The most common question we get is some version of "should we move off Zapier?" The honest answer is that it depends entirely on volume, and most people asking are either well past the point where it obviously makes sense, or nowhere near it.
So here is the arithmetic, without the vendor spin.
The sticker prices
Zapier charges per task. A task is one action step executing once — so a five-step Zap that runs a thousand times consumes five thousand tasks, not one thousand. This is the detail that catches people out.
n8n self-hosted charges nothing per execution. You pay for a server. A ₹1,400/month VPS handles a surprising amount of work, and queue mode scales it further when needed.
At 10,000 tasks a month
Zapier's mid-tier plans cover this comfortably. Call it ₹4,000–6,000 a month all-in.
n8n would cost you around ₹1,400 for a VPS, plus the time to set it up properly and keep it patched. If you value that time at anything realistic, Zapier is cheaper at this volume. Stay where you are.
At 50,000 tasks a month
Now Zapier is around ₹15,000–20,000 a month depending on plan and features, and rising with your business.
n8n is still ₹1,400 for the VPS plus maybe ₹8,000 for someone to keep it healthy. This is roughly the crossover point — the maths favours n8n, but not so decisively that migration is urgent if everything is working.
At 200,000 tasks a month
Zapier is now a serious line item — comfortably over ₹40,000 a month, and it grows every time you succeed.
n8n needs a slightly bigger server and queue mode, so call it ₹4,000 in infrastructure plus support. The difference is several lakh rupees a year, and it widens as you grow. At this point migration pays for itself in under a quarter.
The costs people forget
- Migration effort — rebuilding workflows takes real time, and edge cases the original quietly handled will surface
- Maintenance — someone has to own upgrades, backups and TLS renewal on a self-hosted instance
- Learning curve — n8n rewards technical users and frustrates non-technical ones
- Integration gaps — n8n has fewer pre-built connectors, so some integrations take longer to build
- Downtime risk — a self-hosted instance that nobody monitors is worse than a cloud service that just works
What we actually recommend
Don't migrate everything. Migrate the handful of workflows driving your task count and leave the rest on a cheaper Zapier tier. Most clients we work with end up running both, and that's the right outcome rather than a compromise.
And if you're under about 20,000 tasks a month, the honest advice is to leave it alone and spend the attention somewhere it earns more.
Rule of thumb: below 20k tasks/month stay on Zapier. Between 20k and 50k, migrate selectively. Above 50k, migrate the heavy workflows and expect payback within a quarter.