What both tools actually do
Zapier and Make both let you connect apps that don't naturally talk to each other — say, your website's contact form and your CRM — so that an action in one automatically triggers an action in the other, without anyone writing code. The concept is identical between them; the difference is in how you build and pay for it.
Where Zapier wins
Zapier has the larger app library and the gentler learning curve. For a simple, single-path automation — form submission triggers a CRM entry and a Slack notification, full stop — it's usually the faster tool to set up and the easier one to hand off to someone non-technical to maintain later.
Where Make wins
Make's visual, flowchart-style builder handles branching logic far better — if you need "if this, do A, otherwise do B and then C" type workflows, Make represents that visually in a way Zapier's linear step format struggles with. It's also typically more cost-efficient per operation once you're running a meaningful volume of automation, though that comes with a steeper initial learning curve.
Pricing reality check
Zapier's pricing scales with the number of "tasks" (each individual action), and that bill grows quickly once you're running several automations regularly. Make prices around "operations" rather than tasks, and for equivalent workloads it's often noticeably cheaper at scale — the trade-off is spending more time up front actually building the workflow.
Which one should you pick
If you have one to three simple automations and want the lowest possible setup effort, start with Zapier. If you're already automating multiple processes, expect that to grow, or need genuine branching logic, Make is worth the steeper learning curve — you'll likely end up there eventually anyway as things get more complex.