Workflow builders, AI agents, and integrations that remove the manual admin work from a small business.
12 guides
Automation pricing is the most misleading in software, because the headline figure rarely survives contact with a real workflow. We break down how each tool meters usage, per task, per operation, or per seat, since that is what decides the bill rather than the advertised price.
The highest scoring tools we have tested in this category.
Zapier is free for 100 tasks a month. Professional starts at $19.99 a month billed annually for 750 tasks, Team at $69. The price climbs with task volume, not features, so count your tasks first.
Zapier has the widest app library and the gentlest learning curve, at the highest per-task price. Make undercuts it meaningfully. n8n is free if self-hosted, at the cost of owning the infrastructure.
Zapier is the safest default for small business automation, with the widest app library available. Free covers 100 tasks a month but blocks multi-step Zaps. Professional starts at $19.99 a month for 750 tasks.
Airtable bills per editor while viewers and commenters cost nothing, which is unusual and genuinely useful. The limit that actually stops you is records per base: 1,000 free, 50,000 on Team.
GPT-6 Astra is $10 per million input tokens. GPT-5.6 Luna is $0.20. Same API, same call, a 50x gap. What each model costs and how caching and batching cut the bill further.
Searches for Codex pricing are up more than 1,000 percent, and most of them are looking for a plan that does not exist. Codex comes with your ChatGPT plan. What each tier actually gives you.
Zapier bills per action and the bill grows with your workflows. Five alternatives that price differently, from a $9 a month operation-based plan to a self-hosted option that costs a server.
IFTTT costs a few dollars a month, Zapier around twenty. They are not really competing for the same job. Here is which one your automation actually belongs on.
Power Automate is cheaper per seat and includes desktop RPA. Zapier connects to thousands more apps with far less setup. The deciding factor is whether your business already runs on Microsoft 365.
Zapier pricing explained by plan and by task. What the free plan and the 14-day trial each cover, when Professional at $19.99 is enough, and why the plan name matters less than your monthly task count.
Zapier does not sign a BAA on any plan, which rules it out for PHI. What its own FAQ says, why the platform cannot easily change it, and what healthcare teams can still automate.
A side-by-side of the three most common small-business automation platforms, on price, app support, and how much technical comfort each one assumes.
n8n pricing across its free self-hosted Community Edition and paid cloud tiers, and when owning the infrastructure is actually worth it for a small business.
Make (formerly Integromat) pricing, its credit-based system compared with Zapier's task-based one, and who should choose the visual builder over the simpler alternative.
Zapier pricing broken down by task, what the free plan actually blocks, and where the Professional and Team tiers start to add up. Based on Zapier's own pricing page.