Quick verdict: Zapier vs Workato
Zapier publishes its prices, starts free, and scales through self-serve task tiers with Copilot and Agents built in. Workato sells the other way. It is a quote-based enterprise iPaaS: plans are defined by contract, governance controls sit in the top tier, and it lists 1,200+ prebuilt connectors by its own figures. Choose on buying model first, feature checklist second.
Here is how that was put together. Both vendors' pricing pages were checked on September 10, 2026, and every figure below comes from the vendor that owns it. No aggregator or review-site numbers were used. Those pages tend to carry retired tiers long after the vendor drops them. Where Workato publishes nothing, this comparison says so rather than borrowing a figure from a third party. You will not find an invented Workato price, seat count, or service level here. Zapier prices always carry their billing term, because the annual and monthly rates differ.
Zapier vs Workato at a glance
Read the Zapier column as public pricing you can act on today. The Workato column shows what the vendor states in public, with "Quote" or "Not published" wherever the number exists only inside a contract. Cells are deliberately short. The sections below carry the caveats, the billing terms and the parts neither vendor puts on a public page.
| Feature | Zapier | Workato |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Published, self-serve | Quote-based contract |
| Free plan or trial | Free plan, 14-day trial | Not published |
| Entry price | $19.99/mo billed yearly | Quote |
| Billing unit | Tasks, pooled monthly | Not published |
| Unlimited users | Enterprise plan only | Yes, by own figures |
| Connectors, own count | 9,000+ apps | 1,200+ prebuilt |
| AI features | Copilot, Agents | Enterprise Workbots |
| MCP | Yes, 2 tasks per call | Named MCP plan tiers |
| Governance | Enterprise adds more | Masking, audit, keys |
| Best for | Self-serve SMB teams | Contracted enterprise |
Two rows carry most of the decision: the billing unit and who has to sign a contract before anything runs. Almost everything else in this comparison follows from those two lines.
Pricing: published tiers versus a quote
Zapier's public ladder is short. The Free plan costs $0 per month and includes 100 tasks a month, two-step Zap workflows, Tables and Forms. Every plan, Free included, allows unlimited Zap workflows. Professional starts at $19.99 per month billed annually for 750 tasks, or $29.99 per month billed monthly for the same 750 tasks. It adds multi-step workflows, unlimited premium apps and webhooks. Zapier advertises a 33% discount for paying yearly instead of monthly, which is where that gap comes from. The Starter plan was retired on April 2, 2024, so Professional is now the entry-level paid plan.
"Get a quote ... * Workato's pricing and plan structures may vary based on your contract terms and when you joined. For the most accurate information, please consult your agreement or reach out to our team."
Source: workato.com
Above Professional the slider does the work: task tiers on paid plans run up to 2 million tasks a month. Team adds 25 users with shared Zap workflows, folders and SAML SSO, and Enterprise is the only plan with unlimited users. Zapier does not publish an Enterprise price and lists it as contact-for-pricing. For the current Team rate, check the vendor's pricing page, since this comparison quotes no price it could not verify. New accounts are enrolled automatically in a free 14-day trial of Professional, no credit card required.
One detail matters more than the tier names. Task usage is pooled across the entire account, so Zap workflows, AI steps, code, MCP and the SDK all draw from the same monthly allocation. With pay-per-task enabled, total usage is capped at three times the plan's task limit, which turns 750 tasks on Professional into a 2,250-task ceiling. Zapier's own blog puts overage at 1.25x the normal task cost on annual plans and 2.5x on monthly plans. Non-profits get 15% off any paid plan, excluding pay-per-task charges.
Workato sits on the other side of that line. It publishes no prices. The pricing page offers a quote and notes that pricing and plan structures may vary based on contract terms and when the customer joined. The named tiers are Business MCP and Enterprise MCP. For budgeting, quote-based means three things: you cannot model spend before a sales conversation, two companies on the same tier may hold different terms, and renewal is a negotiation rather than a slider. Ask in writing which unit is metered, what the annual commitment covers, and what an overage costs. Budget a discovery call, not a checkout.
Scale, users and governance
User counts are where Zapier's ladder gets steep. The Team plan includes 25 users with shared Zap workflows, folders and SAML SSO, and only Enterprise lifts the seat cap to unlimited. Enterprise arrived with the 2024 pricing overhaul, built to help businesses scale automation to more teammates and departments with additional governance. It is the plan Zapier points larger buyers toward rather than a bigger task tier on Team. What "additional governance" contains in your contract is a sales conversation, not a published list. Every plan does include the full platform, covering Zap workflows, Forms and Tables. Depth still differs by tier: Free stops at two-step Zaps.
Workato inverts that. By its own figures it includes 1,200+ prebuilt connectors for every user plus unlimited workspaces and users. So headcount is not the lever that moves the invoice; because pricing is quote-based, what any given contract includes may differ. Governance is where its pricing page gets specific. The Enterprise MCP tier adds unlimited Enterprise Workbots along with data masking, activity audit, hourly key rotation and runtime user connections. Those are exactly the controls a security review asks about: who saw the data, who acted as whom, and how often credentials rotate.
Be honest about the blank spaces. The public material checked here covers no service level agreements, uptime commitments, support response times or compliance certifications in a form worth quoting for either vendor. So treat every availability promise you hear in a pitch as unverified until it appears in the contract, and read each vendor's own pricing page and security documentation directly. Zapier does publish one support detail: Live Chat starts at the Professional plan's 2,000-task tier and above. That is a plan-tier fact, not a response-time commitment, so ask what happens when a workflow breaks at 2 a.m.
Connectors and integrations
Zapier offers more than 9,000 app integrations by its own count, and it manages all API updates and connector maintenance in-house. That is the part most catalog comparisons skip. In-house maintenance means a broken connector is the vendor's problem to fix. Catalog totals like these are vendor self-reported, and neither page breaks them down by category.
Workato states 1,200+ prebuilt connectors for every user, by its own figures. The gap looks decisive until you ask what is being counted. A catalog number answers one question: is my app on the list at all. It says nothing about how deep any single connector goes, which objects it exposes, whether it supports bulk operations, or how it handles custom fields. Neither vendor's public pages settle that here. So do the boring thing. List the eight or ten systems that actually carry your revenue, then check both connector directories for those names and read the trigger and action lists side by side. Breadth wins tie-breakers across a long tail of small tools. Depth wins when one system, usually the CRM or the ERP, carries most of the load and everything else is a spoke.
AI agents and MCP
Copilot, Zapier's building assistant, is available on every plan, with a daily cap on Free: Free-plan users get a daily message limit that resets at 12:00 AM UTC. Agents are metered separately. The free tier lets agent behaviors run up to 400 times a month. Agents Pro costs $400 billed annually, equivalent to $33.33 a month, for up to 1,500 activities a month.
Inside a Zap, AI steps changed on June 15, 2026, when Zapier began pricing AI by Zapier by model tier instead of a flat per-step rate. That model-tier pricing is available on Professional, Team and Enterprise, though tool calls are not available on Enterprise accounts. There is a safety valve: if a single AI step reaches 75 tasks in one run, the Zap pauses for manual approval. MCP has its own accounting. One Zapier MCP tool call consumes two tasks, so agent-heavy usage drains the pool faster than a linear read of the tier suggests. Code steps let you drop Python or JavaScript into a workflow when no connector fits.
Workato's public AI story is thinner. Its pricing page names Business MCP and Enterprise MCP tiers and puts unlimited Enterprise Workbots in the enterprise tier. That is where the published detail stops: no model list, no agent quota, no per-call metering. If AI agents are the reason you are shopping, ask for those numbers in the quote and check the vendor's pricing page for changes.
Speed and operations
Trigger speed is a plan feature on Zapier. Polling runs every 15 minutes on Free, every 2 minutes on Professional, and every 1 minute on Team and Enterprise. Paid plans let you customize that interval per Zap. Polling checks are free: they do not consume tasks. A task is counted when the platform successfully completes an action on your behalf, such as sending an email or creating a spreadsheet row. Triggers, filters and failed steps cost nothing. For the full list of built-in steps that do not count, check Zapier's own documentation.
"Zapier's polling triggers can check for new data as often as every minute, but those checks aren't tasks. A task only happens when an action step actually runs."
Source: zapier.com
Two structural limits matter too. A Zap workflow tops out at 100 steps, and branching allows up to three nested Path steps with as many as 10 branches in a path group. For Workato, the honest answer is that the public pages checked here carry no polling interval, concurrency or throughput figures. There is nothing to hold up against those numbers. Ask the vendor for the runtime limits that apply to your edition.
Who should pick Zapier, and who should pick Workato
If you need something running this week on a company card, that is Zapier. The free tier gives 100 tasks a month to prove the idea. Every new account gets the 14-day Professional trial without a credit card, and $19.99 per month billed annually buys 750 tasks with multi-step workflows. No sales call on that path.
Where procurement, security review and audit trails are the real blockers, Workato fits the shape of the problem. Data masking, activity audit, hourly key rotation and runtime user connections are listed on its Enterprise MCP tier. The quote process is where those controls get written into a contract. The cost of that fit is time and opacity. No price until you ask.
Say the constraint is a budget you must model a year ahead. Published tiers win. You can price 750 tasks or 2 million tasks on Zapier's own page, add the ceiling that pay-per-task allows, and hand finance a number today. A quote can land cheaper at volume. But you cannot model what you cannot see, and pricing that varies with contract terms and joining date is hard to benchmark. Agencies have the mirror-image problem, since seats and separation matter more than tasks: weigh Zapier's 25-user Team plan and unlimited-user Enterprise tier against Workato's stated unlimited workspaces and users.
Worth knowing as a self-serve third option: Latenode bills workflow runtime in CPU seconds, runs multiplied by average seconds, rather than per operation or per step. Adding steps does not multiply the bill. The first 10,000 CPU seconds are free every month on both plans, with the free plan at $0 a month and 5 active workflows. Because the meter is duration, cost tracks how long runs take, which is not directly comparable to Zapier tasks or contract-defined units.
