Hand repetitive daily work to automation + AI
For example: email arrives → AI summarises it → writes it to a spreadsheet → sends a notification. Save half an hour a day.
An automatic “trigger → AI step → notification” workflow
3 top picks
The most app connections and lots of templates; ideal for your first automation.
Free: Free plan: 100 tasks per month
Visual branches and loops; free plan has 1,000 credits per month.
Free: Free plan: 1,000 credits per month, minimum 15-minute run interval
The community edition can be self-hosted for free; good for people willing to manage a server.
Free: Community edition can be self-hosted for free; the cloud version offers a free trial
How to combine them
- 1
Write the process you want to automate as “trigger → step 1 → step 2 → result”.
- 2
Get a minimal version working from a template in Zapier or Make.
- 3
Add AI steps (summarise, classify, rewrite) and set up a notification when it fails.
- 4
Once the flow is stable and volume grows, consider moving to self-hosted n8n to cut costs.
How far the free plans go
Zapier's free plan has 100 tasks per month, Make's free plan 1,000 credits per month, and the n8n community edition can be self-hosted for free (you pay for the server).
Prices and limits change often. Data checked on 2026-10-27; the official sites are the final word.
Not for
- Sensitive data that can't go to a third-party cloud service (consider self-hosted n8n)