Is Zapier free? (Full answer and solution)

Zapier has a free version and other paid plans. If you're trying to learn about the pricing of this no-code business automation tool, the good and the bad about it, this article is for you.
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Is Zapier free?

Zapier has a free tier that is unbelievably limited. When I first learnt about it, I got puzzled whether any user can make use of it. I've compiled a list of the too narrow limitations of the free tier:

• Single step Zaps only: You can't add more steps to your automation on the free plan. This means whenever you think about improving your workflow from a single step to more useful steps, you are stuck while on the free plan.
• 100 tasks per month: You are limited to 100 executed steps per month, so this plan only works for your too low volume automations.
• No filters or formatters: If you have different scenarios of execution in your automation, you can't implement them on the free plan because you can't use Zapier's filters or formatters. However, even if they are included, it's useless since you can't add a second step on this plan.
• Only one user included: You are the only user of the account on this plan until a much more expensive one. You can't invite additional users to collaborate on the automation flows with you.
• Not very useful support: Zapier offers premium support at an additional cost, and their basic support is described mediocre by Zapier's users.

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Why isn't Zapier free?

It's important to understand that for a service provider to sustain their operations and offer a high quality product, they need to make money to cover the costs and to motivate the team to offer a great service.

If you set your expectations to use purely free software as a free alternative to Zapier, you'll then need to compromise the quality of the product and the number of integrations built and maintained by the service.

However, Zapier makes it very hard to use their product for simple use cases unless you move to the paid plans as we explained above.

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How much is Zapier?

Since you now understand the limitations of the free plan on Zapier, you're probably wondering how much Zapier is when it comes to its paid plans.

The answer to this question depends on your needs. For example, if your flows are all simple that you don't need to use the branching feature from Zapier (they call it Paths) and you don't need any of Zapier's premium apps, but you'd like to consume more than 100 tasks a month or build multi-step zaps, then you can take the first paid tier on Zapier. It starts at $30 per month for 750 monthly tasks.

At the time of writing this post, the following table represents Zapier's pricing for all its plans (these are in case you'd like to pay month to month):

However, if you'd like to make a yearly commitment, these prices turn into this:

Free Zapier alternatives

If you're looking for free alternatives to Zapier, then the best way to do it is to use an open source alternative to Zapier and set it up on your own machine. Otherwise, it's very difficult to find a service that's 100% free, but if you're not into open source, you can explore some of the best Zapier alternatives anyway.

If you're unfamiliar with it, open source means that you don't only see the interface of the application, but you can also get the code written to run it. Open source software usually has its code published to a Git hosting service like GitHub or GitLab under a repository, then there is a license that governs the repository to give you certain permissions like using the code, modifying it or redistributing it.

Make sure you understand the license of the open source tool you choose to use before using it.

Back to the free Zapier alternatives, I would definitely recommend using Activepieces, an open source no-code business automation tool that gives you even a better user experience than Zapier and can be hosted on your machine for free. You can find Activepieces GitHub repository here along with all the instructions to use it.