Make.com vs n8n: Which AI Workflow Tool Wins for Real Production Use?

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A developer built the same nine-step lead-routing AI agent in both Make.com and n8n to compare their real-world performance beyond basic happy-path demos. Make.com proved faster to set up, with cleaner UX and easier authentication, making it ideal for simple workflows under 1,000 operations per month. However, once production requirements like retry logic, error handling, and custom HMAC-signed API calls were added, Make's per-operation pricing model caused costs to escalate rapidly — with polling overhead alone consuming around 8,600 ops per month. n8n offered greater flexibility for complex logic, allowing custom code such as inline cryptographic signing within a single function node. The developer concluded that tool choice should depend on workflow complexity and volume, not blanket recommendations often pushed by self-hosting course creators.

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