9 Best n8n Alternatives in 2026, Compared on Price and Effort

Nobody leaves n8n because it's a bad product. They leave because the flow they wired at 11pm broke at 9am, because the Cloud invoice jumped a tier, because they realised they had become the unpaid automation engineer for a business that sells something else. Nobody applied for that job.

I run an AI agent platform. So I spend most of my week inside this category, and inside the arguments people have about it. The question they bring me is what they can stop doing.

The list below is ordered by reason. My own product is first. I say why, and the table is right there if that bothers you.

Every price came off the vendor's own pricing page on 11 September 2026. Prices move. The sources at the end carry the links.

How I compared them

Every tool here got the same five questions. They tell you more than a feature table does:

• Who does the work? You sit at a canvas and wire the flow yourself. Or somebody built the worker already, and your part is signing in and approving what it sends.
• What do you maintain? Servers, credentials, and the node that stopped working on the morning an API changed.
• How does the bill grow? Per execution, per step, per credit, per seat, or flat. That one line explains most of the surprise invoices in this category.
• What happens when a run fails? Somebody has to notice. That somebody is you.
• How fast does a non-technical person get a result? Minutes on a good day. An afternoon on an ordinary one. On a bad one you pay a contractor to finish what you started.

The numbers come from each vendor's pricing page and docs, read on 11 September 2026. I have not run a bake-off. The failure stories are the ones people post in public, plus what I hear from people who left.

Quick comparison

Prices are what each vendor's pricing page showed on 11 September 2026, per month. Activepieces, Pipedream and n8n Cloud show annual-billing rates. Zapier, Make, Gumloop and Lindy show the price on the page's default view; that view does not say whether it is a monthly or an annual rate.

One workload, five bills

Take one flow: eight steps, running fifty times a day. That is 1,500 runs and 12,000 steps on a 30-day month. The flow does not change from tool to tool. The bill does, because each vendor counts a different thing. Units and prices below are as of September 2026.

Read the unit column before the price column. n8n Cloud's 20 euros and Zapier's $19.99 look like the same money. One of them counts this flow as 1,500 things. The other counts it as 12,000.

Same eight steps, same fifty runs a day. Two tools price it inside their entry plan, two make you size up, and Gravity does not sell the flow at all. It sells the finished agent, so that last row only applies if an agent for your task already exists. Pipedream, Gumloop, Lindy and Relevance AI stay out of the table. Workflow caps, AI credits, seats and a custom quote do not price this workload on the same axis.

Illustration from the vendors' published pricing units as of 11 September 2026. Your own step counts, retries and AI steps change the numbers. n8n prices in euros; no conversion applied.

1. Gravity: best when you want the task done, not a workflow

This is my product. Discount me accordingly. It is first because it is the only thing here where you build nothing, and that is the reason people give me for leaving n8n.

You type the task in plain words. Gravity matches it to an agent a builder already made and tested. You sign in to the accounts it needs, answer a few setup questions, and it runs on schedule.

The catalogue covers what a small business repeats every week: chasing the overdue invoice, qualifying a new lead, collecting documents that never arrive, sending renewal reminders, triaging an inbox, posting a morning brief. Gmail, Sheets, Calendar, Drive, Slack, Notion and HubSpot connect through an ordinary login. You never paste an API key.

Anything that messages a customer or moves money waits for you. Every agent passes automated checks before it is listed. A run that fails on a platform error, with no usable output, is refunded under the refund policy. No ticket.

Who keeps it working

Every other tool here sells you somewhere to build. Gravity sells the finished worker, and the builder who wrote it keeps it working. That is their job, not yours.

Best for

The bookkeeper repeating the same exports every Monday, the estate agent chasing documents, a two-person team living in Gmail and Sheets.

Pricing

First agent free, no card. Then Autopilot at $20 a month worldwide, ₹1,999 a month in India, with a lot of usage included. India also has Minipilot at ₹399 a month with a smaller allowance. Buy more usage if you run out. As of September 2026.

Free tier

Yes. One agent, free.

Verdict

If your n8n flow exists only to do one of those jobs, this is the shortest route to never thinking about it again. Gravity vs n8n puts them side by side.

2. Zapier: best for the widest app catalogue

Start with the meter, because it is what surprises people. Every step in a Zap counts as a task. So does every connector call, and AI steps, code and MCP calls draw from the same pool at higher rates. A ten-step Zap running a hundred times a day is a thousand tasks before lunch. n8n charges once per execution, however many nodes it crosses. Count your steps before you assume Zapier is the cheaper one.

What the meter buys is reach. Zapier is what people mean when they say automation. The catalogue is the largest in this category, and the editor is the gentlest thing in it.

Zapier's pricing page sizes the plan on a task slider that steps 100, 2K, 10K and 100K. Twelve thousand tasks a month lands above the 10K step, and the price climbs from Professional's $19.99 as you move up.

What comes with the account besides Zaps

Reach now arrives with a lot of other software attached. Tables, Forms, Canvas, an MCP server and an SDK sit in one account. Someone who cannot code can build a small internal system without leaving the tab. Gravity vs Zapier covers where the two overlap.

Best for

A small team whose real blocker is that nothing else connects to the one app they cannot work without.

Pricing

Free, 100 tasks a month. Professional from $19.99 a month, Team from $69, Enterprise on request. As of September 2026.

Free tier

Yes, 100 tasks a month on two-step Zaps.

Verdict

Zapier wins on catalogue size and loses on long flows, and that trade stays the same on every plan above Professional.

3. Make: best cheap visual builder

Make has collapsed its pricing into one self-serve paid plan sized by credits. A credit is a module action: one row added to a sheet, one credit. For a scenario firing a few times an hour, nothing hosted here is cheaper.

The canvas is the most literal of the group. Routers, filters and iterators are drawn on screen as shapes. That makes branching easier to read than n8n's node graph, and harder to hand over to whoever inherits it.

What a credit actually costs you

You pay for each module action. The smallest bill on this page belongs to whoever moves the least data through it. The Make AI Agents beta drops an agent step onto the same canvas.

It suits a solo operator who likes building, wants to see the shapes on screen and wants a small, boring bill at the end of the month. The free plan gives you 1,000 credits a month, with that 15-minute interval attached. Paid starts at $9 a month for 5,000 credits and scales up a credit slider from there; Enterprise is a separate custom plan. Anything larger goes through Enterprise sales. Those were the numbers on Make's pricing page in September 2026.

If you enjoy building, this is the best value on the page. Gravity vs Make is the one to read if building is the part you were hoping to hand over.

4. Activepieces: best open source without the ops

Activepieces is the closest thing here to n8n itself: open source, a visual builder, and your choice of their cloud or your own servers at the same price.

Two things make it kinder. One credit covers an entire run whatever the step count, so the bill fits on the back of an envelope. The free allowance refills every day, which keeps small flows alive without a card.

Gravity's builders publish their agents in Activepieces, so it is in front of me most working days. The credit model is the easiest here to budget: one number, one run. Two things catch people out. The catalogue is smaller than Zapier's and Make's, and you find that out the first time the niche app you need is missing. Plus stops at five seats, which a growing team hits sooner than it expects.

The credit that covers a whole run

You can price a flow before you build it. The unit is the whole run, whatever it crosses. Agents, tables and MCP servers come on every plan, and the core stays open source.

Best for

A technical team that likes n8n's model but wants legible pricing and no server to own.

Pricing

Free, 100 credits a day. Plus $16 a month billed yearly for 10,000 credits, then $0.007 a credit. Team $166 a month. Ultimate on request. As of September 2026.

Free tier

Yes, and it refills every day.

Verdict

The most direct swap for a builder leaving n8n. Gravity vs Activepieces explains how the two fit together.

5. Pipedream: best for developers who want it hosted

Pipedream puts code at the centre and keeps it there. You write Node, Python, Go or Bash, wire those steps to thousands of pre-built triggers and actions, and Pipedream runs and logs the lot.

It has repositioned around AI too. Pipedream Connect hands your own product managed auth to other apps. Different buyer from the n8n refugee. The builder is still underneath.

What you stop owning

You write the function. Somebody else's machines run it, and the logs sit where you can read them at 9am. If your objection to n8n was that you only ever wanted to write the function, this takes the rest off your hands.

The buyer is the developer tired of being the person who restarts the self-hosted n8n box. The free tier runs three workflows on 100 credits a month, enough to test the idea. Paid starts at $29 a month billed annually for Basic, then Advanced at $49 and Connect at $99, with Business through sales. All read in September 2026.

If you think in code, this is the right answer on the page. Gravity vs Pipedream is the same question asked from the other side.

6. Gumloop: best AI-first builder for teams

Gumloop started as a canvas for chaining AI steps. It now keeps a store of what your company knows, ships a CLI and runs an MCP server. The flows you build reach your own context. The developers on the team drive the thing from a terminal.

There is one self-serve paid plan. It carries unlimited agents and unlimited seats, which is worth noticing if you have been pricing Lindy per person. Bring your own model keys and an 8% orchestration fee rides along.

Where the AI sits in a Gumloop flow

Every step here can be an AI step. The controls sit at that level too: pick the model, watch what it spends, set a limit for each agent. In n8n the AI is one node hanging off a workflow tool.

Pro starts at $37 a month with 20,000 credits, Enterprise is on request, and those were the September 2026 numbers. There is no free tier, only a 14-day trial.

It fits a marketing or ops team that wants to build its own AI flows and share them without buying a seat each time. When the AI steps are the whole point of the flow, this is the strongest canvas on the page. Gravity vs Gumloop compares building with buying.

7. Lindy: best assistant with a name

This one is for the person whose n8n flows were really about email. The founder answering the same three questions all morning, booking their own meetings, watching a Slack channel nobody else reads. Lindy is not a workflow builder. It is an AI teammate in your inbox and Slack that records meetings, drafts replies in something close to your voice, and runs routines on a schedule.

The pricing has a shape worth understanding. You pay per seat, and the credit pool is shared across the seats. An everyday ask costs 2 to 250 credits. A research report runs to 1,000. The same plan is generous for one person and thin for six.

You won't know which you are until you have watched it for a month. Gravity vs Lindy covers what changes when the task is a business outcome with a deadline on it.

What it remembers, and when it stops

It holds on to how your workspace works, so you explain things once. It asks you before it acts, and it halts when the credits run out.

Best for

One person, or a handful, who want one assistant across email, calendar, meetings and Slack.

Pricing

Plus $29.99, Pro $99.99 and Max $199.99 per seat a month, for 3,000, 15,000 and 35,000 credits. Enterprise on request. As of September 2026.

Free tier

A trial only.

Verdict

The best pick here if the work you want back is your own inbox and calendar. Watch the credit burn for a month before you add seats.

8. Relevance AI: best if you are buying an AI workforce at enterprise scale

The pricing page ends in a button that books a sales call. As of September 2026 it lists one plan, Enterprise, custom. For that you get unlimited agents, 2,000+ integrations, calling and meeting agents, evaluations and A/B testing. Relevance AI has walked upmarket and pulled the ladder up behind it.

Wrong page for a solo operator leaving n8n. Right page for a company that wants a vendor in the room while it designs a sales or support agent team.

Who the agents are built around

You get agents shaped for revenue work, including a named BDR agent, and you get the security paperwork your IT team will ask about on the first call: SSO, RBAC and audit logs.

It is built for enterprise revenue teams with a budget line and a procurement process behind them. There is no free tier. The price arrives in the sales conversation, which was still true when I read the page in September 2026.

It is a different league with a different buyer. If you are the smaller team looking at the same job, Gravity vs Relevance AI is the closer comparison.

9. n8n Community Edition: best if the only problem is the bill

Sometimes the alternative to n8n is n8n. The Community Edition on GitHub is free to self-host. A fair number of people who tell me they left n8n had only left n8n Cloud.

Cloud charges once per execution, however many nodes it crosses. That is still the fairest unit in this category. The problem is the spacing: Starter is 20 euros a month billed annually for 2,500 executions, Pro is 50 euros for 10,000, Business is 667 euros for 40,000 self-hosted. Look at that last gap.

Self-hosting swaps the invoice for time. A box to keep running, updates to apply, backups nobody tests until the morning they are needed, and the pleasure of being the person a stalled queue wakes up. If that person is already on the payroll, this is the cheapest answer here.

What self-hosting actually changes

Nothing changes except where it runs and who is responsible for keeping it up.

Self-hosting is free. Cloud sits at 20 euros a month billed annually if you change your mind, as of September 2026. The Community Edition is the free tier, and there is nothing else to sign up for.

It fits a technical team that already runs servers and has no appetite for relearning a tool. If the invoice is the whole complaint, fix the invoice and keep the tool.

Which one should you choose?

Start from what you want to stop doing. Most people leave n8n and go shopping for a better n8n. Then they spend a fortnight rebuilding the same flows on a different canvas. It still feels like a second job.

If the complaint is maintenance, most of this page is a lateral move: Make, Activepieces, Pipedream, Gumloop and Zapier are canvases you will maintain. Only Lindy and Gravity take the building away, and they split the territory. Lindy takes your inbox and calendar. Gravity takes the business task with an outcome attached.

When it is the invoice, be specific about which invoice you mean. A cheaper builder shrinks a small bill. Self-hosting removes it and hands you a pager. Neither one touches the hours you spend inside the tool, and on most weeks the hours are the more expensive line.

A few cases need no thinking. A missing connector means Zapier. Procurement in the room means Relevance AI, who will be delighted to hear from you. If you would rather write the function than drag the node, you knew the answer was Pipedream before you opened this page.

My own bias, stated plainly: for the jobs a small business repeats every week, the invoices, the leads, the reminders, the documents, the inbox, I would pick the option where nobody builds anything. That's Gravity, and the first agent is free.

FAQ

Sources