Make vs n8n: which automation platform fits creator workflows?

Choose Make when you want a hosted, visual automation platform with 3,000+ pre-built app integrations and no infrastructure to run — and when your team is non-technical.

Choose n8n when you want full control: self-hosted Community Edition is free, workflows live on your own infrastructure, and the node-based editor suits developers building AI agents and RAG pipelines.

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Make: Free plan at US$0 with up to 1,000 credits/month and a 15-minute minimum interval between runs. Paid tiers start at Core $10/month ($9 billed annually) for 10,000 credits, then Pro $18 and Teams $34 per month, scaling with credit volume.

n8n: free self-hosted Community Edition; cloud Starter is 20€/month billed annually (2,500 executions, 5 concurrent), Pro 50€/month (10,000 executions, 20 concurrent). Every execution counts once no matter how many steps it has. Business is a self-hosted license billed in euros (667€/mo) on your own infrastructure.

Make bills every module action as one credit, while n8n bills one execution per complete workflow run. Take a 6-step workflow (new YouTube upload, fetch details, AI summary, post to two socials, log to a sheet) running 30 times a day: that is about 900 runs and 5,400 Make credits a month.

On Make, 5,400 credits fit the Core plan's 10,000 credits for $10/month ($9 billed annually). On n8n Cloud, 900 executions fit Starter's 2,500 for 20€/month billed annually. Self-hosted n8n Community Edition has no execution cap; the cost is the server, for example Hostinger KVM 1 from $6.49/month on a prepaid term (renewing at $11.99), plus your time for updates and backups.

The break-even shifts with step count: long, branching workflows burn Make credits fast but still count as one n8n execution, so heavy multi-step automation usually ends up cheaper on n8n, and cheapest self-hosted.

Make is SaaS-first: you pay for credits, and each module action in a scenario consumes one credit, so cost scales with workflow complexity. There is no self-hosting option.

n8n is source-available (fair-code) and runs anywhere; cloud plans cap monthly executions and concurrent runs, and the AI Assistant on cloud is an early preview with monthly credit caps.

Creators and channel operators who want to automate publishing, social posting, and content pipelines without code — and who prefer a hosted service where they never touch infrastructure. The 3,000+ pre-built apps cover YouTube, social platforms, and creator tooling out of the box.

Technical creators, developers, and small teams already running servers or Docker, who want AI agent orchestration and RAG pipelines with no per-credit metering on the free self-hosted tier. Budget only infrastructure and maintenance time.

Deploying self-hosted n8n 24/7: For uninterrupted webhook execution and background AI agent automation without keeping your local workstation on, deploying n8n via Docker on an entry-level Linux VPS (such as Hostinger KVM 1, from $6.49/month on a prepaid term) gives you dedicated resources and persistent uptime at a fraction of cloud SaaS tiers.

If you only need one simple zap (e.g. new YouTube video → post to X), a single-purpose integration inside your existing tool (or a lighter automation service) beats both. If you need deep AI-native agent behavior with hosted simplicity, evaluate dedicated AI agent platforms instead.