💰 TCO at a Glance
The sticker price is never the real price. A platform that looks cheap at $20/month can cost a 5-person team $8,400/month when you factor in engineering hours spent maintaining, debugging, and upgrading. This calculator breaks down the five layers of true cost.
- Monthly subscription
- Per-seat fees
- Execution credits
- Engineering maintenance time
- Infrastructure hosting
- Integration API costs
- Opportunity cost of downtime
📊 The Five TCO Layers
| Layer | What's Included | Who It's Highest For |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Platform Subscription | Per-seat, per-workflow, per-execution, or per-agent pricing; tier jumps; hidden add-ons; minimum seat commitments | Zapier (per-task pricing scales aggressively) |
| 2. Infrastructure | Self-hosted: compute, database hosting, backups, monitoring, CDN/SSL, CI/CD. Cloud-hosted: storage/execution/rate caps | n8n self-hosted (you own the infrastructure) |
| 3. Integration Costs | Per-integration fees, API call costs from integrations themselves, webhook overages | High-volume integrations across any platform |
| 4. People Costs | Setup, maintenance, training, debugging, custom integrations, upgrade labor | n8n self-hosted (highest engineering burden) |
| 5. Opportunity Cost | Downtime, performance degradation, rigidity preventing business agility | Open-source with no SLA |
📈 The 3-Year TCO Curve
The cost profile changes dramatically over time. Year 1 is setup-heavy. Year 3 is platform-dominated.
| Year | Cost Profile | Primary Driver | Typical Split |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Setup-heavy | People costs (setup, training, migration) | People: 70% | Platform: 20% | Infra: 10% |
| Year 2 | Stabilized | Platform + maintenance | People: 40% | Platform: 45% | Infra: 15% |
| Year 3 | Platform-dominated | Subscription + scaling costs | People: 20% | Platform: 60% | Infra: 20% |
Key insight: The cheapest Year-1 platform is often the most expensive in Year 3. Zapier's low entry price masks aggressive per-task scaling. n8n's "free" self-hosted option becomes expensive when you price engineering time.
🪤 The "Free Tier" Trap
Free tiers are training grounds that become traps. Workflows built on free tiers become critical, and upgrading costs more than starting paid due to:
- Workflow lock-in: Rebuilding 50 workflows on a paid tier is a migration project
- Data migration: Execution history, credentials, and logs don't always transfer cleanly
- Feature gaps: Free-tier features are often "lite" versions that need reconfiguration
- Hidden upgrade fees: Some platforms charge migration or setup fees for free-to-paid transitions
Rule of thumb: If you plan to use a platform for more than 90 days, start on the tier you'll need at month 6. The free tier is a false economy.
🏢 TCO Comparison by Organization Size
We modeled three organization sizes across four platforms. All figures are 3-year cumulative USD.
| Platform | 5-Person Team | 50-Person Team | 200-Person Team | Primary Cost Driver |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gobii | $18,000 | $142,000 | $498,000 | Per-agent pricing; low maintenance |
| Zapier | $24,000 | $298,000 | $1.2M | Per-task pricing at scale |
| n8n Cloud | $22,000 | $186,000 | $720,000 | Execution-based pricing + add-ons |
| n8n Self-Hosted | $31,000 | $224,000 | $890,000 | People cost (engineering maintenance) |
| Make | $21,000 | $178,000 | $680,000 | Per-operation pricing |
Assumptions: Engineering time valued at $150/hr. Includes subscription, infrastructure, integrations, and people costs. Opportunity cost excluded due to variability. Models based on public pricing and community benchmarks as of June 2026.
👷 Hidden People Cost Calculator
The biggest TCO variable is almost never on the pricing page. It's the hours your team spends maintaining the platform.
| Platform | Low Estimate (hrs/mo) | High Estimate (hrs/mo) | Annual Cost at $150/hr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gobii | 2 | 5 | $3,600 – $9,000 |
| Zapier | 3 | 8 | $5,400 – $14,400 |
| n8n Cloud | 5 | 15 | $9,000 – $27,000 |
| n8n Self-Hosted | 20 | 40 | $36,000 – $72,000 |
| Make | 4 | 10 | $7,200 – $18,000 |
Reality check: At 40 hours/month, your "free" n8n self-hosted instance costs $72,000/year in engineering time — more than most enterprise SaaS subscriptions. The platform with the lowest sticker price often has the highest people cost.
🎯 Our Verdict
For small teams (5-20 people): Gobii and Make offer the best balance of capability and cost. Zapier's per-task pricing is manageable at low volume but becomes punitive as you scale.
For mid-market (50-200 people): Gobii's per-agent pricing scales linearly without the per-task penalty. n8n Cloud is competitive if your team has technical depth. Avoid n8n self-hosted unless you have dedicated DevOps.
For enterprise (200+ people): The TCO gap widens significantly. Gobii's predictable per-agent model vs Zapier's per-task model can mean a $700K+ difference over 3 years at 200-person scale. Factor in people costs and the delta grows.
The bottom line: Price the full stack — not just the subscription. The platform that wins on sticker price often loses on total cost of ownership.