Make.com vs Power Automate 2026: Which Wins for Your Team?

Quick answer: Make.com and Power Automate solve different problems despite looking similar on the surface. Make.com is the better fit for solo operators, agencies, and SaaS-heavy workflows where you need a visual builder, 3,000+ app integrations, and pricing that scales with credit usage. Power Automate is the better fit for firms already running Microsoft 365, especially where unattended desktop RPA, SharePoint, Dataverse, or Copilot Studio are part of the picture. For most independent creators and small teams, Make.com wins on cost, flexibility, and onboarding speed. For enterprises deep in the Microsoft stack, Power Automate wins on native integration depth.

This comparison is based on the official pricing pages of both vendors as of April 14, 2026, product documentation from Make.com and Microsoft, and aggregated user reviews on G2 and Capterra. No testing claims are made beyond what the vendors and independent reviewers have published.

Who each platform is actually built for

The surface-level pitch for Make.com and Power Automate sounds identical — “automate your work without code.” Dig past the marketing and the target audiences diverge sharply.

Make.com (formerly Integromat, rebranded in 2022) is a Prague-based no-code automation platform targeting independent operators, agencies, SaaS businesses, and growing teams. Its positioning emphasises visual workflow design, pay-for-what-you-use credit pricing, and a deep third-party app ecosystem. As of April 2026, Make advertises over 3,000 app integrations on its pricing page and markets aggressively to creators, solopreneurs, and mid-market SaaS teams.

Power Automate is Microsoft’s automation layer, bundled into the Power Platform alongside Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Pages. Its positioning emphasises enterprise governance, deep Microsoft 365 integration, and robotic process automation (RPA) — including unattended desktop automation that runs on virtual machines. It targets organisations already committed to the Microsoft ecosystem: Windows shops, Azure AD-governed environments, firms running SharePoint, Dynamics 365, or Dataverse.

Analytics dashboard showing workflow automation metrics on a laptop screen

The audience split matters because it shapes every downstream decision — pricing structure, integration depth, onboarding complexity, and the skills your team needs.

Make.com in one paragraph

If you live inside SaaS tools — Notion, Airtable, Stripe, HubSpot, Google Workspace, OpenAI — and you want a drag-and-drop canvas that lets you chain them together, Make.com is built for you. The learning curve is measured in hours, not weeks. Pricing scales smoothly as your automation volume grows. You can run your first scenario on the free tier without a credit card.

Open a free Make.com account and build your first scenario in under 30 minutes.

Power Automate in one paragraph

If you run Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, and Dynamics, and you need to automate approval workflows, document processing, or legacy desktop applications (Windows RPA), Power Automate is built for you. It is also the right choice for large organisations that need conditional access, data loss prevention policies, and governed environments tied to Azure AD. The learning curve is steeper — most teams use a Microsoft partner or internal Power Platform admin.

Pricing compared — verified April 14, 2026

This section cites every figure directly from the vendors’ official pricing pages, checked on April 14, 2026. Prices shift — always confirm on the vendor’s site before committing.

Make.com pricing

Make.com switched from an “operations” credit unit to a “credits” unit in its pricing model. Each module action counts as one credit. The slider on make.com/en/pricing scales from 10,000 credits per month up to 8 million plus per month, with pricing rising proportionally.

At 10,000 credits per month (the entry tier for paid plans), pricing is as follows:

Free: $0 per month, capped at 1,000 credits per month, two active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval between scheduled runs.
Core: $9 per month for 10,000 credits, unlimited active scenarios, 1-minute scheduled interval, Make API access.
Pro: $16 per month for 10,000 credits, priority scenario execution, custom variables, full-text execution log search. Labelled “Recommended” on the page.
Teams: $29 per month for 10,000 credits, team roles, shared scenario templates.
Enterprise: custom pricing, 24/7 support, Value Engineering team onboarding, overage protection.

Annual billing is advertised as “Save 15% or more” versus monthly. All figures above are monthly pricing as shown on make.com/en/pricing on April 14, 2026.

A practical translation: a solo operator running one well-designed scenario with two or three steps that fires every few minutes will comfortably stay within 10,000 credits per month. That is $9–$16 per month for real automation capacity. At higher volumes, the slider on Make’s pricing page scales continuously — a team at 500,000 credits per month pays considerably more, but the math stays transparent.

Power Automate pricing

Microsoft’s pricing is published at microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-automate/pricing. The structure is notably different from Make — licensing splits across per-user, per-bot, and per-tenant models.

Free trial: 30 days, cloud flows (DPA) and standard connectors only.
Power Automate Premium: $15.00 per user per month, paid yearly. Includes cloud flows (DPA), attended desktop flows (RPA), process mining with 50 MB data stored, Microsoft Dataverse entitlements of 250 MB database and 2 GB file.
Power Automate Process: $150.00 per bot per month, paid yearly. Cloud flows plus unattended desktop flows. Dataverse entitlements of 50 MB database and 200 MB file.
Power Automate Hosted Process: $215.00 per bot per month, paid yearly. Adds a Microsoft-hosted virtual machine — no on-premises RPA infrastructure required.
Process Mining add-on: $5,000.00 per tenant per month, paid yearly. Requires Premium plan.
Microsoft Copilot Studio: $200.00 per month for 25,000 Copilot Credits, paid yearly.

Microsoft’s pricing page carries an explicit disclaimer: “Prices shown are for marketing purposes only and may not be reflective of actual list price due to currency, country, regional, and organizational variant factors.” Enterprise customers typically negotiate, especially when Power Automate is bundled with Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Dynamics 365, or an Enterprise Agreement.

Business professional reviewing automation analytics and KPI dashboard

Which is cheaper in practice

For a single user automating SaaS-to-SaaS workflows (Gmail triggers posting to Slack, Stripe webhooks updating Airtable, form submissions firing email campaigns), Make.com is dramatically cheaper. A Core plan at $9 per month covers most indie creators. The equivalent on Power Automate — Premium at $15 per user per month, annual only — is 67% more expensive and assumes the user lives inside Microsoft 365.

For unattended desktop RPA — scripts that log into legacy Windows applications, process documents through a local accounting package, or automate a browser when no user is present — Power Automate Process at $150 per bot per month is the native option. Make.com does not offer unattended desktop RPA as a first-party feature. If desktop RPA is your core requirement, Power Automate wins by default.

For an agency managing automations across 10 client workflows, Make.com’s Teams plan at $29 per month for 10,000 credits plus shared templates scales predictably. Power Automate equivalent would be 10 Premium licences at $15 per user per month = $150 per month, without template sharing as a first-party feature.

If you already pay for Microsoft 365 Business Standard or E3 and you only need light automation, the included Power Automate cloud flows (standard connectors, no RPA) may cover you at no additional cost. Check the licensing guide on the Microsoft page — the “free with your Microsoft 365 licence” capability tier has changed several times and varies by country.

Integrations and ecosystem

Integration breadth is where Make.com’s independent positioning shows clearest.

Make.com’s app ecosystem

Make.com advertises “3,000+ standard apps” on its pricing page. The catalogue skews heavily toward SaaS, creator tools, and modern developer platforms: OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, Gemini, Airtable, Notion, Coda, ClickUp, Linear, Framer, Webflow, Shopify, Stripe, Calendly, Typeform, Slack, Discord, Zoom, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Beehiiv, Ghost — the list goes on.

Make’s Core plan upward includes access to Make API (300+ endpoints) and, on higher tiers, the ability to build and share custom apps within your organisation. Enterprise adds an on-prem agent for accessing local networks and core business apps like SAP.

The practical effect is that if your workflow touches a SaaS tool built in the last five years, Make.com almost certainly has a first-party connector. Build time for a typical three-to-five step scenario is measured in minutes.

Power Automate’s ecosystem

Power Automate’s connector library is also large — Microsoft publishes over 1,000 connectors — but the depth is concentrated in the Microsoft stack. If your workflow is “SharePoint list item added → Teams message posted → Dataverse row updated → Approver notified via Outlook” you are in Power Automate’s home turf. The experience is native, governance is enterprise-grade, and the connectors are maintained by Microsoft’s platform team.

Outside the Microsoft ecosystem, the connector experience gets thinner. Third-party SaaS integrations exist but are often community-maintained, rate-limited under premium connector licensing, or require a Power Automate Premium seat per user who touches the flow. The total cost of a “non-Microsoft” workflow on Power Automate climbs quickly.

RPA and desktop automation

This is the single biggest capability gap between the two platforms.

Power Automate’s RPA story

Power Automate includes full desktop automation — what Microsoft calls “desktop flows” — across both attended and unattended modes. Attended mode runs alongside a logged-in user and is included in Power Automate Premium at $15 per user per month. Unattended mode runs headlessly on a machine without a user present and requires Power Automate Process ($150 per bot per month) or Hosted Process ($215 per bot per month, Microsoft-hosted VM included).

For use cases like “every night at 2am, open our legacy accounting application, export a CSV, upload it to SharePoint, and email the finance team” — Power Automate is the obvious fit. Microsoft Power Platform also offers Process Mining (analyse existing business processes to find automation opportunities) as a $5,000 per tenant per month add-on for Premium customers.

Make.com’s RPA story

Make.com does not offer first-party desktop RPA. Scenarios run in the cloud, triggered by HTTP webhooks, scheduled intervals, or app events. If your automation requires clicking buttons inside a desktop application running on a Windows VM, Make is not the tool.

What Make does offer is a “Make Code App” that lets you run custom JavaScript or Python directly inside a scenario — 2 credits per 1 second of execution time. For API-accessible workflows and data transformation, that covers most modern needs. For screen-scraping a 2010-era Windows accounting package, it does not.

Governance, security, and compliance

Enterprise buyers typically care about this section more than anyone else.

Make.com’s security posture

Make is hosted on AWS in EU and North America regions. Two-factor authentication is available on all plans. Enterprise plans add two-factor authentication enforcement, company SSO (OAuth2 or SAML2 identity providers), domain claim, and information security compliance support. Make publishes SOC 2 Type II compliance and is GDPR-aligned.

Power Automate’s security posture

Power Automate inherits Microsoft 365 and Azure AD governance. Data loss prevention (DLP) policies, conditional access, role-based access control, audit logs, and environment isolation are first-class features. For organisations already governed under a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, Power Automate requires zero incremental security work to approve — the controls already exist at the tenant level.

For regulated industries — healthcare, financial services, government — Power Automate’s governance depth is a significant advantage. Microsoft publishes FedRAMP High, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and a long list of region-specific certifications. Make.com publishes a narrower (but still respectable) compliance set focused on SOC 2 and GDPR.

Team reviewing workflow automation strategy in a collaborative meeting

Onboarding, learning curve, and time-to-value

Anyone who has onboarded both platforms will recognise the pattern: Make.com is faster to a first working scenario; Power Automate is slower, but the skills transfer across an entire Microsoft ecosystem investment.

Make.com time-to-value

Sign up with an email address. Confirm. You land in the scenario editor. Drag your trigger app, drag your action app, connect, configure, run. Published user reviews on G2 and Capterra consistently describe first-scenario time as “under an hour” — often under 30 minutes for anyone who has used Zapier or similar tools before. The 15-minute minimum interval on the free tier is the only early friction point.

Power Automate time-to-value

Sign in with a work or school account (personal Microsoft accounts have significant feature restrictions). Choose an environment — or ask your Power Platform admin to create one. Select a template or build a flow from scratch. Premium connectors, Dataverse, and RPA require explicit licensing. The editor is capable but denser. Published reviews describe first useful flow as “one to three weeks” for users new to the Power Platform, often with assistance from a partner or internal admin.

For a solo operator or a team without a Microsoft Power Platform admin already in place, that onboarding gap is significant — it is the difference between shipping an automation this afternoon and shipping it next sprint.

Reliability and execution guarantees

Both platforms publish status pages and uptime commitments. Neither publishes a straightforward SLA document on its public pricing page, so verify directly with the vendor when negotiating.

Make’s pricing page lists “priority scenario execution” as a Pro-tier-and-above benefit — meaning Core plan users may experience queuing during peak load. Enterprise adds “credits overage protection” so a scenario does not silently pause when credits run out. Execution log storage scales from 7 days (Free) to 60 days (Enterprise).

Power Automate’s reliability story is harder to summarise publicly because SLAs vary by environment, region, and licensing tier. Enterprise customers typically negotiate specific uptime commitments. For attended RPA, reliability depends heavily on the desktop environment the flow runs in — unattended RPA on a Microsoft-hosted VM (Hosted Process tier) is the most operationally stable option.

When Make.com is the clear choice

Solo operators, freelancers, agencies, and small SaaS teams.
Workflows that chain modern SaaS apps (Stripe, Airtable, OpenAI, Notion, Slack, HubSpot).
Teams that want a visual, drag-and-drop editor without committing to an enterprise platform.
Anyone who needs to ship their first automation today, not next month.
Budget-conscious users — $9 to $29 per month covers most single-operator and small-team needs.
Content creators, marketing teams, and revenue operators running AI-heavy pipelines.

When Power Automate is the clear choice

Organisations already running Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, or Dynamics 365.
Workflows that require unattended desktop RPA on Windows machines.
Regulated industries needing enterprise governance (DLP, conditional access, audit logs, Azure AD roles).
Firms that have a Power Platform admin or Microsoft partner engaged.
Use cases involving Dataverse, Dynamics 365, or Microsoft Copilot Studio.
Teams that already budget for Microsoft Enterprise Agreements — the marginal cost is often zero.

What about Zapier, n8n, and other alternatives

Make and Power Automate are not the only options. Zapier is the legacy incumbent and is strongest on simple two-step “trigger → action” flows — its per-task pricing gets expensive at volume. n8n is an open-source self-hostable alternative popular with developer-led teams. Workato targets enterprise automation with a heavy services motion. Airtable Automations, Notion Automations, and Retool Workflows cover narrower but deeper integrations inside their respective platforms.

The choice between Make and Power Automate specifically comes down to two questions: are you inside the Microsoft ecosystem, and do you need unattended desktop RPA? Answer yes to either and Power Automate is the default. Answer no to both and Make.com is the default.

Our recommendation

For solo operators, creators, agencies, and most small-to-mid SaaS teams — Make.com on the Core ($9) or Pro ($16) plan. You get a visual editor, 3,000+ integrations, credit-based pricing that scales cleanly with usage, and a real free tier for experimentation. Start there.

Try Make.com free — no credit card required

For firms already running Microsoft 365, organisations needing unattended desktop RPA, or teams with a Power Platform admin in place — Power Automate Premium ($15 per user per month annual) with Process ($150 per bot per month) added when unattended RPA is required. Budget for onboarding time and expect a steeper initial learning curve in exchange for deeper Microsoft-stack integration.

If you are unsure which platform fits, run the free tier of both for two weeks. Build the same small workflow on each. You will know within a day which one your team reaches for first. A useful benchmark test: pick a workflow you run manually at least three times a week, then automate it on each platform. Whichever one you finish first, with working error handling and a clear execution log, is the platform your team will actually adopt.

One final note on total cost of ownership. The published monthly figures on each vendor’s pricing page rarely capture the full picture. On Make.com the real cost scales with credit consumption — a poorly designed scenario that fires every minute can burn through a Core plan’s 10,000 credits in days. Build scenarios with sensible triggers and batching from day one. On Power Automate the real cost scales with licences and bot tiers — every user who touches a flow needs a seat, every unattended process needs its own bot licence, and premium connectors bill separately. Budget for a 20 to 40 percent overrun versus the list price on either platform in your first year, until your team learns where the actual cost levers sit.

Frequently asked questions

Is Make.com really cheaper than Power Automate?

For solo operators and small teams not already inside Microsoft 365, yes — materially cheaper. Make.com Core at $9 per month covers most single-user SaaS workflows. Power Automate Premium at $15 per user per month annual is the entry tier on the Microsoft side, and it assumes Microsoft 365 context. For larger teams with Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, the effective cost of Power Automate can be lower due to bundling. Always check your existing Microsoft licensing before assuming a cost.

Can Make.com replace Power Automate for desktop RPA?

No. Make.com does not offer first-party unattended desktop RPA. If you need to automate Windows desktop applications headlessly, Power Automate Process or Hosted Process is the native option. Make can run custom JavaScript and Python inside scenarios, which covers most API-based automation but not screen-level desktop RPA.

Which platform has more integrations?

Make.com advertises over 3,000 standard apps. Power Automate publishes over 1,000 connectors. In practice Make is broader for modern SaaS and creator tools; Power Automate is deeper inside the Microsoft ecosystem (SharePoint, Dynamics, Dataverse, Teams, Exchange). Count raw numbers less; check whether your specific apps are supported at first-party quality on each platform.

Is there a free tier on both?

Make.com offers a genuine free tier — 1,000 credits per month, no time limit, no credit card required. Power Automate offers a 30-day free trial of cloud flows with standard connectors, after which a paid plan or an included-with-Microsoft-365 entitlement is required. Make’s free tier is friendlier for hands-on evaluation.

Which is easier to learn?

Make.com, consistently. Published user reviews on G2 and Capterra describe first-scenario time as under an hour. Power Automate has a denser editor, more licensing decisions, and typically requires either a Microsoft partner or an internal Power Platform admin for an enterprise deployment. That said, if your team already uses Microsoft 365 daily, the conceptual model of Power Automate is familiar faster.

Do either vendors offer enterprise SLAs?

Yes, both — but neither publishes SLA specifics on their public pricing pages. Make’s Enterprise plan includes 24/7 top-priority assistance, dedicated Value Engineering team access, and security compliance support. Power Automate Enterprise SLAs are negotiated through Microsoft Enterprise Agreement motions and vary by region and tier. Request specifics in writing during procurement.

Can I migrate from one platform to the other?

No first-party migration tooling exists between Make.com and Power Automate. Scenario logic has to be rebuilt manually. If migration is a realistic future need, design your automations with clear written specifications and external documentation — that way the rebuild on the other platform is mechanical, not archaeological.

Common mistakes people make choosing between Make.com and Power Automate

Three errors show up repeatedly in published reviews and community threads on r/automation, r/msp, and the Make.com community forum.

Mistake one: picking Power Automate by default because you use Microsoft 365. Having Microsoft 365 does not automatically make Power Automate the right call. If your workflow is SaaS-heavy (Stripe, Airtable, HubSpot, OpenAI), Make.com will be faster to build and cheaper to run even when you already have a Microsoft 365 licence. The Microsoft tax is not always worth paying.

Mistake two: picking Make.com because it is cheaper, then hitting a desktop RPA requirement six months in. If there is any realistic chance your automations will need to drive a legacy Windows application, include Power Automate in your evaluation upfront. Migrating later is a full rebuild.

Mistake three: not using the free tier to validate. Both platforms offer meaningful free access — Make’s 1,000-credits-per-month tier with no time limit, and Power Automate’s 30-day trial of cloud flows. Build your actual workflow on each before committing. A 90-minute evaluation saves three months of rework.

Final verdict

Make.com wins for independent operators, agencies, and SaaS-heavy teams — better pricing, broader integrations, faster onboarding, and a real free tier. Power Automate wins for Microsoft-centric enterprises, unattended desktop RPA, and regulated industries needing enterprise governance. Neither is universally “better.” The right answer is the one that matches where your team already lives and what your automations actually need to do.

For most of the readers of Automation Trail — creators, solopreneurs, agency operators, and growing teams — Make.com is the default recommendation. Start on the free tier, build two or three useful scenarios, and upgrade to Core at $9 per month when you run out of credits. That path gets you to real automation value faster than any alternative on the market.

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