counts whole workflow executions. Ten thousand of each is a different workload. The useful comparison prices one identical workflow under each vendor’s counting rule, then adds the cost of leaving before you sign an annual plan.

This post does that arithmetic using stated prices only. It labels Pabbly’s comparison figures as Pabbly’s own claims and treats n8n’s self-hosting option as a license question, not a free lunch.

This review is based on official pricing pages and vendor documentation, fetched 2026-11-05. We did not run these tools hands-on. Vendor comparison figures are vendor claims, and every price below links to its source page.

The trap: 10,000 of anything is not 10,000 of anything else

Automation buyers compare included units first, and that is the trap. Pabbly’s pricing page lists a free plan at 100 tasks and a Standard plan at 10,000 tasks per month (Pabbly pricing). Zapier’s page starts Professional at $19.99 per month and Team at $69 per month (Zapier pricing). Make’s FAQ says credits are its billing unit, with 1,000 free credits per month (Make pricing). n8n’s page sells Starter, Pro and Business tiers by workflow execution (n8n pricing). A lower price per unit can still be a higher price for your workflow.

What each vendor counts

• Pabbly: action steps. Trigger steps and internal steps such as Filter, Router, Formatter, Iterator and Email Parser are not counted. Trigger polls and checks are not charged, which Pabbly calls unlimited operations (Pabbly pricing).
• Zapier: tasks. Zapier’s FAQ says triggers do not count toward the task limit, checking for new data never uses a task, and each successful action counts as one task. Filter by Zapier, Formatter by Zapier, Path by Zapier and Delay are listed as steps that do not count (Zapier pricing). Zapier also notes that some actions may use more than one task.
• Make: credits. Most actions consume one credit, and some AI-provider features consume more. The FAQ lists reading data from an app or webhook, and transforming data with built-in tools, as credit-consuming. Routers and error-handler modules (Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit, Ignore) consume none (Make pricing). Make’s operations doc defines an operation as one module run per bundle, so five Gmail sends are five operations (Make operations).
• n8n: executions. n8n says you only pay when a workflow runs from start to finish, with unlimited steps per execution (n8n pricing).

Pabbly Connect pricing, in Pabbly’s own words

• Free: 100 tasks per month, no credit card required (Pabbly pricing).
• Standard: 10,000 tasks, listed as “normally $19/mo” and shown at $14/mo.
• Unlimited: unlimited tasks, listed as “normally $79/mo” and shown at $59/mo.
• Billing terms: the plan toggles read “Yearly - SAVE 15%”, “2 Yearly - SAVE 20%” and “3 Yearly - SAVE 25%”, plus a “Lifetime” option. The 25% applies to the three-year term. The page does not say which term the $14 figure assumes.
• Lifetime and refunds: Pabbly describes a one-time payment with lifetime access, and a 30-day refund guarantee appears on the page (Pabbly pricing). Both are vendor claims.
• Plan range: the FAQ says plans run “from 12,000 to 9 million tasks per month”, which does not sit neatly beside a 10,000-task Standard tier. Confirm the current ladder on the pricing page.

Pabbly’s comparison widget says that for the same workflow Pabbly consumes one task against three for Integromat and two for Zapier. It also lists 10,000 tasks per month at Pabbly $16, Zapier $254, Make $29 and n8n Cloud $70 (Pabbly pricing). The widget labels the same figures both as what you would pay over five years and as a monthly rate, and its $16 for Pabbly differs from the $14 on the plan card. Treat those numbers as Pabbly’s claims, not as monthly prices.

The other side of the table: Zapier, Make and n8n stated prices

• Zapier: Free is $0 per month for 100 tasks and two-step Zaps. Professional starts at $19.99 per month with multi-step Zaps and webhooks. Team starts at $69 per month with 25 users and SAML SSO (Zapier pricing). Zapier’s static page does not show per-tier prices; they sit behind the tier selector.
• Make: the free plan includes 1,000 credits per month. Plan dollar prices are not on the page we could read, so this post gives no Make dollar figure. Check make.com/pricing for current numbers.
• n8n: Starter is €20 per month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions and is n8n-hosted. Pro is €50 per month billed annually for 10,000 executions. Business is €667 per month billed annually for 40,000 executions, self-hosted only, with SSO, LDAP, queue mode and Git version control. Enterprise is contact sales (n8n pricing). A standard self-hosted Community Edition is also available from n8n’s GitHub (n8n pricing).

The cost math: one workflow, four counting rules

The test workflow runs 3,000 times a month. Each run has a webhook trigger, a filter, a formatter and three action steps: post to Slack, update a CRM record and send a confirmation email. All figures are arithmetic on stated prices, not a benchmark.

Vendor	Rule applied	Units per month	Plan that covers it	Stated price
Pabbly	Action steps (3 per run)	9,000 tasks	Standard, 10,000 tasks	$14/mo shown ($19/mo list)
Zapier	Successful actions (trigger, filter, formatter free)	9,000 tasks, a floor	Above the 100-task free plan	Tier price not on the static page
Make	Trigger + formatter + 3 actions (5 per run; filter not listed in the FAQ)	15,000 credits, a floor	Above the 1,000-credit free plan	Not captured; check make.com
n8n	One execution per run	3,000 executions	Pro, 10,000 executions	€50/mo billed annually

Three readings follow. Pabbly and Zapier land on the same count for this workflow. Make’s count is the highest because its FAQ bills the trigger read and the transform step (Make pricing). n8n’s count is the lowest because one run is one execution however many steps it holds (n8n pricing).

Price per included unit is arithmetic, not equivalence. Pabbly Standard is $14 divided by 10,000 tasks, or $0.0014 per task if you use them all. n8n Pro is €50 divided by 10,000 executions, or €0.005 per execution. Those figures describe price per vendor unit only.

Volume changes the picture. At 5,000 runs a month, Pabbly needs 15,000 tasks, so the plan moves above Standard’s 10,000 (Pabbly pricing). The slider shows a 20K tier whose price was not captured, and Unlimited at the shown $59 per month is the other option. n8n’s 5,000 executions exceed Starter’s 2,500, so the arithmetic lands on Pro.

Lock-in and the export angle: what leaving actually costs

Leaving has three costs: prepaid time, the export path, and license limits.

Prepaid time. Make’s credits expire at the end of the term, and extra credits expire after one month on monthly plans or one year on annual Pro and Teams plans (Make pricing). Zapier says you can cancel at any time and keep access for the rest of your billing cycle, with a linked refund policy (Zapier pricing). On n8n’s Business plan, annual cancellation takes effect at the end of the annual term (n8n pricing). Pabbly advertises a 30-day refund guarantee; the page does not say how it applies to annual terms, so ask.

Export. Neither the Zapier nor the Pabbly pricing page describes a workflow export format. Before you pay for a year, ask in writing whether workflows can be exported, whether data is kept after cancellation, and how long a migration takes.

License. n8n is fair-code, not OSI open source, under the Sustainable Use License (n8n license). You may use or modify it for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use. Redistribution is free of charge and non-commercial only. Letting customers connect their accounts and build workflows on your instance is not internal business use and needs a separate commercial agreement. Commercial consulting, or building workflows for clients, is allowed without a license. The Community Edition is a self-hosted build on GitHub, so your hosting becomes the cost. The Business plan is still billed by executions, so self-hosting it does not remove the metering.

Pabbly’s ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type 2 claims come from its own site (Pabbly). Treat them as questions for your procurement team, not as proof.

Before committing, calculate unit cost on one real workflow, check the expiry and refund rules, ask about export, confirm the license terms for your use, and check any price you could not find on the vendor page.

FAQ

Does a trigger really count as a task in Pabbly Connect?

Pabbly’s own pricing page says trigger steps and internal steps are not counted, and only action steps consume tasks. It also says trigger polls and checks are not charged. These are Pabbly’s claims, not independent measurements (Pabbly pricing). Zapier’s FAQ describes the same rule for its triggers (Zapier pricing).

Can I compare 10,000 Pabbly tasks directly with 10,000 Zapier tasks or Make credits?

Pabbly and Zapier come out close for a plain action-step workflow (Zapier pricing). Make and n8n do not. Make bills credits per module run, including the trigger read and transforms, and n8n bills one execution per run. Price the same workflow under each rule instead of comparing included units.

Is n8n open source, and can I self-host to escape lock-in?

No. n8n is fair-code under the Sustainable Use License (n8n license). Self-hosting is allowed for internal business or non-commercial use. Letting customers build workflows on your instance requires a commercial agreement.

The takeaway: price the workflow and the exit, not the plan

Do not buy on sticker price or included units. Price one real workflow under each counting rule, verify the missing prices on each vendor’s own page, and check expiry, refund and license terms before committing to annual billing.

On this workflow, Pabbly and Zapier come out close. Make’s count is the highest, so its bill is the most sensitive to workflow shape. n8n’s execution model favours long runs with many steps, and its Business self-hosting is still billed by execution (n8n pricing). Pabbly’s $14 Standard plan is the lowest price we could read for this workload; Zapier’s and Make’s tier prices need checking on their own pages.

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