SaaS vs self-hosted
Most pages here put a hosted SaaS against the open-source tool that replaces it, and price it properly: licence, server, and the hours it takes to keep alive.
the integration you need is only in its 9,000+ catalogue
you want multi-step on the free plan, and $9/mo after it
| Free plan | 100 tasks/mo | 1,000 ops/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid | $19.99/mo | $9/mo |
| Charged unit | action step | module run |
Airtable has no self-hosted option at any plan, including Enterprise. Baserow ships an MIT-licensed edition you run yourself, with no per-user fee and no row cap beyond your hardware.
| Free plan | 1,000 records/base | 3,000 rows · self-host unlimited |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid | $20/seat/mo | $10/user/mo |
| Year one, 5 users | $1,200 | ~$72 + 14 hours |
Ten times the free rows, cheaper per seat, and cloud data processed in German data centres. The catch is the licence above three users, where SeaTable stops publishing a price.
| Free plan | 1,000 records/base | 10,000 rows · 25 users |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid | $20/seat/mo | €7/user/mo |
| Year one, 3 users | $720 | ~$72 + 14 hours |
The pair where self-hosting saves the least. Free software on your own box is also the box that dies with everything else it was supposed to be watching.
| Licence | €108/yr (Solo) | $0 · MIT |
|---|---|---|
| Monitors | 50 free · 500 paid | no built-in limit |
| Year one | ~$117 | ~$72 + 14 hours |
Make changes the pricing unit. n8n changes who owns the infrastructure. Only one of the three can come off somebody else's servers.
| Licence | $240/yr (Zapier Pro) | $0 · n8n Community |
|---|---|---|
| Run ceiling | 750 tasks/mo | unlimited executions |
| Year one | $240 | ~$72 + 14 hours |
Both hosted, so there is no server to price — but the units are not comparable, and that is where the money goes.
| Free plan | 100 tasks/mo | 1,000 ops/mo, multi-step |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid | $19.99/mo | $9/mo |
| Charged unit | action step | module run |
Every automation platform meters steps that run, not workflows you build. Budget by the wrong one and the plan runs out weeks early.
3 tasks per run × 12 runs a month = 36 tasks
Triggers, actions, filters, and paths: how the pieces connect, with a real example.
Read the explainer →What counts as a task, what happens at your limit, and why annual billing saves 33%.
Read the explainer →There's a genuine free plan, capped at 100 tasks a month, and one trigger plus one action per Zap. It's enough to test whether automation solves your problem, not enough to run a business process on.
Each action step that runs counts as one task. A Zap with three action steps that fires once uses three tasks, not one, which catches a lot of people budgeting by "number of Zaps" instead of steps times runs.
No. No affiliate links, no sponsored placement, no vendor relationships. Every price and limit is read off the vendor's own public pages and dated on the page it appears on, so you can check it or catch it going stale.
