Comparison
Make pricing explained: credits, plans, and real costs
Direct answer
Here is Make pricing as of October 2026. Make has a Free plan with 1,000 credits a month and paid plans that start at 10,000 credits: Core at $12 a month, Pro at $21, and Teams at $38 when billed monthly, with annual billing saving 15% or more, per Make's pricing page. A credit is roughly one module action, so every step of every run counts, and polling triggers use credits even when they find nothing new. Extra credits cost 25% more than plan credits. For most small businesses the subscription is cheap. The costs that add up are credit creep as volume grows and the time it takes to maintain scenarios.
Make plans at a glance
Figures are from Make's pricing page as of October 2026. Paid plans have a slider that raises the monthly credit allowance from 10,000 up to 8 million, and the price goes up with it. Check the page for the exact price at your tier.
| Plan | Price (10,000 credits, billed monthly) | Credits per month | Key limits and features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1,000 | 2 active scenarios, 15-minute minimum schedule, 5-minute max run time, 7-day logs |
| Core | $12/mo | 10,000 and up | Unlimited active scenarios, 1-minute minimum schedule, 40-minute max run time, 30-day logs, Make API |
| Pro | $21/mo | 10,000 and up | Adds priority execution, custom variables, full-text log search |
| Teams | $38/mo | 10,000 and up | Adds teams and team roles, shared scenario templates |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom functions, 24/7 enterprise support, overage protection, 60-day logs |
Make changed its plans in November 2025. According to Make's help center, Core now tops out at 300,000 credits a month and Pro at 8 million. Customers above the Core ceiling were moved to Pro.
How credits work
Make switched its billing unit from "operations" to "credits" in August 2025 (Make help center). For ordinary apps the rule stayed the same: one module action is one credit. Make's pricing page gives examples like adding a Google Sheets row or fetching Gmail data. Reading, searching, creating, updating, deleting, transforming, and iterating records all use credits. Routers and error handlers do not.
Most Make bills come down to three things:
- Credits are charged per bundle. If a search returns 20 records, every module after it runs 20 times, so a three-step action chain uses 60 credits (Make Academy).
- Polling triggers cost credits on every check. A scheduled check that finds no new data is a "check run" and still uses one operation (Make help center). A trigger that polls every 15 minutes runs about 2,880 times a month, whether or not anything happened. Instant (webhook) triggers avoid this.
- AI modules vary. With Make's built-in AI provider, credits are based on tokens processed, so long prompts and large files cost more. On paid plans you can connect your own AI provider instead, in which case Make charges credits per operation and you pay the provider for tokens (Make help center).
Extra credits and running out
If you use up your monthly credits, you can buy more. Per Make's extra credits documentation, extra credits cost 25% more than the per-credit rate in your plan, whether bought manually (in units of 1,000) or automatically. Auto-purchase buys 10,000 credits at a time and is capped at the number of credits in your subscription. On the $12 Core plan with 10,000 credits, that works out to $1.20 per 1,000 credits in the plan, so 1,000 extra credits cost $1.50.
If you keep hitting the ceiling, moving up a tier on the slider usually costs less than buying extras.
A worked example for a small business
Take a 10-person home services company running four scenarios. The volumes are an illustration, not a benchmark.
| Scenario | How it is built | Monthly credits |
|---|---|---|
| New website lead: add to CRM, alert Slack, send a first reply | Webhook trigger + 3 actions, 300 leads | 1,200 |
| Inbox triage: label new Gmail messages and draft replies | Polling every 15 minutes (2,880 checks) + 3 actions on each of 1,200 emails, own AI provider | 6,480 |
| Overdue invoice reminders | Daily search, then 3 actions on about 15 invoices a day | 1,380 |
| Weekly summary to the owner | About 5 modules, 4 times a month | 20 |
| Total | about 9,080 |
That fits under 10,000 credits, so Core at $12 a month (billed monthly) covers it. The margin is thin, though. Polling alone uses about 2,880 credits, nearly a third of the total, before a single email gets processed.
Small changes can move the bill a lot:
- Poll every minute instead of every 15 and the inbox trigger alone becomes about 43,200 credits a month. You need a much higher tier.
- Email doubles to 2,400 a month and the total passes 12,000 credits. You buy extras at the 25% premium or move up the slider.
- Use Make's built-in AI provider instead of your own key, and the AI step is billed by tokens, so long emails cost more credits.
For comparison, the same four workflows in n8n count as about 1,534 executions, because n8n charges once per workflow run regardless of steps. Make still holds up at this size, but per-step billing grows faster as workflows get longer.
Hidden costs beyond the subscription
- Your time to build. Each scenario needs field mapping, filters, error handling, and testing.
- Upkeep. Apps change fields, connections expire, and scenarios stop with errors. Someone has to watch the execution logs and fix them.
- Credit tuning. Keeping the bill low means redesigning scenarios by switching to webhooks, batching, and adding filters. That takes real time.
- Judgment. Scenarios follow rules. A customer who disputes an invoice or asks an odd question still ends up with a person.
As an illustration: if someone spends four hours a month maintaining scenarios and their time is worth $75 an hour, that is $300 a month on top of a $12 plan.
Alternatives to consider
- Zapier is easier to learn and counts tasks only when an action succeeds. Triggers, filters, and formatter steps are free. It usually costs more at volume. See TeamShift vs Zapier and our Zapier alternatives roundup.
- n8n charges per workflow run instead of per step, and you can self-host it for free. If you have someone technical, it's the better deal for long, looping workflows.
- A done-for-you team. TeamShift is a hosted team of nine AI workers. You don't build scenarios. You hand off work in a sentence, and the right worker does it in the apps you already use. Anything that sends to a customer, moves money, publishes, deletes, or commits your calendar waits for your OK. Pricing is usage-based: a free workspace, work billed at 3x its compute cost, a quoted maximum before each job, and daily or monthly spend caps (pricing). See TeamShift vs Make.
Pick Make if you like building, your scenarios are stable, and your volume fits a low tier. At $12 a month, it's hard to beat on price alone. A done-for-you team makes more sense when nobody has time to own the scenarios, or when a lot of the work needs judgment that rules can't cover.
FAQ
Is Make free?
Yes, there is a free plan with 1,000 credits a month, two active scenarios, and a 15-minute minimum schedule. That's enough to test real scenarios, but tight for running a business day to day.
What is the difference between Make operations and credits?
Credits replaced operations as Make's billing unit in August 2025. For ordinary apps, one operation still uses one credit. Built-in AI modules can use more, based on tokens processed.
Why is my Make credit usage so high?
The usual causes are polling triggers that check too often, or modules running once per bundle after a search returns many records. Webhook triggers, longer intervals, and filters early in the scenario all cut usage.
How much do extra Make credits cost?
Extra credits cost 25% more than the per-credit rate in your plan, bought manually in units of 1,000 or automatically in units of 10,000.
Is Make cheaper than n8n?
For short, simple scenarios at low volume, the two are close, and Make's free plan is generous. For long workflows that loop over many records, n8n usually costs less because it bills per run instead of per step.