Zapier is the default answer for “connect A to B” — and it’s a good one until the invoice or the data-residency question arrives. n8n is the self-hosted alternative that’s grown past hobby status into a serious platform. Here’s the honest trade.
Where Zapier still wins
- Zero maintenance — it just runs; nobody owns the uptime
- Fastest first automation — the app catalog and onboarding are frictionless
- Team polish — sharing, folders, and org features are mature
For a handful of light zaps, that’s genuinely enough.
Where self-hosted n8n wins
- Cost shape — Zapier prices per task and per step; a busy workflow burns through tiers fast. n8n on your own instance has no per-execution counter — run it a hundred times or a hundred thousand.
- Data stays with you — credentials and payloads never leave your infrastructure. For anything touching customer data or internal systems, that argument is often decisive.
- Code when you need it — JavaScript/Python nodes, custom packages, real branching. Zapier stays visual; n8n goes under the hood.
- Feature depth in 2.x — AI Assistant, verified webhooks, Canvas Groups, AI agent nodes with fallback models — the self-hosted option stopped being the spartan one.
The tradeoff everyone knows
Self-hosting n8n means owning a server: Docker, updates, TLS, monitoring, backups. That’s the real reason people stay on Zapier — not features, but maintenance. Which is exactly the problem a managed runtime removes.
The Pod card below runs n8n for you — same self-hosted codebase, same control, flat monthly price, and no per-execution fee from us. You keep the “your data, your rules” part without the server part.