Choose on two things: how each one charges, and where your data ends up. Zapier charges per task and is the easiest to start with. Make charges per operation and is cheaper at volume. n8n can be self-hosted on your own server, which changes both the cost curve and the data question entirely.
The pricing models are the real difference
Per-task pricing is comfortable at ten runs a day and painful at ten thousand. A workflow that costs almost nothing while you are testing it can become a monthly bill larger than the salary of the person it replaced, and it does so gradually enough that nobody notices the month it crossed over.
Self-hosting removes that curve. You pay for a server, and a server does not care whether it processed a hundred runs or a hundred thousand. For a Pakistani business earning in rupees and paying a subscription in dollars, that difference compounds with the exchange rate as well as with volume.
Where the data goes
A hosted automation platform sees everything that passes through it. For marketing enquiries that is usually acceptable. For patient records, student data, salary information or anything a client gave you under a confidentiality agreement, it is a question you should be able to answer, and "it goes to a company in another jurisdiction" is an answer with consequences.
Self-hosted n8n keeps that data on infrastructure you control. This is the reason it is usually the right choice for regulated or sensitive work, and it is worth more than any feature comparison.
Where the hosted tools genuinely win
They have more pre-built connectors, and somebody else keeps them working when a vendor changes an interface. Self-hosting means that maintenance is yours: updates, backups, and the morning a workflow stops because a certificate expired. That is a real cost and it should be in the comparison.
A reasonable default
Start hosted if you are testing whether automation helps at all, because the setup cost is near zero and you may conclude the answer is no. Move to self-hosted n8n once the workflows are proven, the volume is real, or the data becomes sensitive. Migrating later is work, but far less work than discovering the ceiling on a platform you cannot leave.
Automation n8n Pakistan