Head to head
n8n vs Zapier Agents
A side-by-side, sourced comparison. Facts come from each vendor’s own materials; scores are our editorial opinion applied by the same rubric to both.
| Dimension | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Self-hosted Community Edition is free. Cloud (billed annually): Starter EUR20/mo (2.5K executions), Pro EUR50/mo (10K executions), Business EUR667/mo (40K, self-hosted), Enterprise custom — all with unlimited users, workflows, and integrations.source ↗ | Metered by "activities" (a trigger, knowledge answer, action run, web browse/scrape, or web search each count as 1 activity). Free includes 400 activities/mo; Pro includes 1,500/mo; Enterprise is custom. Agents do not consume the core Zapier task quota. Exact paid-tier dollar figures for Agents were not available at access time (the pricing URL returned 404).source ↗ |
| Hosting model | Two options — n8n Cloud (hosted) or self-hosted on your own infrastructure, including a free Community Edition on GitHub.source ↗ | Fully-managed cloud SaaS (no self-host); agents run in-platform, in the background, and via a Chrome extension.source ↗ |
| Memory & state | AI Agent nodes take memory sub-nodes: "Simple Memory" (in-instance, not persisted across sessions), "Postgres Chat Memory" for persistence, and a "Chat Memory Manager" for advanced management.source ↗ | Knowledge sources — add FAQs, docs, and public links the agent draws on (each a billable activity); a distinct long-term conversational memory primitive is not described.Unverified |
| MCP support | Nativesource ↗ | Nativesource ↗ |
| Integrations | 400+ integrations per the GitHub repository (the homepage markets 500+); provider-agnostic LLM nodes via LangChain.source ↗ | 9,000+ connected apps and 30,000+ actions (the latter exposed via Zapier MCP).source ↗ |
| Model providers | LangChain-based; documented chat models include OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, Groq, and Azure, and you can connect any model.source ↗ | The product page references a "fine-tuned AI model" but names no underlying LLM provider.Unverified |
| Open source | Nosource ↗ | Nosource ↗ |
| Developer experience(opinion) | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Pricing transparency & value(opinion) | 4/5 | 3/5 |
| Scalability(opinion) | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Memory & state(opinion) | 3/5 | 2/5 |
| Integrations(opinion) | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| MCP nativeness(opinion) | 5/5 | 5/5 |
The balanced view
Editorial opinion, derived from the scorecard above
Where n8n scores higher
In our rubric, n8n rates ahead on pricing transparency & value, memory & state.
Where Zapier Agents scores higher
In our rubric, Zapier Agents does not rate ahead of n8n on any single dimension.
These two serve different needs — read the full dossiers for n8n and Zapier Agents before deciding. Neither has been hands-on tested by us yet.
Product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the products under discussion.