The short answer
Short answer, prices read on 29 October 2026: a sales or operations team running 10,000 five-step workflows a month needs 50,000 tasks on Zapier if every step counts, which is $289 a month on Professional billed yearly or $433.50 billed monthly. Activepieces Cloud counts a run as one credit however many steps it has, so the same work is 10,000 credits and fits the $20 a month Plus plan. Running the open source Community Edition on one Hostinger KVM 2 server is $14.99 a month at renewal ($8.79 on the current promotion), but that is only $5.01 below Plus at this volume. The big saving is the billing unit, $269 a month against Zapier yearly. The server starts to matter above 10,000 runs, where Activepieces charges $7 per 1,000 extra credits.
| Option | 10,000 five-step runs a month | What is counted | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier Professional, billed monthly | $433.50 | 50,000 tasks (every step) | Zapier says rates may vary by connector, AI tier and code |
| Zapier Professional, billed yearly | $289 | 50,000 tasks | Pay yearly saves 33% on its page |
| Activepieces Cloud Plus | $20 | 10,000 credits (one per run) | Up to 5 users; AI steps cost 2, 10 or 20 credits unless you bring your own keys |
| Activepieces Community Edition on KVM 2 Our pick | $14.99 at renewal ($8.79 promotional) | No meter | You run it; paid features are not in the free edition |
Our pick means we earn a commission if you buy through our link. Hostinger is our pick for the server because it is the host we already price across our self-hosting guides; its KVM 2 plan (2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB NVMe) is $8.79 a month on a Black Friday promotion, paid upfront for 24 months, and renews at $14.99. Our editor score for Hostinger is 1.9 out of 10, unchanged by the commission. See Hostinger VPS plans.
Why the same workflow is billed so differently
Zapier’s pricing page says “Every step in a Zap and every external connector call uses tasks”, and adds that rates may vary with the AI model tier, the code runtime and the connector. Tasks are one pool across Zaps, AI steps, code, MCP and the SDK. A five-step workflow that runs 10,000 times is therefore 50,000 tasks on our assumption that all five steps count. If your trigger does not count, scale the Zapier column down; the direction of the result does not change.
Activepieces Cloud bills the run. Its pricing FAQ says “A run is one credit however many steps it has”, with AI as the exception: a step on a fast model is 2 credits, a smart model 10 and a frontier model 20, and on Plus and up you can connect your own AI keys, which drops every AI step to 1 credit and moves the model cost to your provider. So a five-step flow with no AI is one credit, and a five-step flow with one frontier-model step is up to 24 credits unless you bring your own key. Check how many of your steps are AI before you trust the table below.
The bill at five volumes
| Runs a month | Zapier tasks | Zapier monthly | Zapier yearly | Activepieces Cloud | Self-hosted KVM 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | 10,000 | $193.50 | $129 | $20 (Plus) | $14.99 |
| 10,000 | 50,000 | $433.50 | $289 | $20 (Plus) | $14.99 |
| 20,000 | 100,000 | $733.50 | $489 | $90 (Plus) | $14.99 |
| 40,000 | 200,000 | $1,149 | $769 | $200 (Team) | $14.99 |
| 100,000 | 500,000 | $2,199 | $1,499 | $550 (Team) | $14.99 |
At 10,000 runs, Activepieces Cloud saves $269 a month against Zapier billed yearly, $3,228 a year, and $413.50 a month against monthly billing. The server saves $274.01 a month against Zapier yearly, $3,288.12 a year. At 100,000 runs the gap to the server is $535.01 a month, because Activepieces Cloud has to bill 100,000 credits ($550 on Team) while the server does not meter them. Below 10,000 runs a month the server and Plus differ by about five dollars, and Plus comes with nobody to patch it.
What self-hosting Activepieces buys, and what it does not
The code is open source. The README says Activepieces’ Community Edition is released under the MIT licence and its enterprise features under a commercial licence, the LICENSE file confines the MIT terms to everything outside the packages/ee directories, and GitHub showed 25,267 stars on 29 October 2026, with the last push on 2026-10-29. Its README describes it as “self-hosted and network-gapped” for control over your data, and its pricing table lists “Cloud or on-prem” on every plan.
The pricing FAQ is direct about the trade: “Community Edition is the automation core on its own”, and paying adds access control, an audit trail of who changed what, separation between teams and clients, safer shipping of changes, and Agents and Chat. If one or two people build the workflows, the free edition covers the job. If an agency has clients who must not see each other’s flows, you are buying the paid layer whichever way you host.
We price Hostinger KVM 2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM) as our assumption, not a published requirement: we read no minimum server size for Activepieces, so start there and watch memory. A bigger KVM 4 (4 vCPU, 16 GB) is $12.99 a month promotional and $28.99 at renewal. Hostinger’s plans are paid upfront, so the monthly rate is the plan total divided by 24 months. See Hostinger VPS plans.
If you already weigh a self-hosted workflow engine, n8n is the other one we price; n8n against Zapier for AI agents: what each costs and What self-hosting n8n really costs cover it, and Self-hosted AI agent platforms compared compares the agent platforms.
When Zapier is still the right buy
- Your volume is small. Zapier’s Free plan gives 100 tasks a month, and Activepieces Free gives 1,000 credits, so a light user pays nothing on either.
- You need one specific app. We did not compare connector catalogues. Check that every app you use has an Activepieces piece, or that the HTTP piece or a webhook reaches it, before you move.
- Nobody owns the server. Every self-hosted figure here excludes engineer time. If an hour a month of someone’s time costs more than the $5.01 gap to Plus, use Plus.
- Your steps are mostly AI. At 10 or 20 credits a step, an AI-heavy run costs more credits; bring your own keys, or compare on your own run mix.
How we checked
Every price on this page was read on the vendor’s own page in a rendered browser on 29 October 2026. Zapier’s price depends on a task slider, so we stepped the slider through every tier by keyboard, once with monthly billing and once with yearly, and saved the Professional card text at each step. Activepieces’ plan table and FAQ and Hostinger’s VPS page were read the same day, and the licence, stars and last-push date come from GitHub’s REST API and the repository’s README and LICENSE. All 40 facts are logged with the exact quote and evidence file. The scenario and every total are our arithmetic. We did not run either product, so this is a price and licence check, not a speed or reliability test.
Questions people ask about Activepieces and Zapier
Is Activepieces cheaper than Zapier?
At 10,000 five-step runs a month, yes: Activepieces Cloud Plus is $20 and Zapier Professional is $289 billed yearly or $433.50 billed monthly, if every Zapier step counts as a task. Activepieces bills one credit per run; AI steps cost more unless you bring your own keys. Read 29 October 2026.
Is Zapier a good AI tool?
Zapier sells AI steps, MCP and an SDK inside the same task pool as its automations, so AI use is billed in tasks. It rates a task by AI model tier, code runtime and connector. We priced it, we did not benchmark it. Read 29 October 2026.
What apps are similar to Zapier?
Among open source options we priced, Activepieces (MIT Community Edition, 25,267 GitHub stars) and n8n. Activepieces Cloud starts at $0 for 1,000 credits a month and $20 for 10,000.
Is n8n better than Zapier?
That depends on volume and who runs the server; our n8n against Zapier cost comparison has the numbers. On price alone, both n8n and Activepieces avoid Zapier’s per-step task billing when you self-host.
Is Activepieces free to self-host?
The Community Edition is released under the MIT licence, so the software is free, including for commercial use. The enterprise features are under a commercial licence. You pay for the server.
How much does it cost to host Activepieces on a VPS?
On Hostinger KVM 2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM) it is $8.79 a month promotional and $14.99 at renewal, paid upfront for 24 months. Activepieces publishes no minimum server size we could read, so that choice is our assumption.
What happens when I go over my Activepieces credits?
On Plus and Team the flows keep running and the extra is $0.007 per credit. On Free, runs wait until credits refresh the next day. Zapier, by contrast, switches you to pay-as-you-go unless you turn that off.
Related reading
- n8n against Zapier for AI agents: what each costs
- What self-hosting n8n really costs
- Self-hosted AI agent platforms compared
- Open source alternatives to paid AI tools
- Self-hosting an LLM against paying per token: the break-even
Sources
- Zapier pricing, task slider stepped through every tier, monthly and yearly, read 29 October 2026.
- Activepieces pricing and FAQ, read 29 October 2026.
- Hostinger VPS hosting, read 29 October 2026.
- activepieces/activepieces README, LICENSE and GitHub REST API, read 29 October 2026.
- Google AI Overview and AI Mode for “activepieces vs zapier”, People Also Ask, our capture, 29 October 2026.
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