Compare / Zapier Agents vs n8n
Zapier Agents vs n8n
Written by Wanna AI. Checked on 17 Oct 2026, refreshed every 30 days. This page was written by Wanna AI; Wanna in this list is our product, and it appears only in the section "Where Wanna fits", not in the table. Prices change; open each link before you decide.
Short answer. Both connect AI to the apps you use. Zapier Agents is a hosted product inside Zapier where you describe a job and the agent does it. n8n is a canvas where you wire the steps yourself, and you can host it yourself. Pick Zapier Agents if you want little set-up and already use Zapier. Pick n8n if someone on your team is technical and wants to see and control every step. We ran neither product.
Zapier is moving Agents. Zapier's help center says it is migrating Agents into the Zap editor as AI by Zapier, with the same task pricing as the rest of Zapier and no separate Agents subscription. It says it "has not set a date to turn off Agents yet" and will email affected users first. The Agents limits below apply until then.
How we compared
- Rows are the same for both products.
- Zapier Agents: zapier.com/agents, Zapier's pricing page, the help article How is Zapier Agents usage measured? and the guide Migrating from Agents to AI by Zapier, all read on 17 Oct 2026.
- n8n: n8n's home page and pricing page, read on 17 Oct 2026.
- One outside source: the review at Jet Admin, published 30 Sep 2026. It says it is research-based, not hands-on, and Jet Admin sells software in an adjacent space. We found no outside review of Zapier Agents we could read, so its minuses below are our reading of Zapier's own pages.
- A figure we could not read is printed as "not found".
Side by side
| Zapier Agents | n8n | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Agents with your company information that work across "9,000+ apps", including while you are offline. Zapier Copilot helps you build them. | A canvas for workflows and AI agents: "over 500 integrations", plus custom API connections. Its home page promises that you can inspect each step of an agent's reasoning on the canvas. |
| Who it is for | People who already build in Zapier, or want agents beside their automations (our reading). | A team with a technical person who wants control. Jet Admin calls the learning curve steep and says it assumes comfort with webhooks, API authentication and JSON. |
| Free start | Free tier with 400 activities monthly. Tests count toward that quota on Free. | Free trial, no card, on Starter and Pro. The cloud trial has 1,000 executions and a 180-second timeout. |
| Paid price and limits | Pro: 1,500 activities a month. Zapier lists $33.33 a month billed annually ($400 a year); a month-to-month Pro price: not found. Enterprise: custom. | Starter €20, 2,500 executions. Pro €50, 10,000 executions, 3 projects. Business €667, 40,000 executions, self-hosted only. All shown by the month, billed annually. Enterprise: contact sales. |
| What a unit of usage is | An activity: any billable action, such as a trigger, a knowledge answer, an action, a web search or a browse step. A run is capped at 10 activities on Free and 40 on paid plans; at the cap the agent asks you before it goes on. | A full workflow execution, whatever its number of steps, according to n8n's pricing page. Every plan lists unlimited users and workflows. |
| Who approves | Today's Agents pages we read do not describe an approval step. In AI by Zapier, a tool can be set to "Require approval before running"; by default, tools run without pausing. | The home page offers human-in-the-loop approvals that you add to a workflow. Nothing is on by default; you build it. |
| Honest minuses | Usage is hard to predict, since each search or browse step counts. Agents is being folded into AI by Zapier, and both can run at once during migration, which Zapier warns "may cause duplicate actions". Its pages gave two customer counts (3.4 million and 2.2 million companies). | You build and maintain it. Self-hosting means you own uptime, upgrades and backups (Jet Admin). Starter support is the forum. Business jumps from €50 to €667 a month. Its Trustpilot rating is 3.2 against 4.7 on G2 (Jet Admin, not verified). |
Criteria that decide it
- Who will maintain it? If nobody on your team wants to debug a workflow, Zapier's hosted agent avoids that. If someone does, n8n gives you more control.
- How do you want to be billed? Zapier counts activities in a pool. n8n counts whole executions, so a long workflow is one execution.
- Where must the data sit? n8n can be self-hosted and run on your own servers. Zapier is hosted.
- How much must be approved? Neither pauses by default. Decide which steps need your OK before you connect your inbox.
Where Wanna fits
Wanna does a different job from both: it reads your site, proposes the week's growth tasks and drafts letters, posts and ads. Posts and ads always wait for your OK; letters go out only after you turn sending on (Trust). Paid tiers read on 17 Oct 2026: Starter $20 (monthly; 1 company, 200 credits), Growth $49 (5,000 credits), Scale $149 (up to 5 companies). Honest minuses: it is early, with 3 companies of people and 0 paying on the live page at 14:06 UTC on 17 Oct 2026, and it has no workflow builder and no inbox assistant. For Wanna beside each of these, see Wanna vs Zapier and Wanna vs n8n. Other pages in this set: Lindy vs n8n and Relevance AI vs Zapier Agents.
What neither replaces
Neither replaces a person who owns the decisions and reads what reaches a customer. Neither replaces a developer for production systems, or your lawyer for the terms your data sits under. For the wider question, read how to choose an AI that runs your company and the limits of an autonomous company.
FAQ
Is Zapier Agents better than n8n? It depends on who will run it. Zapier Agents suits people who want a hosted agent and little set-up; n8n suits a team with a technical person who wants control. We do not rank them.
Is n8n free? n8n offers a free trial with no card on Starter and Pro: 1,000 executions and a 180-second timeout. Paid plans start at €20 a month, billed annually.
Is Zapier Agents free? There is a free tier with 400 activities a month. Tests use that quota on Free.
Is Zapier retiring Zapier Agents? Zapier says it is migrating Agents to AI by Zapier, built into the Zap editor. It has set no date to turn Agents off and will email affected users first.
Can n8n be self-hosted? Yes. Its home page says you can deploy on your own servers or use its hosted version. Its Business plan is self-hosted only. Jet Admin warns that self-hosting means you own uptime, upgrades and backups.
What is an activity in Zapier Agents? Any billable action an agent takes: a trigger, an action, a knowledge answer, a web search or a browse step.
Do I need to be technical to use n8n? A reviewer calls the learning curve steep and says it assumes comfort with webhooks, API authentication and JSON. A non-technical team will likely need help.
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