What is Make?
Formerly Integromat, Make connects apps on a visual canvas instead of Zapier's linear step list. The canvas gets the marketing attention. The thing that actually moves the buying decision is the billing unit: Make charges per operation, not per task or per zap run. One scenario run that touches eight modules is eight operations. That sounds worse than per-task billing until you do the math on a real workflow, where it usually is not.
Where the operations model wins (and where it bites)
A task-based competitor charges per successful action regardless of internal complexity. Make charges per module action, which it now counts as a credit. For a high-fan-out scenario, one trigger spraying into a dozen conditional branches, you can burn credits faster than a naive estimate. For the median ops workflow, a trigger plus a few transforms plus one or two writes, the credit model comes in well under per-task at the same volume. The trap is the high-branching case; budget against your actual scenario shape, not the list price. Make's Core plan starts at $9/month for 10,000 credits, and the free tier gives you 1,000/month, enough to validate a real workflow before paying (per Make's pricing page, June 2026).
What you actually get
- Branching, looping, error routes, and break/continue, all native rather than bolted on
- AI Agents (GA on all paid plans) that pick their own next tool from MCP servers and native modules in one reasoning loop, not just plain LLM calls anymore
- Make Code App for custom JavaScript or Python in a scenario, so the old no-code-step gap is largely closed
- Data stores: key-value state that persists across runs, which removes a class of external-database glue
- 3,000-plus connectors plus generic HTTP/webhook modules for anything not covered
Who should pick it
Ops and mid-market teams that need Zapier-grade connectivity, real autonomous agents in a visual builder, plus control over data flow and failure handling, and that run enough volume for the credit model to pay off. Teams that want the simplest possible interface and low volume are better served by Zapier. Engineering-led teams with a residency or private-network requirement should look at self-hosted n8n instead; Make's AI Agents close the agent-loop gap, but not the hosting-model one.
Pricing
Free tier: 1,000 credits/month. Core: $9/month for 10,000 credits. Pro: $16/month (Make's recommended tier), adds priority execution and custom variables. Teams: $29/month for 10,000 credits, with team roles and shared templates. Annual billing saves 15 percent or more. Credit cost, not connector count, is the number to model before committing (current per Make's pricing page, June 25 2026). Each module action counts as one credit.