Power Automate, n8n or Make – which automation platform to choose for your company

At their core, all three tools do the same thing: when something happens in one system, they carry out set steps in others. For example, when an invoice arrives in a mailbox, save the attachment in SharePoint, enter the data in a table and send a notification to the accountant.

They differ in where they run, who uses them and how they charge. A ready-made connection to another program is called a connector; in Make and n8n, the individual steps of such a connection are called modules and nodes. The table below sets out the main differences.

Building the first flow often takes a few hours. The real work starts later: a system password expires, a supplier changes a form, someone leaves the company and takes with them the knowledge of how the automation worked.

So before you compare prices, answer the four questions in the list below. The answers usually point to a platform better than any feature table.

Power Automate is the natural choice for a company that runs on Microsoft 365. Flows use the same accounts as email and Teams, so there is no need to manage access separately. Approvals of invoices or holiday requests can appear directly in Teams, where a manager approves them with one click.

The administrator also has ready-made oversight tools. Data policies in the Power Platform admin center make it possible, for example, to block connectors through which company data could end up in personal services. This matters when flows are built by department staff, not just by IT.

The limitations concern mainly cost and the world outside Microsoft. Connectors to many non-Microsoft systems, such as databases or popular CRMs, are paid. Nor can you easily move flows to another tool – if you change platform, they have to be rebuilt from scratch.

Power Automate is also the only one of the three platforms that can operate old desktop programs by clicking through them as a person would. This kind of automation is called RPA (robotic process automation) – it is useful when a system has no other way of exchanging data.

n8n is chosen by companies that want their automations on their own server and have someone to look after it. Data then flows only through the company’s own infrastructure. The basic edition can be installed without a licence fee; the cost is the server and the administrator’s time.

It is worth knowing that n8n is not open-source software in the classic sense. The code is public, but the licence allows it to be used only for the company’s own purposes. It may not be made available to other companies for a fee, and some features require a paid licence.

In practice, this matters for sign-in. Single sign-on with one company account (SSO) and working with several environments come with the Business plan for installations on your own server. n8n prices it at EUR 667 a month with annual billing. Without it, every user has a separate n8n account.

The biggest risk is having nobody to look after it. The server has to be updated, secured and backed up. If the only person who knows how to do this leaves the company, the automations behind key processes are left without anyone to maintain them.

Make (formerly Integromat) works well where many web applications need to be connected quickly: an online shop, a newsletter tool, forms, spreadsheets and a messaging app. The editor shows the whole scenario as a clear diagram, so someone in marketing can build a simple automation without IT help.

Since 2025, Make’s paid plans have allowed you to add your own JavaScript or Python code to a scenario. Older comparisons that say Make cannot run code are therefore out of date.

Make runs only in its provider’s cloud. If customer contracts or industry regulations require data to stay on your servers, Make is ruled out. It also copes less well with systems installed on the company’s premises, such as an older ERP with no internet access.

Each platform calculates cost differently, so comparing price lists alone is misleading. Power Automate counts users, n8n cloud counts runs, and Make counts steps executed. The same process may therefore come out cheap on one platform and expensive on another.

Take a hypothetical order-handling process: 50 orders a day, 22 working days, with 8 steps in each run. That is 1,100 runs a month. In n8n cloud, that is 1,100 runs; in Make, about 8,800 credits, because 1,100 × 8 = 8,800.

In Power Automate, what counts is who builds and runs the flows. If the process uses a premium connector, for example to a database, a Premium licence is needed. For 5 builders, that is 5 × USD 15 × 12 months = USD 900 a year at list prices.

On top of licences, add the costs that are not on any price list. These include the time of the person who maintains the flows, a server for self-hosted n8n, training and a possible future change of platform.

With automations, data passes through the platform even if you do not store it anywhere. So it is worth knowing three things: who can create and change flows, whose servers the data flows through and whether you can see who changed what.

Power Automate uses Microsoft 365 mechanisms: Microsoft Entra ID accounts, data policies and activity logs. With n8n on your own server, your company designs and maintains all of these elements itself, which gives full control but takes work. With Make, the foundation is the contract with the provider, the choice of data processing region and team permissions.

Whenever personal data is involved, you need a data processing agreement (DPA) with the cloud provider. Also check whether the data is processed in the European Union.

In a mid-sized company, it is best to start with one main platform. A second one only makes sense when it solves a specific problem that the main one does not solve, or solves at too high a cost.

A typical combination is Power Automate for document workflows and approvals in Microsoft 365, and n8n or Make for processes in marketing’s web applications. This set-up only works when the rules are written down.

The worst scenario is three platforms doing the same thing because each department chose its own. Nobody then knows where to look for a flow that has stopped working, and the company pays for three tools.

The best first step is not “we’ll buy Power Automate because we have Microsoft”, but an analysis of a few specific processes. The steps below usually take a few meetings and protect you from a decision that is hard to reverse later.