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Make vs Pabbly Connect: which automation tool costs a UK small business less in 2026

Affiliate note: Occono may earn a commission if you use the Make, Systeme.io or beehiiv links on this page, at no extra cost to you. The Pabbly Connect links are not affiliate links. Occono does not earn from Pabbly. Affiliate disclosure. Website terms.

Both tools connect apps and run a workflow when something happens. They do not sell the same unit. Make sells credits. Pabbly sells tasks, and its pages say a trigger is not a task. Make’s prices below are in US dollars. Pabbly’s are in US dollars and Indian rupees. A UK card issuer may add a conversion charge. This article does not turn either price into pounds, because neither page showed a pound price or an exchange rate. Checked 3 November 2026.

What public reviews say

These are third-party scores, read on 3 November 2026. They are other people’s reviews. Occono has not collected them, and they will move. Capterra is the source used for the scores. Trustpilot and G2 are in the table because both were requested, and neither returned a score this article can use.

On Capterra, Make is 4.8 from 409 reviews and Pabbly Connect is 4.5 from 86. Make’s sample is larger. Pabbly’s value-for-money score, 4.6 from 80, sits next to Make’s 4.7 from 359. Pabbly’s customer-service score, 4.2 from 76, is the lower of the two. Capterra says 91% of Make’s reviewers and 94% of Pabbly’s are small businesses. The reviews below were picked because they are recent, or because they say something a sole trader can check: price, the free plan, or how hard the builder is.

“The onboarding process was smooth but what really changed the overall experience was Claude Code connection - it works excellent.”

Katarzyna B., Operations Manager, Capterra, 28 October 2026. Overall rating 5.0. The same review says: “I would really appreciate some automatic suggestions in how to spend credits in best possible way, where it's possible to save them.” Link to the Make page the review was read on. Checked 3 November 2026.

“J’utilise la version gratuite de Make et ça simplifie mon quotidien de graphiste freelance.”

Maël T., freelance graphic designer, Capterra, 3 September 2026, written in French. In English: “I use the free version of Make and it simplifies my day-to-day as a freelance graphic designer.” That translation is Occono’s. The same review says a former Zapier user will find Make a little complicated. The text returned for this review did not show a separate overall-rating number next to the quote, so none is given.

“It's a mixed bag. It takes a lot of work to set up the processes, but if there were a simpler and better solution, I'd switch.”

A reviewer listed as CEO, Capterra, 5 August 2026, on the same Make page. Overall rating 3.0. The same review says: “There are an astonishing number of potential errors, many of which are very complex to fix; sometimes entire processes have to be scrapped.”

“Fast and Cheap and easy to use as they have helped me out lot in doing ai automation workflows and various other tasks.”

A reviewer listed as CMO, Capterra, 10 August 2026, on the Pabbly Connect page. Overall rating 5.0, likelihood to recommend 8 out of 10. The same review says: “Usability had been a issue as sometimes it gets difficult to understand the way it works and a little more easier dashboard will be better.” Link to the Pabbly page the review was read on.

“For someone new to using a system like this, it was a little bit confusing. But after using it for a while, it was very easy to understand.”

Verified Reviewer, President, Capterra, 21 May 2026, on the same Pabbly page. Overall rating 5.0. The same review says: “I had a little difficulty setting up some of the programs with pabbly, but I did get it to work.It just took a little bit of time.”

“Whoever designed the UX was clearly not a business owner with how many hoops you had to jump through to get a simple automation created. The support is subpar.”

Zachary M., Capterra, 10 January 2025, on the same Pabbly page. Overall rating 1.0. The same review says: “They try to do too much with their product trying to be everything to everyone.”

What you actually get

Checked 3 November 2026. Make’s credit rules are from the FAQ on Make’s pricing page. Make’s plan prices are from Make’s Make-vs-Zapier comparison page. Pabbly’s dollar and rupee table is from Pabbly’s pricing file. The rupee cards, the free-plan wording and the 30-day refund are from the public connect page. The free-task list is from Pabbly’s help page, which says it was updated on 3 November 2026.

Make credits, the Free plan’s 1,000 credits, the 1 MB data store, what counts as a credit, running out, annual billing being cheaper, and the Start-up Plan line: the FAQ and intro on make.com/en/pricing. The plan cards were not in that fetch. Make’s Free, Core, Pro and Team prices, the “not time-limited” line, 3,000+ apps, and paid-plan AI: Make vs Zapier, on make.com. Xero: Make’s Xero app page. Pabbly dollar and rupee prices, and the task rule that names Delay and Code: Pabbly’s pricing file. The rupee cards, the free card’s “up to 2 workflows with up to 2 steps”, the ₹1,301 yearly block, the 30-day refund, the 2,000+ line, and the FAQ on tasks, operations, the 12,000-to-9-million sentence, the 25% yearly wording, and Standard at 10,000 tasks: pabbly.com/connect. A request to the /connect/pricing/ address returned that same page. Free-task list: Pabbly’s help page, updated 3 November 2026. All checked 3 November 2026.

The offer

Make. Free is $0, 1,000 credits a month, and Make’s comparison page says that allowance is not time-limited. No separate paid trial is described on the pages read. Core is listed at $9 a month from 10,000 credits, Pro at $16 and Team at $29, on that comparison page. The pricing FAQ says paying annually is cheaper than paying monthly, and the plan cards did not load, so the billing period behind the $9 is not stated here. Capterra lists Core at $10.59 a month. There is a Start-up Plan line for businesses under 20 employees, at 50% off Business, with no Business price on the page. Paid plans, on the FAQ, can be paid by major credit cards, ACH direct debit or Google Pay. If you cancel, the paid plan runs to the end of the term and the organisation then moves to the Free plan, unless the owner already has another free organisation. The free plan is the way the pages describe trying it. We earn from Make.

Pabbly Connect. Free is 100 tasks a month, with no card, on the connect page. The free card also limits the account to 2 workflows of up to 2 steps. No trial length is named. A purchase has the 30-day refund quoted above. Standard is 10,000 tasks a month. The pricing file lists that plan at $16 a month on yearly billing, $15 on two-yearly, $14 on three-yearly, and $19 as the normal price. The public card’s struck-through ₹1,799 does not match the file’s ₹1,581, and the FAQ’s “from 12,000 to 9 million tasks” does not match the Standard line of 10,000 on the same FAQ. Unlimited is $69 a month on yearly billing in the file. A Standard Lifetime card shows 3,000 tasks a month for a one-time ₹32,799, against a struck-through ₹64,980. Confirm the currency and the term at checkout. We do not earn from Pabbly.

A worked example, Occono’s own arithmetic, from the rules above. A website enquiry is added to a sheet and an email is sent. That is a trigger and two actions. On Make, if the trigger’s read and each action use 1 credit, one enquiry is 3 credits. One hundred enquiries are 300 credits, inside the Free plan’s 1,000. On Pabbly, the trigger is free and each action is one task, so 100 enquiries are 200 tasks. That is over the free 100 and inside Standard’s 10,000. The free card’s “up to 2 steps” may also matter: the page does not define a step, so this article does not decide whether a trigger plus two actions fits the free card. A second job is a watcher. Pabbly’s FAQ says a check every five minutes is 288 operations a day, and that those operations are free. If Make counts each of those reads as 1 credit, 288 credits a day for 30 days is 8,640 credits. That is over Make’s free 1,000 and inside the 10,000 on the Core line, before any action runs. On Pabbly the same checks add no tasks. The actions, when a record is actually found, are the tasks. A quiet watcher can therefore stay on Pabbly’s free 100 tasks and miss Make’s free plan entirely.

Which one fits you?

Maël T.’s September 2026 review is a freelancer on Make’s free plan. The August 2026 CEO review, and Zachary M.’s January 2025 review, are the warnings about setup. Katarzyna B.’s October 2026 review is the one that asks for help spending credits carefully. The August 2026 CMO review is the Pabbly case in one line: fast and cheap, and the dashboard is hard. The May 2026 President review says the same thing more gently.

A UK sole trader whose week is a contact form, a row in a sheet and a reply email. Count the runs before you count the brands. A few dozen enquiries a month, at about 3 Make credits each, stay inside 1,000 credits. At two Pabbly action tasks each, that same few dozen also stays inside the free 100 if the month stays under 50 enquiries. The caps part company above that: 51 enquiries are 102 Pabbly tasks, over the free 100, and about 153 Make credits, still inside 1,000. Those totals are Occono’s arithmetic from the one-credit and one-task rules above. The free card’s two-step line is a second Pabbly cap the Make pages read for this article do not state. Start on Make’s free plan if you expect a busy month, and read the credit counter after one real week. The quote follow-up guide is the same shape of job, a sheet and two chase emails, without either of these subscriptions. If the form later needs a branch for “quote over £500”, look at Pabbly’s filter rule before you buy Make credits. The Make and Zapier comparison is the page for the other tool people leave when the task price climbs.

A bookkeeper who wants Xero watched through the day. Make’s Xero page loaded. It is marked Verified, it says Make maintains the app, and the same page also says community users develop and maintain it. It lists 12 triggers and 65 actions. This article’s fetch of Pabbly’s Xero integration page did not include a trigger list, so no Pabbly Xero count is given here. The cost difference that is on the pages is the empty check. A five-minute poll, using Pabbly’s own 288-a-day example and Make’s one-credit read, is about 8,640 Make credits across 30 days and zero Pabbly tasks. If the only billable work is “create the contact” when an invoice appears, and that happens fewer than 100 times a month, Pabbly’s free plan is the one that can stay at $0. Make’s free plan does not cover that many reads. If the actions themselves run past 100, Standard at $16 a month on yearly billing is the Pabbly file’s entry price, and it is higher than Make’s published $9 only while the whole job, checks included, still fits in 10,000 Make credits. Past that, Make’s next price was not on the cards, and Pabbly’s published unlimited price is $69 a month on yearly billing.

A coach or trainer who wants a booking page, a sales page and a course. Neither tool is that product. They connect products. If the real need is a page, email and a course in one place, an all-in-one such as Systeme.io may remove the automation bill. The Systeme.io guide for solopreneurs covers that choice. Add Make or Pabbly for the gap the all-in-one does not cover, and count the steps before you pay.

A shop or a creator whose “automation” is really the newsletter. Pabbly’s FAQ uses Mailchimp as the example action. If you are choosing the newsletter tool itself, beehiiv has a free plan, and the beehiiv and Kit comparison has the limits. Pay for Make or Pabbly when the letter has to collect a row from somewhere else. The wider set of tools, including both of these, is the Zapier alternatives guide.

An office that already pays for Microsoft 365, or a person who will run the software on their own server. Leave requests, approvals and a row in Excel can already sit inside a Microsoft 365 licence. Paying for Make or Pabbly on top is a second bill. The connector marks and the £11.50 Premium price are in the Make and Power Automate comparison, checked on 23 October 2026 and not re-read for this page. If each run has so many steps that a credit per step is the expensive part, and you will host the software, the n8n and Make comparison is the other page. Pabbly’s pricing file is the published dollar price for 10,000 action tasks, at $16 a month on yearly billing, with triggers and the internal steps it names left off the meter.

Where Make is the better buy

Make is the smaller bill when the job is a webhook or a form, the runs are a few hundred a month, and you would rather stay at $0. The Free plan is 1,000 credits, and Make’s comparison page says it is not time-limited. One hundred enquiries at 3 credits each are 300 credits. Pabbly’s free plan is 100 tasks, and the free card adds a limit of 2 workflows with up to 2 steps. If you do pay, Make’s comparison page lists Core at $9 a month from 10,000 credits. Pabbly’s pricing file lists Standard at $16 a month on yearly billing for 10,000 tasks, or $19 as the normal price. For a short job that fits in both allowances, $9 is the lower published figure. Capterra’s 4.8 from 409 reviews is the higher of the two Capterra scores, from the larger sample. The August 2026 three-star review is the reason to build one scenario before you plan ten. Capterra’s $10.59 for Core is a reminder to read the checkout, because it is not the $9 on Make’s comparison page.

Where Pabbly Connect is the better buy

Pabbly Connect is the smaller bill when the meter is the part that matters. Triggers are free. Operations, including the 288 checks a day in Pabbly’s own five-minute example, are free. The pricing file says Filter, Router, Formatter, Iterator, Delay and Code are free, with the help page’s shorter list noted above. A watcher that would cost about 8,640 Make credits in 30 days can stay inside Pabbly’s free 100 tasks if the real actions stay under 100. Once you are past that, Standard’s 10,000 tasks at $16 a month on yearly billing buy external actions, and the formatters do not spend the allowance. Unlimited is a published $69 a month on yearly billing. Make’s comparison page lists Enterprise as custom, so this article cannot price an unlimited Make plan against that $69. Capterra’s 4.5 from 86 reviews, and the value-for-money score of 4.6 from 80, are the public case. Zachary M.’s one-star review, and the CMO review’s line about the dashboard, are the cost in time. The rupee card and the FAQ do not agree with the pricing file on every number, so the checkout is the price, not this paragraph.

Write down one workflow you already do by hand. Mark which steps are a trigger, a check, a filter or an action in another app. That mark is the whole price difference.

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Update details

• 3 November 2026 — Published.