Quick verdict: Make.com vs Pabbly Connect
Pabbly Connect is cheaper per unit and does not bill triggers or internal steps, so a branching workflow costs less to run. Make.com bills a credit for every module action. But its canvas is richer: routers, iterators and aggregators, AI agents, Maia and Make MCP Server. Pick on billing model first, features second.
Both vendors' pricing pages were checked in September 2026. Every number below comes from those pages or from the vendors' own documentation. No aggregator numbers, no review-site roundups, no prices lifted from a competitor's comparison table. Where one vendor makes a claim about the other, the claim is attributed or left out. Where a figure is not published, this article says so rather than guessing at it.
Make.com vs Pabbly Connect at a glance
Short version first. The figures are the ones each vendor publishes for itself.
| Feature | Make.com | Pabbly Connect |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0, 1,000 credits/mo | $0, 100 tasks/mo |
| Entry paid plan (10k/mo) | $9/mo billed annually | $16/mo billed annually |
| Billing unit | Credit per module | Task per app action |
| Not billed | Not listed | Triggers, internal steps |
| Lifetime deal | Not listed | From $349 one time |
| Apps, own count | 3,000+ apps | 2,000+ integrations |
| AI features | AI agents, Maia, MCP | AI assistant, MCP |
| Code steps | Python, JS (paid plans) | JavaScript, Python |
| Team members | Teams $29/mo annually | Not on monthly plans |
Pricing: credits versus tasks
Make.com's Free plan is $0 a month: up to 1,000 credits a month, access to 3,000+ apps and a 15-minute minimum interval between scheduled runs. Those free credits expire at the end of the term. With yearly billing selected, the pricing page lists Core at $9 a month, Pro at $16 a month and Teams at $29 a month. Each carries 10,000 credits a month, and Core is where scheduling drops to the minute. Those are annual-billing figures. If you plan to pay month to month, check the vendor's pricing page for that rate.
"Each module action in your scenario, like adding a Google Sheet row or fetching Gmail account data, counts as one credit."
Source: make.com
Run out before the next billing cycle and you can buy extra credits in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000 at a fixed price defined in your subscription. The Enterprise tier adds overage protection and advanced security features, and no Enterprise price sits next to the self-serve plans.
Pabbly Connect also starts at $0 a month: 100 tasks a month, no credit card required, capped at 2 workflows of up to 2 steps. The Standard plan carries 10,000 tasks a month at $16 a month billed annually, against a regular price of $19 a month. The same page shows deeper two-year and three-year discounts. The Unlimited plan gives unlimited tasks every month with all features at a regular price of $79 a month, and the page shows multi-year discounts down to $59 a month.
Pabbly Connect also sells one-time lifetime plans. Standard Lifetime is $349 for 3,000 tasks a month with feature restrictions. Ultimate Lifetime is $799 for 10,000 tasks a month with all features. Ultimate Plus Lifetime costs $1,298 for 20,000 tasks a month. Team members are not available on monthly plans, which matters the moment a second person builds.
Put the two entry plans side by side and the gap looks decisive: 10,000 credits for $9 a month billed annually against 10,000 tasks for $16 a month billed annually. The trap: the units are not the same thing. A Make.com credit is consumed by each module action in a scenario. A Pabbly Connect task is counted only when an action is performed on an external app. One run of one workflow can spend several credits and a single task, which is why the cheaper sticker does not settle the bill.
What counts against the bill
On Make.com the meter is the module. Each module action in a scenario consumes a credit, whether that action adds a Google Sheets row or fetches data from Gmail. So a scenario built from ten modules is not a one-credit run. Make.com's own pricing and comparison pages add that some steps cost more than a single credit. Code execution is billed at 2 credits per second, and steps that run AI or process multiple bundles can consume more than one. The billing unit was renamed from operations to credits, and Make.com's pricing page and its comparison page do not agree on when. Take the credit model as current and ignore the dating.
Pabbly Connect counts a task only when an action is performed on an external app. Triggers and checks for new data are not counted, and neither is the internal plumbing. Filter, Router, Text Formatter, Number Formatter, Schedule, Iterator, Date and Time formatter, Email Parser, JSON Extractor and Array Functions all run without touching the task balance.
Take a workflow that watches a form and filters out the entries you do not want. It reformats a date, splits into two branches, writes a row to a spreadsheet and sends one email. Four of those six steps are plumbing. On Pabbly Connect the trigger, the filter, the formatter and the router are free, so the run bills two tasks: the spreadsheet row and the email. On Make.com the same shape is a chain of modules. Each module action that executes consumes a credit, so the same run lands above two rather than at two. The pages checked here do not publish a list of exempt steps. So if your scenarios are heavy on routing and formatting, check the vendor's pricing page before you model a monthly bill.
What each builder can do
Make.com builds scenarios on a visual canvas, and most scenarios can hold an unlimited number of modules. Long chains do not hit a step ceiling. Zapier's comparison page credits Make.com's power-user reputation to unlimited routers, iterators and aggregators, which is a competitor's framing rather than a benchmark. The builder does match the description: branch with a router, walk a list with an iterator, collapse the results back with an aggregator. On paid plans the code app takes custom Python and JavaScript, and Enterprise plans add custom functions applied inline. Scenario Run Replay re-runs a workflow against historical data. If-else and Merge modules were in open beta as of Make.com's April 2026 comparison post and may well have shipped since.
Pabbly Connect builds multi-step workflows with the same branching vocabulary in a plainer package: routers, filters, iterators and formatters. Every one of them is an internal step that spends no tasks. It lists JavaScript and Python code modules, so custom logic is not gated away from the cheaper tool. Human-in-the-loop approvals sit on the same feature list, and that is the piece most buyers forget to check when they compare builders on branching alone. What is not published is a module ceiling per workflow beyond the free plan's 2 steps. So check the vendor's pricing page if you are planning very long chains.
App catalog and integrations
Make.com puts its catalog at 3,000+ apps by its own count, and the Free plan already includes access to all of them. The AI slice of that catalog is quoted two ways on Make.com's own pages: 350+ AI apps on the pricing page and 560 on the comparison page. Read both as vendor figures rather than an audited count. Pabbly Connect claims 2,000+ integrations by its own count, alongside 14,099+ businesses as customers, again its own number.
A thousand-app gap sounds decisive. Usually it is not. Catalog size only matters when the apps you actually run sit inside the gap. Write down the six or eight tools your workflows touch, search both directories for each one, then open the app page and read the actions available, not the logo. Connector depth is the other half of the question. Two platforms can both list the same CRM and still differ on whether they can search records or only create them. A platform with fewer apps that covers your stack beats a bigger catalog that misses the one system you cannot work around.
AI, agents and MCP
Make.com AI agents are in beta and can be built with Make.com's own AI provider on all plans or with your own LLM key. Agents are built, run and debugged inside the Scenario Builder. Uploading files gives them context, which skips assembling a retrieval workflow by hand. By Make.com's own count, agents orchestrate processes across 3,000+ apps. Maia, described by Make.com as a co-worker for AI and automation that turns plain language into automation and agents, is included in all plans. Make MCP Server points the other way, turning scenarios into callable tools for ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and other MCP-compatible agents across 3,000+ apps and 30,000+ actions.
Pabbly Connect lists an AI assistant and MCP servers among its features. What it does not publish is which models sit behind the assistant, or whether AI steps carry charges of their own. So check the vendor's pricing page before you budget an AI-heavy build. On paper the two AI rows look similar. The difference: Make.com documents where agents are built and how they are exposed over MCP, while Pabbly Connect's page only names the features.
Speed, limits and teams
Scheduling separates the free tiers. On Make.com's Free plan scheduled scenarios run no more often than every 15 minutes. Core drops that to a minute, which the help center gives as the lowest regular setting. Webhooks sidestep the schedule: all plans include multi-step workflows and instant webhook execution.
Pabbly Connect's angle is unlimited operations: checks for new data are not counted as tasks, so a workflow can watch without spending the balance. The free plan is deliberately small, 2 workflows of up to 2 steps against 100 tasks a month. A minimum polling interval for triggers is not published beside those limits. So check the vendor's pricing page if trigger latency matters.
Seats are the other split. Pabbly Connect does not offer team members on monthly plans, so a multi-builder shop must commit for longer. On security, Pabbly states it is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001:2022 certified, which is the vendor's own statement rather than a published audit report. Make.com lists GDPR, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliance, AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 and 1.3 in transit. Make.com's pricing page also shows AWS hosting in the EU and North America. But that is one row on a pricing table and does not establish that every plan tier gets the same hosting.
Who should pick Make.com, and who should pick Pabbly Connect
Pick by the shape of your workflows, not by the sticker on the entry plan.
- Branching-heavy scenarios: Make.com. Routers, iterators and aggregators sit on a canvas that holds an unlimited number of modules in most scenarios, and paid plans add Python and JavaScript. It is a builder you grow into rather than out of.
- High volume on a budget: Pabbly Connect. When most of your steps are filters, formatters and routers, they cost nothing. The Unlimited plan removes the ceiling at a regular $79 a month, with multi-year discounts down to $59 a month.
- Lifetime-deal buyers: Pabbly Connect is the only one of the two with a one-time option, from $349 for 3,000 tasks a month with feature restrictions up to $1,298 for 20,000 tasks a month. Read the restriction list on the cheapest tier before you buy.
- Agencies: count seats first. Pabbly Connect does not offer team members on monthly plans, so a multi-builder shop needs the longer commitment. Make.com's Teams plan is listed at $29 a month billed annually for 10,000 credits.
- Teams with access and compliance requirements: Make.com Enterprise adds SSO via OAuth2 or SAML2, role-based access controls, audit logs, a guaranteed 99.5% uptime SLA and 24/7 priority support with 2-hour response SLAs.
A third billing model is worth knowing before you commit to either meter. Latenode charges for workflow runtime in CPU seconds rather than per operation or per step, so adding steps to a workflow does not multiply the bill. The first 10,000 CPU seconds each month are free on both of its plans. Because the meter is run duration, its cost is not directly comparable to credits or to tasks. It favors workflows whose runs finish quickly.
