As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates n8n 2.5/5 and Zapier 2.5/5 in Workflow Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick n8n and 1 picks Zapier. n8n scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Hosting options & portability, Process design, forms & approvals, Governance, credentials & audit trail, plus 2 more). Zapier scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Connectors, API & on-premise reach and Execution, error handling & monitoring). Provenance — n8n: EU-Made; Zapier: Rest of world, United States. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
n8n holds the higher mean on hosting and portability (6.5 to Zapier's 3.3), governance and audit (5.8 to 5.5), sovereignty (3.3 to 3.0), pricing transparency (5.5 to 5.3) and process design (4.7 to 4.0); Zapier holds it on integrations and connectors (5.8 to 5.2) and run reliability (6.0 to 5.8). On the leans, 5 of 6 judges pick n8n for run reliability, governance and audit, hosting and portability, sovereignty and pricing transparency; process design goes 4 n8n, 1 Zapier, 1 tie; integrations go 2 n8n, 1 Zapier, 3 ties. So run reliability's mean and leans point opposite ways. Weighted totals favor Zapier for the integrator (5.3 to 0) and n8n for the ops analyst (6.8 to 5.2), head of IT (6.6 to 4.6), data protection officer (6.1 to 4.1) and skeptic (6.4 to 5); the process owner's total is not listed. No overall winner — these splits are the answer.
Choose n8n if
You need to self-host, run workflows air-gapped, or keep automation under Git version control — hosting and portability leans n8n 5 judges to 1, means 6.5 to 3.3.
Your governance requirements name SAML SSO, audit logging, or SOC reports in a public trust center — governance and audit leans n8n 5 judges to 1, means 5.8 to 5.5.
You are buying as head of IT — the weighted total reads 6.6 for n8n versus 4.6 for Zapier.
Your data protection officer signs off on the purchase — the weighted total reads 6.1 for n8n versus 4.1 for Zapier.
You need pricing detail published across plans — pricing transparency leans n8n 5 judges to 1, means 5.5 to 5.3, while Zapier's captured pricing publishes the task allowance only for the Free tier's 100 tasks per month, with Professional shown as "Starting from $19.99 /month" and Team as "Starting from $69 /month" without task allowances.
Choose Zapier if
Your work depends on connector breadth — integrations and connectors means read 5.8 for Zapier versus 5.2, on a 9,000-plus app catalogue with webhooks to any API; note the leans split 2 for n8n, 1 for Zapier, 3 ties.
You are buying as the integrator — the weighted total reads 5.3 for Zapier versus 0 for n8n.
Your setup accepts US-default data residency and a US legal entity — Zapier's attributes list legal entity jurisdiction as US and data residency as US default.
You prioritize the higher run reliability mean (6.0 to 5.8), on documented automatic retries and step-level observability — noting that 5 of 6 judges lean n8n on that criterion.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Data Protection Officer
Reads every workflow as a chain of transfers. Asks where the execution log keeps its copy of the payload and for how long, which subprocessors and AI model providers a step sends data to, whether payloads can be masked, and what the approval trail records about employees before the works council asks.
n8n
This judge's pick
Zapier
Criterion by criterion
Process design, forms & approvals
n8n
The visual builder routes through switch nodes and supports human-in-the-loop approvals — a Gmail send-and-wait step with approve, reject and cancel, and a ClickUp approval task with configurable poll interval, max attempts, reminder threshold and timeout outcomes — with testing by sample form submission and replay or mock data. We found no public information on native forms, a task inbox for participants, or keeping in-flight instances on their original process version; workflow history retention and Git versioning are shown for definitions.
Zapier
The visual no-code editor is well evidenced with paths, filters, looping and scheduling, and forms exist with conditional logic on the Professional plan. I found no public information on approval steps assigned to roles, substitutes, deadlines for open tasks, a participant inbox, or how a process already running is versioned — the captured pages cap a Zap at 25 steps and stop there.
Connectors, API & on-premise reach
n8n
Named connectors with documented node pages cover Google Workspace, Microsoft Excel 365, Postgres and MySQL, alongside a generic HTTP Request step, inbound webhooks, MCP client and server, custom code, and a public API to read workflows and credentials; the engine itself runs self-hosted on Docker, reaching internal systems without opening the firewall. We found no public information on connectors to DACH ERP or accounting systems such as SAP or DATEV, or on who maintains each connector.
Zapier
A 9,000-plus app catalogue, webhooks to any API, a public REST API that can create a fully configured Zap, and code-built private integrations on the developer platform are all documented. I found no public information on connectors to ERP or accounting systems common in DACH, an on-premise agent reaching systems behind the firewall, or who maintains each connector.
Execution, error handling & monitoring
n8n
Automatic retries, error workflows that email execution-level details with a machine-readable error payload, single-step re-run, queue mode, concurrency and duration limits, per-plan execution log retention of 7 to 30 days or unlimited, and streaming of logs to the customer's own tools such as Datadog are documented. We found no public information on a status page with incident history, an uptime commitment, or retry back-off behaviour.
Zapier
Automatic retries on throttling and on authentication refresh, error display in Zap history with email notification, step-level observability, log streaming, and a settable shorter retention window on Company or Enterprise plans are documented. I found no public information on replaying a failed run from the failing step, a public status page with incident history, or an uptime commitment.
Governance, credentials & audit trail
n8n
SAML SSO, project roles with custom roles, an encrypted credential store whose values are stated never to be recorded in cloud session recordings, audit logging, execution data redaction, external secret stores and enforced two-factor are documented, with SOC reports and technical measures gathered in a public trust center. The privacy policy does state what is recorded about users on self-hosted instances (user identifiers, truncated IP, account settings, events), but we found no public information on SCIM provisioning, a publishing approval between the dev and prod instances, or export of the audit trail.
Zapier
SAML SSO and SCIM, shared folders, advanced admin permissions, a view of every run with its owner and systems involved, and asset history are documented, and model training on derived data is auto-opted-out on Company and Enterprise. But I found no public information on payload redaction or field-level masking in logs — while Zap runs are also stored in Zapier's non-production database for its own product analytics — and none on separate environments with publishing approval or an exportable audit trail describing what is recorded about individual users.
Hosting options & portability
n8n
The engine runs self-hosted via Docker up to air-gapped deployments, the source code is published on GitHub, the licence terms and community licence boundary are public, and definitions version in Git. The documented move from cloud to self-hosted is manual and one-directional, credentials cannot be exported from Cloud for security reasons, and we found no public information on handing back execution history or running exported definitions in another tool.
Zapier
The terms place the service in a United States cloud, and I found no public information on an EU region or any self-hosted edition. Export of Zap workflows, Zap history and account data is documented and the terms promise export before account deletion to switch providers, but the captured pages do not document a JSON or BPMN format for definitions or an API to read execution history.
European sovereignty
n8n
The contracting entity is n8n GmbH of Berlin with a downloadable pre-signed Article 28 processing agreement, but we found no public statement of where cloud workflows execute or where execution logs with their payload copies are stored, and no subprocessor list beyond the merchant of record that processes card payments. The privacy policy relies on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses, and AI steps connect to providers such as Groq, Mistral and OpenRouter without a stated processing location; only the self-hosted edition, with telemetry opt-out and air-gapped deployment, keeps the data chain on the customer's own servers.
Zapier
The contracting entity is Zapier, Inc., a Delaware corporation, the service is operated from a United States cloud, and a data processing addendum and privacy policy exist with GDPR importer and exporter roles and Data Privacy Framework certifications — a DPA with no European footing shown. The only subprocessors named are advertising and analytics partners; AI features exist and take customer Input, but the model providers behind those steps are not named on the captured pages.
Pricing transparency
n8n
Each self-serve tier is priced publicly with its billing period and allowance — Starter at 20€ /mo, billed annually, with 2.5k executions; Pro at 50€ /mo, billed annually, with 10k; Business self-hosted at 667€ /mo, billed annually, with 40k — and the billing unit is defined as a full workflow execution run from start to finish rather than per step or user, with fees stated exclusive of taxes. Enterprise is contact-sales only, and we found no public price for executions above a plan's included allowance.
Zapier
The task is a clearly defined billing unit — only successfully completed actions count, triggers and polling are free, ten internal step types are listed as non-task, and one MCP tool call uses two tasks — with a $0 free tier at 100 tasks per month, Professional from $19.99 and Team from $69 monthly. But the captured pages give no task allowance for the paid tiers, no per-task figure for pay-per-task overage, and Enterprise is contact for pricing.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
n8n
Zapier
Legal entity
Not determined
Incorporated in US
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates both 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick n8n and 1 picks Zapier. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is n8n or Zapier European?
n8n is European (EU-Made). Zapier is not European by provenance (Rest of world, United States). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do n8n and Zapier have a free plan?
As of 28 Oct 2026, Zapier’s own pages state a free plan; n8n’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.