Is Zapier free? Yes, with two ceilings
Zapier has a free plan that does not expire and does not need a card. It costs $0 and includes 100 tasks a month, counted across your Zap workflows and MCP server actions. You can create as many Zaps, Tables and Forms as you want on it, which Zapier calls unlimited assets.
Two ceilings sit on top of that. The first is the 100 tasks. The second, and the one people actually run into, is that a free Zap is a two-step Zap: one trigger and one action, with no chaining. The moment a workflow needs to write a row and then send a message, the free plan cannot run it, no matter how few times a month it fires.
The free plan also carries two-factor authentication, drafts for in-progress workflows, custom actions and custom test records, Copilot, and the free versions of Zapier Chatbots and Agents. Figures here were read off zapier.com/pricing and Zapier's help centre on 8 September 2026.
The two-step ceiling, in practice
One trigger plus one action covers a surprising amount of ordinary automation. New form response creates a spreadsheet row. New Stripe payment creates a CRM contact. New file in Dropbox posts a Slack message. Each of those is a complete, useful Zap that runs on $0 forever.
What it does not cover is anything with a second destination or a decision in the middle. Filters and Paths are paid features, so a free Zap cannot say "only if the amount is over 500" or branch two ways. If you want to see where those fit, the what is a Zap guide walks through the anatomy with a worked example.
There is one workaround that is not really a workaround: chain two Zaps by having the first one write to a place the second one watches. It works, it costs two tasks instead of one, and it inherits the 15-minute polling delay twice over. For most people the honest answer is that a genuinely multi-step workflow means a paid plan.
What burns your 100 tasks, and what does not
A task is one successfully completed action step. Triggers never cost a task, no matter how often they check. Neither do steps that error out or get skipped, because they never finished.
Several built-in steps are also free of charge against your allowance. Filter and Paths steps never count. Neither do Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Zapier Manager, Storage, or steps for Zapier Tables and Zapier Forms. Four of those are paid features in the first place: Delay, Looping, Sub-Zap and Storage all need a paid plan, so on the free tier the practical list of no-cost helpers is short.
On a two-step Zap the arithmetic is easy: one run is one task, so 100 tasks is 100 runs a month across everything you have built. That is about three runs a day. A form that gets filled in twice a week fits comfortably. A webhook fired by every page view does not.
Fifteen minutes is the other thing you are paying for
Polling triggers on the free plan check every 15 minutes. Paid plans go down to a 1-minute interval. For a Zap that files receipts or syncs a contact list, 15 minutes is invisible. For anything a person is waiting on, it is the difference between an automation and a delayed batch job.
Instant triggers, the ones built on webhooks rather than polling, fire immediately on any plan, so whether the delay affects you depends entirely on which trigger the app you are connecting offers. That distinction is worth checking before you conclude the free plan is too slow.
The free tier also has a rate limit worth knowing about: a Zap with a polling trigger is held if it exceeds 200 requests every 10 minutes. Private apps on Free and Professional are capped at 100 requests per 60 seconds, against 5,000 on Team and Enterprise.
What happens when you hit 100 tasks
Nothing is lost. In Zapier's own words, "Your Zap runs will be held, not lost. Held runs are paused and can be replayed from your Zap History once you have available tasks." Zapier emails you as you approach the limit and again when you reach it.
The practical consequence is that a time-sensitive workflow stops being time-sensitive. A held run replayed four days later has technically not failed, but a Slack alert that arrives on Friday about something that happened on Monday has failed at the only job it had. If the workflow matters on a clock, treat the task limit as a hard stop rather than a soft one.
The 14-day Professional trial, and the cliff at the end
New accounts get 14 days of Professional free, with no credit card. During the trial you get multi-step Zaps, premium apps, filters and paths, and the faster polling interval. It is the sensible way to find out whether your workflow actually needs a paid plan, because you can build the real thing rather than guess.
Two details catch people out. During a free trial only the first 30 steps of a Zap will run, which matters only for genuinely long workflows. More importantly, when the trial ends, any Zap that uses a paid feature stops working. A three-step Zap built during the trial does not degrade gracefully into a two-step one, it turns off. Build the trial version knowing which half of it survives.
Is the free plan enough for you?
Work it out before you build. Count the action steps in each workflow you want, multiply by how often it fires per month, and add up the total. If every workflow is a single action and the total is under 100 runs, the free plan is genuinely enough and you should stop reading. If either condition fails, you are looking at Professional, which starts at 750 tasks for $29.99/mo billed monthly or $19.99/mo billed annually.
The 33% annual discount is real but it locks in a year, so it is worth having run the workflow for a month first. Our Zapier pricing guide goes through the tiers and the overage behaviour in full.
If it is the two-step ceiling rather than the volume that pushes you off the free plan, the comparison worth making is not Zapier free against Zapier paid. Make's free plan allows multi-step scenarios and 1,000 operations a month, and n8n can be self-hosted for the cost of a small server. Both are covered in Zapier vs Make and Zapier alternatives.
Frequently asked
Is Zapier free forever, or just a trial?
Both exist. The Free plan is permanent, costs $0, and includes 100 tasks a month with two-step Zaps. Separately, new accounts get a 14-day trial of the Professional plan with no credit card required, after which the account drops to the Free plan.
How many Zaps can you have on the free plan?
As many as you like. Zapier does not cap the number of Zaps, Tables or Forms on the Free plan. What it caps is how complex each Zap can be, one trigger and one action, and how many times they can all run in total, 100 tasks a month.
What are the Zapier free plan limits?
100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps only, a 15-minute polling interval, one user, 2,500 Zapier Tables records, and 10 pages per Forms project. Premium apps, multi-step Zaps, filters, paths, autoreplay on errors and Zap versioning all require a paid plan.
Does a free Zapier account expire if you stop using it?
The Free plan itself does not expire. The 14-day Professional trial does, and when it ends any Zap that relies on a paid feature such as a third step or a premium app stops running rather than reverting to a simpler version.