Activepieces vs Zapier

Activepieces

The strongest reason to pick it over Zapier or Make is the MIT licence: if the pricing stops working for you, you move the same flows onto your own hardware. The connector count is real and the free cloud tier is genuinely usable. The catch is credit metering — AI steps cost 2 to 20 credits each, so agent-heavy flows burn the allowance far faster than plain integrations do.

Pros

• +MIT-licensed with self-hosting via Docker, Helm or any cloud
• +Around 700 connectors covering Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce and Shopify
• +Free forever cloud tier with unlimited flows and daily credit refresh
• +SOC 2 Type II and GDPR attestation on the hosted version, plus API access on every tier

Cons

• −Everything is credit-metered, and AI steps cost up to 20 credits per call
• −The jump from Plus at $16 to Team at $166 a month is steep for small teams
• −Self-hosting means you own upgrades, scaling and uptime yourself

Zapier

Zapier is still the default when the job is 'connect these two SaaS tools and stop thinking about it': the app catalogue is the moat, and Copilot cuts setup time further for people who would never write a webhook. The cost model punishes volume — tasks are counted per step, overage on monthly plans is 2.5× — so once an automation runs thousands of times a day, Make or self-hosted n8n gets cheaper fast, and the AI Agents are a separately billed add-on rather than part of the plan.

Pros

• +More than 9,000 app integrations, the widest catalogue in the category
• +Copilot builds a multi-step Zap from a description, so setup needs no documentation reading
• +Free plan runs real two-step automations, not a time-limited trial
• +Published prices for every tier short of Enterprise, including the overage multipliers

Cons

• −Tasks are counted per step, so a five-step Zap burns five tasks per run
• −Overage costs 2.5× the base rate on monthly plans
• −Agents and Chatbots are add-ons with their own bills
• −Multi-step Zaps need a paid plan

Is Activepieces cheaper than Zapier?

On published entry prices, Activepieces starts lower — $16/mo against $19.99/mo for Zapier. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Activepieces or Zapier have a free tier?

Both: Activepieces has a free tier, and Zapier has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Activepieces or Zapier?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.