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 Skeptic
Knows that "7,000 integrations" counts connectors nobody maintains, that "unlimited workflows" says nothing about the tasks each run consumes, and that "no-code" ends at the first API without a connector. Reads for what counts as a task, how long failed runs are kept, which model an "AI agent" step sends data to, and whether the workflows can leave the platform at all.
n8n
This judge's pick
Zapier
Criterion by criterion
Process design, forms & approvals
n8n
The templates show genuine approval mechanics: a Gmail send-and-wait step with approve, reject and cancel, and a ClickUp approval task that moves through approved, revision, rejected, pending and timed out, with configurable polling, a one-time reminder comment when a configured limit is reached, and switch-node branching on position and role. Forms arrive through Google Forms and Google Sheets rather than a native designer. We found no public information on substitutes or escalation chains, a task inbox for participants, a documented process notation, or what happens to running instances when a workflow changes — workflow history is kept one day on Starter and five on Pro.
Zapier
The visual no-code editor, if/then Paths, multiple loops with steps after loops, and Forms with conditional logic are documented, so this is above a basic branch-and-build tool. But the human side of a process is thin: we found no public information on approval steps assigned to roles or groups, substitutes, deadlines or escalation for open tasks, a task inbox for participants, or versioning that keeps already-running instances on their original version when the definition changes.
Connectors, API & on-premise reach
n8n
Named connectors for Google Workspace and Microsoft Excel 365, Postgres and MySQL, documented Webhook and HTTP Request nodes, a public API called with an API key header, and a self-hosted Docker edition to reach systems behind the firewall. The captured pages give different figures for the integration count — 500-plus pre-built nodes, 772 and 799 listed — and the 1000-plus claim is the HTTP Request node connecting to apps and services generically. We found no public information on connectors to SAP, DATEV or another DACH ERP system, or on who maintains each connector.
Zapier
"9,000+ apps" is a count, not a catalogue I can check by name; the checkable substance is webhooks, a connect-to-any-API step, a documented REST API for creating and configuring workflows, and a developer platform that builds custom integrations in code with automated regression tests and source control. We found no public information on connectors to DACH ERP or accounting systems, an on-premise agent reaching internal databases or file shares, SOAP or database steps, or who maintains which connector.
Execution, error handling & monitoring
n8n
Limits are stated honestly per plan — execution duration of 5 to 40 minutes, log retention of 7 days to unlimited, concurrency of 5 to 200-plus — alongside automatic retries, error workflows whose emails carry the failed workflow id, error source and message plus machine-readable error JSON, re-running of single steps, searching executions by the data they contain, and log streaming to Datadog. We found no public information on a public status page with incident history, an uptime commitment with service credits, or how retries and back-off are configured; the Enterprise SLA is described as dedicated support.
Zapier
Retry on 429, auth-refresh and retry of the whole step on 401, Zap history with error display and email alerts, and step-level observability in the Workflow Manager are all documented — though a good share of the error-handling pages are written for people building connectors, not for the customer whose Zap failed at 3 a.m. Zap history retention is configurable shorter only on Company and Enterprise, and Zap Runs are also kept in a non-production database for the vendor's own analytics; we found no public information on replaying a failed run from the failing step, concurrency controls, a public status page, or an uptime commitment.
Governance, credentials & audit trail
n8n
Project-level roles with custom roles, SSO via SAML and LDAP, an encrypted credential store whose values are excluded from session recordings, external secret store integration, execution data redaction, enforced 2FA, audit logging, and SOC reports and technical measures in a public trust center. Two separate environments for dev and prod exist with Git version control. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, an exportable audit trail, or a publishing approval gate between those environments.
Zapier
SAML SSO with SCIM provisioning, shared folders and app connections, admin visibility of every agent action and workflow run with its owner, and configurable shorter execution retention on Company and Enterprise are evidenced. The developer SDK permissions page states plainly that it is not admin-level access control and cannot govern other team members — useful guardrails for AI agents, not org-wide governance; we found no public information on separate development and production environments with a publishing approval, credential storage encryption, external secret stores, or field-level redaction of payloads in logs.
Hosting options & portability
n8n
A self-hosted edition deployable with Docker, on-prem and air-gapped, the entire source code on GitHub, Git version control, and a documented — manual — route out of the cloud via Admin Panel export and file import. The stated limitations matter for an exit: there is currently no automated way to migrate from n8n Cloud to self-hosted, and credentials cannot be exported from Cloud due to security reasons and must be re-entered. We found no public information on exporting execution history or on system requirements for self-hosting.
Zapier
The terms state the service is operated from a cloud located in the United States, and export of Zap workflows, account data and Zap history is documented, including a pre-deletion export path to switch providers. We found no public information on a self-hosted or on-premise edition, an EU hosting region, a documented export format such as JSON or BPMN for workflow definitions, or migration off the vendor's cloud in either direction.
European sovereignty
n8n
The contracting entity is n8n GmbH, Berlin, with a commercial register number and German VAT ID, a pre-signed processor data processing agreement is published, and the privacy policy is GDPR-based with SCCs and the Data Privacy Framework covering transfers, Paddle named as merchant of record for card payments, and no training of machine learning models on customer data. Nothing captured states where n8n Cloud executes workflows or stores execution logs, and we found no public information on a subprocessor list with locations, including which AI providers sit behind AI steps — so residency is unproven rather than established.
Zapier
The contracting entity is Zapier, Inc., a Delaware corporation, the service runs from a cloud located in the United States, and a data processing agreement plus Data Privacy Framework certifications exist — a privacy-and-DPA level, not EU execution. The captured subprocessor list names advertising and analytics providers rather than the execution chain; AI features exist and derived data may be used for model training, and the only model-choice lever shown is a "Bring Your Own Model" platform control and an automatic AI model opt-out on Enterprise. We found no public information on EU execution or an EU contracting entity.
Pricing transparency
n8n
The billing unit is defined plainly — a full workflow execution from start to finish, not a step or a user — with public prices of 20€, 50€ and 667€ per month billed annually for 2.5k, 10k and 40k executions, unlimited users and workflows on all plans, every integration included, per-plan limits on duration, storage and retention, and fees stated as exclusive of taxes with 12-month enterprise terms. What a buyer cannot yet compute: the Cloud Pro-2 custom plan moves in preset tiers from 50,000 to 500,000 executions, but we found no public information on the price per additional execution or on what Assistant credits cost beyond the 1,600 or 9,600 monthly allowance. Enterprise is contact sales.
Zapier
The billing unit is defined better than most: a task is charged only when an action succeeds, triggers and data checks are free, an enumerated list of steps does not count, one MCP tool call uses two tasks, and tasks are pooled across the whole account — exactly the fine print a buyer needs. But the allowances are incomplete: only the Free tier's "100 tasks per month" is stated, Professional appears as "Starting from $19.99 /month" and Team as "Starting from $69 /month" without task allowances, Enterprise is "Contact for pricing", and pay-per-task overage is priced only as "a higher per-task rate than your base subscription tasks" with no number given.
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.