The short answer: Power Automate fits if your company works entirely with Microsoft 365. Make suits a quick start without your own server. n8n is the right choice if data should stay on your own server or if you run many long processes. The differences lie mainly in billing, data protection and operation.
The three tools at a glance
- n8n comes from Berlin. You can run it yourself (Community Edition) or use it as a cloud service. The source code is available; the licence ("Sustainable Use License") allows use within your own company but is not a classic open-source licence.
- Make only runs as a cloud service. Processes are built in a visual editor that works well for beginners.
- Power Automate belongs to Microsoft. Standard features are included in many Microsoft 365 plans; premium connectors cost extra per user. It runs in the Microsoft cloud.
How do the tools bill?
This is the biggest difference, and it is often overlooked:
- Make counts every single step of a process (operations or credits). A process with ten steps uses ten times as much per run as one with a single step.
- n8n Cloud counts the execution of an entire workflow, however many steps it has.
- Self-hosted n8n has no execution limit. You pay for the server and for operation: updates, backups and monitoring.
- Power Automate bills per user or per process, depending on the plan.
With a few short processes the difference hardly matters. With long processes, many steps or high volume it can become large. Prices change regularly, so check the providers' current pricing pages.
Where does your data stay?
If you run n8n yourself, processes and data stay on your server, for example in a data center in Germany. With Make and Power Automate, the provider processes your data in its cloud. You then need a data processing agreement and should check where the data is processed. Our checklist on AI and data protection explains what matters.
Can the tools do AI as well?
All three include AI building blocks, for example to read, classify or write text. n8n also supports AI agents and the MCP standard, which lets AI assistants access tools. When an agent makes sense and when a simple workflow is enough is explained in AI agents for mid-sized companies.
Which tool suits whom?
- Power Automate if your team works in Outlook, Teams and SharePoint and processes mostly stay within Microsoft.
- Make if you want to start quickly, have few processes and do not want to run a server.
- n8n if data protection and control matter, you connect many different programs or your processes grow over time.
What do we use?
We work with n8n, self-hosted on servers in Germany, because it scales with volume and the data stays in-house. That does not make it the best choice for everyone. If you work entirely with Microsoft anyway, Power Automate is often the shorter route.
Sources
- n8n: pricing and Sustainable Use License
- Make: pricing
- Microsoft: Power Automate pricing
- it-daily: Telekom partners with n8n (German)
