For over a decade, Zapier has been the go-to tool in workflow automation. It's been around the longest, has the widest range of integrations, and has become synonymous with automating repetitive tasks. But even if you're a longtime Zapier user, you may be starting to look around for a Zapier alternative for a few reasons:
- It's expensive! If you're using premium integrations and lots of tasks, you'll face big monthly bills.
- It's, well... old. The user experience isn't as clean or elegant as newer tools, and it can be hard to understand what's happening.
- It can be brittle, with errors popping up in many integrations.
- It's limited, and you may need more complex workflows.
If any of these apply to you, we’re here to help.
TLDR
First, if you only have 30 seconds, here's what you need to know:
- If you're looking for the best all around experience at a great price, start with Relay.app.
- If you're an advanced user or automation consultant that needs maximum flexibility, choose Make.com.
- If you're an enterprise IT team, choose Workato or Tray.ai.
- If you're an engineer, choose Pipedream, ActivePieces, or n8n.
Next, if you have a bit more time, read on to see what you should consider in an automation tool and get the full list of options.
What should you look for in a Zapier alternative?
If you’re seeking a Zapier alternative, you may already have a specific frustration in mind. Perhaps you need easier maintenance, more reliable service, or a more affordable solution. But if you're new to the market, here’s what we think you should consider—and what we used as criteria for the tools we reviewed:
🖼 Intuitive interface
The whole point of automation apps is to enable users who don't know how to code to set up automated workflows. So the most important criteria for workflow automation tools is how intuitive they are to use for less technical audiences. Can a novice in the automation app world quickly learn the platform’s features and set up what they need? Is it clear how to test the workflow and fix errors? Do you need to know what an API is or can you work with simpler constructs?
🤖 AI experience
We are all going to be using AI automations much more in the future than we are now, so you should find a platform that makes it really easy to include different AI tools into your workflows. Can you experiment easily with AI without setting up special accounts with different AI tools? Can you add a human-in-the-loop to double check the outputs of the AI step? Can you work with many different models?
🖇 Integrations
The whole point of an automation tool is to connect your apps, so it needs to have integrations with all of the apps you use! All of the tools will have integrations with common tools like Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, Notion, Salesforce, and more. But before choosing a tool, double check that it supports all of the products that you need to connect, and that it covers all of the triggers and actions you need in each.
💰 Price and value
Most workflow automation tools use a combination of pre-set monthly plans and usage-based pricing, which can quickly add up and bust your budget. Do you need multi-step automations? Zapier charges for any multi-step workflow, but many other tools include those in their free plan. What are the task limits? If you're going to need lots of monthly tasks, make sure to look carefully at the pricing plans so you don't end up with a surprise bill later.
The 10 Best Zapier Alternatives
1. Relay.app
🏆 Best for: User-friendly interface, built-in AI steps, human-in-the-loop workflows, affordable plans.
🔬 Free Tier: 200 free automations per month
That's us! While we're a newcomer to the space, most of our users have switched over to us from Zapier. They love that our interface is more modern and intuitive, and they also appreciate how much easier it is to bring AI into their workflows. All of the major models (Open AI's GPTs, Claude, Gemini, Llama, and more) are built directly into the product in an easy-to-use set of AI steps. No need to set up other accounts or fiddle with API keys. It's all there and available for free.
The most unique element of Relay.app is the human-in-the-loop workflows, which are particularly important if you're using AI steps. You can approve automations before they happen, edit the content that AI has written, or input additional data.
Pros
✅ Modern, delightful user interface that just works.
✅ Human-in-the-loop workflows for approvals, decisions and data input. You can double-check documents, add personalized content to Slack messages, or review an email before its sent.
✅ Built-in AI that's easy to use. Add AI to your workflows with a set of built-in capabilities for summarization, extraction, translation and more. Also easily switch between models with no extra accounts needed.
✅ Simple and predictable pricing. Relay offers transparent pricing with all fundamental features included across its tiers, and significantly more affordable plans than Zapier's.
Cons
❌ Integrations. As a newer player, Relay.app may not yet integrate with all of your apps.
Pricing
If you want to take Relay.app for a test drive, you get 200 automations and 500 AI credits per month for free, with unlimited access to all its features.
In contrast to Zapier, Relay.app’s plans all include all features and integrations, and Relay.app's plans offer significantly more automations at a lower price.
Takeaway
If Relay.app supports the integrations you need, it should be your first choice for automating your routine tasks. It has the best user experience (check out the user love in the G2 reviews), the easiest to use AI experience, and it's the only platform with human-in-the-loop steps. Plus, the pricing is way better than the alternatives.
Start automating for free with Relay.app.
2. Make.com
🏆 Best for: Advanced, visual workflow automation with deep customization.
🔬 Free tier: 1000 ops / month (not that Make counts operations differently than Zapier counts Tasks, more detail in this deep dive)
Make.com (formerly known as Integromat until its rebrand in 2022) is the Zapier alternative you’ve most likely heard of and has been the strongest contender in this market for many years. Like Zapier, it boasts a huge library of apps and services.
Its main advantage over Zapier is its visual editor, which makes it significantly easier to plan and build out bigger and more custom workflows, especially those that require lots of complex branching. This makes Make ideal for users with technical expertise and more advanced needs, but it can be unnecessarily complicated for users with more basic automation processes.
Pros
✅ A drag-and-drop workflow UI that makes it easier to design and implement large and complex workflows.
✅ Advanced logic branching to help set up multiple scenarios that trigger different actions based on specific actions
✅ Shared connection model that easily allows agencies and consultatnts to build automations on behalf of their clients.
Cons
❌ Steep learning curve due to its functionality and customization options. Simple to get started, for sure, but complex to master.
❌ Performance issues when dealing with a very high volume of tasks or intricate automations, which can be a killer for businesses with large-scale automation needs.
Pricing
Takeaway
For seasoned automation experts, Make is the most popular tool for complex workflows. It offers a degree of flexibility and control that other tools don't, if you're savvy enough to take advantage of it. And in most cases, the pricing is significantly more affordable than Zapier's.
3. Workato
🏆 Best for: Large organizations and enterprises requiring automation at scale.
🔬 Free trial: Yes; on request.
Workato is an enterprise-level workflow automation tool, offering a comprehensive solution for large organizations. Unlike many of the other tools on this list, which cater to a broad audience, Workato is designed for large, complex businesses like Atlassian, Adobe, and MGM.
It's designed specifically for IT teams and departments to automate complex business processes and data orchestration. It's the go-to choice for enterprise-level automation. However, its complexity and high cost may be prohibitive for smaller businesses and individual users.
Pros
✅ A wide array of integrations with 1,000+ business applications enabling seamless connectivity between enterprise systems, cloud services and popular apps
✅ Data orchestration and ETL capabilities to combine data from a variety of enterprise sources.
✅ Designed with enterprise-grade security and customizable governance controls to ensure data integrity and privacy.
Cons
❌ Complex (or totally inaccessible) for non-technical users. In most companies, only IT teams create automations using Workato.
❌ Price. As an enterprise product, it's prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses.
Pricing
Workato’s pricing model varies based on the scale of use, number of connectors and tasks required. You have to contact Workato for a custom quote, but you should expect to pay over $10k per year.
Takeaway
If you're an IT leader at a large enterprise, Workato is a powerful and flexible platform that you should certainly consider, but it's not well suited to self-serve use by less technical users.
4. Tray.ai
🏆 Best for: Enterprise customers who want both no-code automation and technical API management.
🔬 Free tier: No; free trial on request.
Much like Workato, you can tell that Tray.ai is built for enterprise buyers as soon as you land on their website. There's no option to try the product for free, so you can either do a demo with their sales team or requests a free trial. The connectors they emphasize (like Salesforce, NetSuite, and Snowflake) also speak to their enterprise focus.
In additional to their low-code workflow builder, they offer a suite of other more technical products for developers looking to build integrations into their products, like data integrations and API management. They recently rebranded from Tray.io to Tray.ai and are heavily emphasizing their AI agent builder, but the details on how that works are a bit thin.
Pros
✅ Enterprise-ready platform, with large customers like Eventbrite, Github, and Udemy.
✅ Additional developer-focused capabilities like data syncing and API management.
✅ Significant investment in AI integrations and AI steps.
Cons
❌ No self-serve option to try the product or buy it at an affordable price for smaller businesses and teams.
❌ Technical product that bills itself at "low-code" and will be difficult for non-developers.
Pricing
Like Workato, Tray.ai's pricing model varies based on the scale of use, number of connectors and tasks required. You have to contact Workato for a custom quote, but you should expect to pay over $10k per year.
Takeaway
If you're an IT leader at a large enterprise, you should evaluate Tray.ai against Workato and get demos and quotes from, but if you want something you can use right away as an end user at an affordable price, go with others on this list.
5. Microsoft Power Automate
🏆 Best for: Customers in the Microsoft Office 365 ecosystem.
🔬 Free tier: No; 30-day free trial of the Premium tier.
Microsoft Power Automate is pretty much what you'd expect from Microsoft. It's not the cheapest, nor is it the easiest to use, nor is it the most powerful, but it is a solid tool. If you're already in the Microsoft ecossystem, it may make sense for you as a convenient option to deply and manage.
Pros
✅ Deep Office 365 integrations and administration, as you'd expect from a Microsoft product.
Cons
❌ Unintuitive design that feels a bit outdated (if you’re not a fan of the “Microsoft look”, run)
❌ Crashes when dealing with a large number of tasks
Pricing
Takeaway
If you're not a Microsoft shop, definitely don't use it. If you are, it's worth considering for ease of adoption and administration.
6. Activepieces
🏆 Best for: Engineers who want an open source product they can extend.
🔬 Free tier: Cloud version includes 1000 tasks; self hosted is free.
Activepieces is another newcomer to the automation space, and the main reason it stands out is that it's open source. This means that engineers can host it themselves and extend it as needed, which can help technical users get a more customized experience and save money. It also provides a white-labeled option if you want to embed automation into your product.
Pros
✅ Open source project with self hosted option.
Cons
❌ Only ~200 integrations, which is fewer than most of the products on this list.
Pricing
Takeaway
If you're an engineer who wants a self-hosted and open source product that you can both extend and embed into your application, we recommend Activepieces.
7. Pipedream
🏆 Best for: Developers looking for a code-centric automation platform.
🔬 Free tier: Yes; includes 300 credits per month.
Pipedream has only been around since 2021, so like us, it’s also a relatively new player.
It’s a workflow automation tool designed for developers—which makes it a powerful Zapier alternative for the crowd who isn’t frightened of integrating their automated workflows into their production code.
If you’re a developer keen to get more granular control over your automations (or willing to hire someone who is!) Pipedream may just be the right tool.
Pros
✅ Developer-centric platform that allows for intricate workflow customization using custom code.
✅ Large community of developers and open source license.
Cons
❌ Explicitly designed for engineers.
Pricing
Takeaway
If you're a developer or engineer who wants to build automations in a true coding environment, Pipedream is a powerful and economical option to consider.
8. n8n
🏆 Best for: Developers who want a self-hosted, technical tool.
🔬 Free tier: No; free trial of Starter plan.
n8n is an "open-source" workflow automation tool that offers a more versatile solution to Zapier (with a few added complexities along the way). Like Pipedream, n8n is targeted at developers and engineers.
With n8n you can run complex automations across a wide range of services and integrate it directly into your own application. Because n8n is self-hostable, it’s appealing to devs who are willing to do the work to manage their automation infrastructure themselves and get the corresponding customization and cost savings. But some developers question the nature of the open source license and have expressed skepticism about contributing.
Pros
✅ Self-hosted option gives engineers additional flexibility and potentialy cost savings.
✅ Broad set of integrations.
Cons
❌ Steep learning curve for non-technical users.
❌ Restrictive open source license.
Pricing
Takeaway
If you're an engineer who wants to self-host, you should consider n8n as an alternative to Activepieces and Pipedream.
9. Integrately
🏆 Best for: Straightforward single-step automations.
🔬 Free tier. 100 tasks across 5 single-step automations.
Integrately is another workflow automation platform that's competing with Zapier primarily on price. Founded in 2016, it’s been around longer than some of the other options on this list but has failed to build a massive following, which comes down to the limited value prop compared to alternatives.
Pros
✅ Simple UI for single-step workflows.
✅ Helpful support that will troubleshoot your issues and even get on a live call with you to help you build your automations.
Cons
❌ Shallower integrations with missing features.
❌ Less reliable product experiences are common on review sites.
Pricing
Takeaway
Integrately is similar to Zapier for basic, single-step automations, but it comes at a lower price, so it can be a good option for users who love Zapier but hate the bill.
10. Albato
🔬 Free tier: Yes; 100 tasks across 5 automations per month.
Albato is also primarily designed for simple single-step workflows that have a trigger and a single action. They primarily target small businesses and startups, with a focus on users who use other no-code tools (like Bubble).
Pros
✅ Simple UI for single-step workflows.
✅ Embedded experience for white-label use cases.
Cons
❌ Limited to simple workflows.
❌ No AI experience.
Pricing
Takeaway
If you're a small business looking for single-step workflows at a decent price, give Albato's free tier a try.
Next steps
If you're an experienced user in the space who already knows exactly what you want to automate, just start experimenting with tools on this list! Most have a free plan, and it's very easy to replicate your Zap on another platform to get a sense of the experience and pricing.
If you're new to the space and looking for a powerful, intuitive platform that combines automation with human insight, why not give Relay.app a try today?
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Zapier alternatives FAQs
Is there a free Zapier?
Yes, Zapier offers a free plan with limited features, allowing you to create unlimited two-step Zaps and perform up to 100 tasks per month.
Is there something better than Zapier?
Depending on your needs, alternatives like those listed in this article may offer more advanced features or better pricing models. We think (as do our customers!) that Relay.app is better than Zapier for a number of reasons. See some of them here.
Who is Zapier's competitor?
Zapier's main competitors include Relay.app, Make.com, Microsoft Power Automate, and Pabbly Connect.
What is the Microsoft version of Zapier?
The Microsoft version of Zapier is Microsoft Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office 365 and other Microsoft services.
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