Best free workflow automation software: seven free tiers and what each allows a month

Best free workflow automation software: the free tiers side by side

Seven free options are priced at $0 for the plan or software, as read on October 30, 2026: the Free plans of Pabbly Connect, Zapier, Make, Albato, Integrately and IFTTT, and n8n's self-hosted Community Edition. Allowances are in each tool's own unit, so 1,000 credits on Make is not 1,000 tasks. A credit is the billing unit of Make and IFTTT, and a transaction is each Albato step that runs after the trigger.

The Try Pabbly Connect button opens Pabbly's plans page, where the Free card sits beside the paid plans.

Which free plan runs a real workflow

Step limits decide it. A 2-step workflow is one trigger and one action step, and Pabbly's help center says a router makes a workflow multi-step. Pabbly Connect's Free plan allows 2 workflows of up to 2 steps, Zapier's allows two-step Zaps, Albato's allows 5 active automations of 2 steps each, and Integrately's allows a single step. The Pabbly Connect free plan guide has the Free card in full.

Make's Free plan carries a 15-minute minimum interval between runs, and IFTTT's Free plan checks every hour. IFTTT does not publish the credits one Applet run uses, so its 1,000 credits cannot be turned into a number of runs.

Free plans with a trial on top

Zapier enrolls new accounts in a free 14-day trial of its Professional plan, with no credit card. Integrately advertises a 14 Day FREE Trial, and n8n Cloud offers a free trial of 1,000 executions with no card. Albato lists a 7-day and a 14-day trial on the same page.

Pabbly Connect's page and Make's pricing page list no trial. Pabbly Connect's Free plan needs no card and is not a trial: it stays at 100 tasks a month.

Self-hosting n8n for free

n8n's Community Edition is free and runs without a license key. It includes almost the complete n8n feature set and leaves out features such as projects, sharing, SSO and Git version control. Its license limits use to your own internal business purposes. You pay for your own server, and n8n's pricing page prints no hosting cost. n8n says self-hosting suits people with infrastructure and technical resources.

When a free plan stops being enough

Past the allowance or the step limit, Pabbly Connect Standard is $19 a month for 10,000 tasks and Make Core is $16 a month for 10,000 credits, both billed monthly. Cheapest automation tool lists every lowest paid plan, and the best workflow automation software for small business sorts all seven tools by what each counts.

Pick Make for 1,000 free credits a month, and Zapier for a 14-day Professional trial on top of its free plan. Pick Pabbly Connect when the free step limit blocks your workflow and your monthly volume is high.