There are already plenty of feature comparisons of these three tools online. This article does not repeat them. It covers three things Taiwanese teams run into when actually buying and rolling out automation — things English-language articles never mention.
The 30-second version
| n8n | Zapier | Make | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing logic | Per instance | Per task | Per operation |
| Currency | Can pay in NT$ (managed) | USD | USD |
| Data residency | Under your control | Theirs | Theirs |
| Number of integrations | Many | The most | Many |
| Learning curve | Medium | Low | Medium |
Consideration 1: the pricing model, and what it looks like once you grow
This is the most fundamental difference of the three, and its impact grows over time.
| Tool | Priced on | What happens as you grow |
|---|---|---|
| Zapier | Task count (every action counts as one) | The more complex the flow, the more tasks a single run consumes; cost rises non-linearly |
| Make | Operation count | Lower unit price, but the same logic, so high volume still pushes cost up noticeably |
| n8n (self-hosted / managed) | Server resources; executions are not billed | Cost stays flat until you need a bigger machine |
Here is the practical difference. A flow like “form submitted → look up the database → evaluate a condition → send a LINE message → write to a spreadsheet” consumes 4–5 billable units per run on a per-execution platform. Run it 200 times a day and that is twenty or thirty thousand units a month.
On n8n, running that flow once and running it a hundred thousand times produce the same bill.
Consideration 2: the hidden costs of a USD subscription
Zapier and Make are both overseas subscriptions priced in US dollars. For a Taiwanese company, that brings several practical annoyances:
- Exchange rate movement — your monthly cost floats, so budgets are hard to pin down
- Credit card fees — foreign transactions typically add around a 1.5% fee
- Invoices and expense claims — you get a foreign electronic receipt, not a Taiwanese uniform invoice. That makes company expense claims and corporate income tax deductions more awkward and requires extra handling
- Procurement process — some companies have internal rules about overseas card subscriptions that require additional sign-off
None of these is big on its own, but together they turn “US$29 a month” into a more irritating number on the books. Services priced in NT$ are much simpler here.
Consideration 3: where your customers’ data travels
This is the one that most needs thinking through early.
When you connect a flow with Zapier or Make, the data passes through their servers. If the flow is “new customer fills in a form → sync to the CRM”, then your customers’ names, phone numbers and email addresses pass through a third-party platform located abroad.
That becomes a problem in several situations:
- Your customers are in finance, healthcare or the public sector, and their contracts restrict where data may be processed
- Your company’s personal data policy requires that data does not leave the country
- You are an agency and the client asks you to document the complete data flow
With self-hosted n8n or a Taiwan-based managed service, data is processed inside your own container and never touches a third-party SaaS. That is a pretty strong answer to have when writing a proposal or responding to a customer audit.
So what are Zapier and Make good at
To be fair, they do things n8n cannot match:
- Number of ready-made integrations — Zapier’s run into the thousands and cover a great many obscure SaaS products. n8n’s node count is growing fast but there is still a gap
- Zero operations — no servers, upgrades or backups to manage
- Speed of getting started — the interface design is friendlier to non-technical people
If your volume is low, everything you connect to is a mainstream service, and you do not care where the data sits, Zapier really is the smoother experience.
Recommendations
| Your situation | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Few executions a month, connecting mainstream SaaS | Zapier / Make; the free or cheap plan is enough |
| High execution volume, or flows with many steps | n8n; per-execution billing will eat you alive |
| Flows that touch customers’ personal data | n8n; data never leaves your environment |
| Company expense claims need a Taiwanese invoice | n8n hosted in Taiwan |
| You need to reach systems on an internal network | n8n; SaaS cannot connect into your intranet |
Running n8n on RoamerHost
Managed n8n on RoamerHost is NT$5,988 billed yearly, avg. NT$499/mo (1 CPU core / 2 GB storage), priced in NT$ with a Taiwanese invoice issued, including SSL and a dedicated subdomain, with no extra charge per execution. For the cost difference between self-hosting and managed hosting, see this cost breakdown.
How to estimate what you will actually spend
The easiest way to skew a plan comparison is to put entry-tier monthly prices side by side. What you actually need to know is which tier your usage lands in.
A rough method:
- List the flows you plan to automate and how often each one triggers
- Work out your total executions per month
- Map that against the tiers of the per-execution plans to see where you land
- Compare that tier’s monthly price against a flat monthly fee
Most people discover at step three that they are one tier higher than expected — because each step in a flow may count separately, rather than the flow counting as one. That definitional difference matters a lot, so check it before choosing a plan.
FAQ
Q: Zapier has more integrations, so why consider n8n at all?
Integration count stops mattering once the services you need are supported. The real difference is the billing model — per-task billing makes you write bad flows to save money, and that cost never shows up on the invoice.
Q: What are the hidden costs of a USD subscription?
Exchange rate movement, foreign transaction fees on your credit card, and having no negotiating room when prices go up. At small amounts you can ignore them, but once you move up a plan tier they start to be noticeable.
Q: Is data residency a real requirement for a small business?
Honestly, in most cases no. If you are handling ordinary marketing data, it is not a substantive problem. It becomes a hard requirement when a customer contract has data processing clauses, or your industry has its own compliance rules.
Q: Is migrating from Zapier a hassle?
The flows have to be rebuilt, but the point is not to copy them over as-is — your original design was shaped by per-execution billing. The recommended migration order is in migrating from Zapier to n8n.
Q: When should I stay on Zapier?
When you have very few flows, the free allowance covers them, and nobody on the team wants to touch anything technical. In those three cases switching just adds cost and maintenance.
Sources and further reading
n8n’s nodes and pricing change often; these are the primary sources to verify against:
- n8n official documentation
- n8n official pricing — cloud plans and allowances
- n8n source code and release history — the authority on license terms
Further reading
- Migrating from Zapier to n8n: why you should not copy your flows across
- What is n8n? An introduction to the workflow automation platform
- Build your first n8n workflow
- Self-hosted n8n vs n8n Cloud
- RoamerHost managed n8n plans
Want someone to build it for you?
If you would rather not put all of this together yourself, or the project is big enough that you want someone to help plan it, Roamer Tech (RoamerHost’s parent company) takes on contract work for business process automation and AI agents:
