The short answer
- Choose Make when volumes are modest and steady, your team wants to open a workflow and follow it visually, and you'd rather not run any infrastructure.
- Choose n8n when volumes are high or unpredictable, when client data should stay on infrastructure you control, or when the logic is complex enough to be awkward to draw.
- Choose neither when the job is one stable, high-volume connection between two systems. A small piece of code is often cheaper to run and simpler to own than a platform subscription.
The rest of this piece explains the reasoning, so you can check it against your own firm rather than taking a verdict on trust.
How each one charges
Make bills on usage. Every step a scenario runs draws on a monthly allowance, so a workflow that checks a mailbox every five minutes and handles twenty attachments per run uses far more than the same workflow triggered once a day. For steady, small jobs that's easy to predict. For anything that loops over a list, such as one step per invoice line, it's surprisingly easy to overshoot.
n8n's hosted service bills per workflow execution: a run counts once, however many steps it contains. Self-hosted n8n doesn't bill per run at all. You pay for the server it sits on and for the time it takes to keep that server patched and backed up. For a firm processing thousands of documents a month, that difference can settle the question on its own.
Both vendors revise their plans regularly. Before committing, check the current pricing pages and ask whoever builds for you to estimate monthly usage from your real volumes in your busiest month, not from a demo.
Where the data goes
Make is a hosted service only, so every document and record a scenario touches passes through Make's infrastructure. For many firms that's acceptable, and it's the same position as most of the cloud software you already use. It's still worth checking against your engagement letters and your own privacy notice, because those are the promises your clients were given.
n8n can run on n8n's own cloud or on a server you control, in a region you choose. For firms whose clients expect their data to stay in a particular jurisdiction, or who simply want fewer third parties in the chain, that's the main reason to pick it.
Self-hosting has a cost that's easy to leave out: someone becomes responsible for updates, backups and the security of that server. If nobody is clearly responsible, self-hosting is a liability dressed up as a safeguard.
Who can maintain it
Make's editor is the more approachable of the two. A capable operations person can usually open a scenario, follow the steps and see where a run stopped. That matters if you want to adjust wording, add a recipient or change a schedule yourself after handover.
n8n suits a technical owner. It has code steps for JavaScript and Python, handles branching and error paths well, and workflows export cleanly as files that can be kept under version control. It rewards a firm that has, or retains, someone comfortable reading a little code.
Xero and QuickBooks on each platform
Both platforms ship ready-made connectors for Xero and QuickBooks Online, and both can call any API directly when a connector doesn't cover what you need. Most real accounting builds use a mix: the connector for common actions like creating a contact or a bill, and direct calls for anything the connector doesn't expose.
Neither platform removes the need to understand the accounting system's own rules. Xero, for example, limits how many API calls an app can make per organisation per minute and per day, and a workflow that ignores those limits will fail in your busiest week. Required fields, tax codes and how attachments are handled all differ between the two ledgers. That knowledge sits with the builder, not the platform.
Side by side
| Make | n8n | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Vendor-hosted only | Vendor cloud or your own server |
| Billing | Per step, against a monthly allowance | Per run on the hosted plans; server costs if self-hosted |
| Editor | Visual, approachable for non-developers | Visual, with code steps; suits a technical owner |
| Xero and QuickBooks | Built-in connectors, plus direct API calls | Built-in connectors, plus direct API calls |
| Licence | Proprietary service | Source-available under n8n's Sustainable Use License |
Five questions that settle it
- How many runs a month, in your busiest month? Count documents, not clients. Twenty clients sending forty receipts each is eight hundred items.
- Does any client agreement say where data may be processed? If it does, that may decide the platform before cost comes into it.
- Who opens the workflow when it fails at 7am in January? Pick the platform that person can read.
- Is someone going to own a server? If the honest answer is no, don't self-host.
- Will it grow? A workflow that loops over line items costs very differently on each platform once volumes rise.
How we choose
We don't have a platform we push. The written scope for every AVROQ project names the platform, estimates the monthly running cost from your actual volumes, and says who will maintain it after handover. If the right answer is a simple Make scenario, that's what the scope will say.