Make was founded as Integromat in 2012 in Prague and rebranded to Make in 2022 following acquisition by Celonis. The platform has established itself as the leading alternative to Zapier for technical users who need more capable automation capabilities at lower cost. The core architectural difference between Make and Zapier is the canvas-based visual builder.
Where Zapier presents automations as a linear sequence of steps, Make displays workflows as a visual flowchart with branches, routers, iterators, and error handlers that can represent complex logic. A scenario that loops through every row of a spreadsheet, applies conditional logic to each record, and routes to different actions based on the result is manageable in Make and difficult in Zapier.
The pricing model is operation-based; every trigger, filter, action, or transformation step counts as one operation. A 10-step scenario running 1,000 times per month consumes 10,000 operations. The Core plan’s 10,000 operations at $9 per month compares favorably against Zapier Professional’s task limits at $19.99 per month for the equivalent workflow complexity. For teams running many multi-step automations, the cost savings are material.
The free plan is useful — 1,000 operations per month and up to 2 active scenarios at 15-minute intervals allows real automation work for light use cases. Where Make requires more effort than Zapier is the learning curve. The canvas interface, while powerful, is more complex to understand initially than Zapier’s step-by-step builder.
Non-technical users typically find Zapier more approachable. Technical users and developers generally prefer Make’s flexibility once past the learning curve. Make is the right tool for technical teams running complex, high-volume automations who want more power and lower per-operation cost than Zapier.