n8n vs Make vs Zapier for AI agents
Toby Banks — Founder, Skillzy
The dispatch
New listings, creator interviews, the occasional discount. Every other Friday.
You bought a skill. Now it needs to touch your real tools — your inbox, your invoicing, your job board. That connective layer is where n8n, Make, and Zapier live. They are not the agent. They are the wiring.
Zapier
Easiest to start, hardest to scale. If your skill does one trigger and one action, Zapier gets you live tonight. Costs climb fast once a skill fires hundreds of times a day, and complex branching gets ugly.
Make
The middle. Visual, cheaper per operation than Zapier, handles branching and loops without a fight. The learning curve is a weekend, not an hour. Most non-technical operators settle here.
n8n
The one we tag most skills for. Self-hostable, no per-operation tax, and it does not flinch at the multi-step flows real agent work needs. It asks more of you up front and pays it back every month after.
The honest call
Start on whatever you already pay for. Move to n8n the first time a bill or a branching limit makes you wince. The skill itself ports between all three — that is the point of buying one built properly.
Featured listingWire Claude into n8n in a weekend.
60-page guide. From zero to a working agent that does real work.
Wire Claude into n8n · $14 →Featured listingYour first SKILL.md, the right way.
The short version of "how to publish a skill people will actually buy."
Your first SKILL.md, the right way · $9 →Liked this? Get the next one.
Field Notes, every other Friday. No spam.
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