Make.com Free Tier Limits Explained: What You Can Actually Build Without Paying

What Is the Make.com Free Tier?

Make.com (formerly Integromat) is one of the most powerful no-code automation platforms available today. It lets you connect apps, move data, and run complex workflows without writing a single line of code. The free tier is surprisingly generous — but it does have limits that will affect what you can realistically build and how often your automations run.

This article breaks down exactly what those limits are, which types of projects work well within them, and when it makes sense to upgrade. If you are evaluating Make.com before committing, this is everything you need to know.

Make.com Free Tier Limits at a Glance

As of 2026, the Make.com free plan includes the following:

• 1,000 operations per month — an operation is counted each time a module executes inside a scenario
• 2 active scenarios — you can have more scenarios saved, but only 2 can be switched on at the same time
• 15-minute minimum interval — your scenarios can only be scheduled to run every 15 minutes at the fastest
• Unlimited scenario executions — there is no cap on how many times a scenario runs, only on total operations used
• Data transfer: unlimited — Make.com does not charge for data volume on the free plan
• Access to most app integrations — the majority of connectors including Google Sheets, Gmail, Blogger, HTTP modules, and webhooks are available on the free plan

What Exactly Counts as an Operation?

This is the question that trips up most beginners. An operation is not the same as a scenario run. Every time a single module inside your scenario executes, that counts as one operation.

So if you have a scenario with 7 modules and it runs once, that costs you 7 operations — not 1. If that same scenario runs 10 times in a day, you have used 70 operations.

This is important to understand before you build. A complex automation with 10 modules running every 15 minutes around the clock would consume roughly 28,800 operations per month — well beyond the free 1,000 limit. A simpler 5-module scenario triggered manually once a day would only use around 150 operations per month, comfortably within the free tier.

What Can You Actually Build for Free?

The 1,000 operation limit sounds restrictive at first, but it goes a long way if you are building the right things. Here are real projects that work well within the free tier.

AI blogging automation — a scenario that watches a Google Sheet for new URLs, calls an AI API to generate content, and publishes to Blogger uses roughly 6 to 8 modules. If you publish one article per day, you are using around 210 to 240 operations per month. That leaves you plenty of room. We built exactly this kind of system from scratch — you can read the full tutorial here: How to Build a Free AI Blogging System with Make.com, Groq and Blogger.

Lead capture to Google Sheets — collecting form submissions and logging them to a spreadsheet. A 3-module scenario triggered by a webhook uses 3 operations per submission. If you get 300 leads a month, that is 900 operations — still within the free plan.

Email digest or newsletter summary — pulling RSS feeds or data from one source and sending a formatted email summary once a day. A 4-module scenario running daily uses about 120 operations per month.

Social media cross-posting — posting to one platform and automatically sharing to another. A 4-module scenario triggered manually or once daily is very efficient on operations.

Webhook-triggered notifications — receiving a webhook and sending a Slack or Telegram message. A simple 2-module scenario costs almost nothing in operations.

What You Cannot Realistically Do for Free

The free tier has real constraints and it is worth being honest about them so you do not hit a wall mid-project.

High-frequency automations — anything that needs to run every minute or every 5 minutes is not possible on the free plan. The minimum interval is 15 minutes. If your use case depends on near-real-time triggers, you will need a paid plan.

Multiple simultaneous projects — with only 2 active scenarios, you cannot run several independent automations at the same time unless you combine them into one scenario.

High-volume operations — if your scenario processes hundreds of records in a single run (for example, looping through a large spreadsheet), you can burn through your 1,000 monthly operations in a single day.

Team collaboration — the free plan is single-user. If you need to share scenarios with a team or client, you need a paid plan.

How to Make the Most of 1,000 Free Operations

A few habits will help you stay well within the free limit every month.

Use filters aggressively. Filters in Make.com stop a scenario from continuing if a condition is not met. If your trigger fires but the data does not match your criteria, the scenario stops early and saves you operations on downstream modules.

Trigger manually when possible. Instead of scheduling a scenario to run every 15 minutes, use a manual trigger or a webhook so it only runs when you actually need it.

Combine related tasks into one scenario. Instead of two separate scenarios that each have 5 modules, merge them into one 8-module scenario. You save one active scenario slot and reduce overhead.

Monitor your usage dashboard. Make.com shows your remaining operations in the dashboard. Check it weekly so you are not surprised by running out mid-month.

Use free external APIs wisely. Tools like Groq (free AI), Unsplash (free images), and Google Sheets (free storage) do not cost you Make.com operations beyond the module call itself. Leveraging free APIs keeps your scenario lean. If you are building an AI content workflow, check out our guide on the best free AI tools for bloggers to pair with your Make.com automations.

Make.com Free vs Paid — Is It Worth Upgrading?

The Core plan (the first paid tier) starts at around $9 per month and gives you 10,000 operations, unlimited active scenarios, and a 1-minute minimum interval. For most solo bloggers and small business owners, the free plan is enough to validate an idea and the Core plan is enough to scale it.

You should consider upgrading when:

• You consistently hit the 1,000 operation ceiling before the month ends
• You need more than 2 active scenarios running simultaneously
• Your use case requires faster than 15-minute scheduling
• You want to add error handling, data stores, or advanced routing that requires more modules per scenario

For most beginners just starting out with automation — especially for blogging, affiliate marketing, or content creation — the free plan is more than enough to get real results. You can read about practical ways to use automation for growing a blog in our guide on boosting new blog traffic with untapped social media strategies.

Make.com Free Tier vs Zapier Free Tier

If you are comparing platforms before committing, here is the honest comparison. Zapier's free plan gives you 100 tasks per month and limits you to single-step Zaps (no multi-step automations). Make.com's free plan gives you 1,000 operations and supports full multi-module scenarios with branching, filtering, and loops.

For anyone building anything more complex than a simple two-app connection, Make.com's free tier is significantly more capable. The learning curve is slightly steeper than Zapier but the flexibility is in a different league entirely.

Real Example: How Many Operations Does a Typical Scenario Use?

To make this concrete, here is a breakdown of a real AI blogging scenario and its operation cost per run:

• Google Sheets — Watch for new rows: 1 operation
• Groq HTTP module — Generate blog title: 1 operation
• Groq HTTP module — Generate meta description: 1 operation
• Groq HTTP module — Generate categories and tags: 1 operation
• Groq HTTP module — Generate image prompt: 1 operation
• Groq HTTP module — Generate full blog content: 1 operation
• Blogger module — Publish post: 1 operation

Total: 7 operations per article published.

With 1,000 free operations per month, you can publish approximately 142 articles per month on the free plan — more than enough for any serious content strategy. Pair this with a solid affiliate marketing approach and the results can be significant. See our beginner's guide to affiliate marketing and our deeper guide on blogging for affiliate marketing to understand how to monetise the traffic you generate.

Does Make.com Free Tier Work Outside the US?

Yes — Make.com itself works globally with no geo-restrictions. However, some of the third-party services you connect to may have regional limitations. For example, Pollinations.ai (a free AI image generator) is blocked via Cloudflare in certain countries including Nigeria. If you are building automations in regions with restricted access to certain APIs, it is worth testing your chosen services independently before building a full scenario around them.

If you are building content automations in 2026 and want to stay compliant across regions, our article on GDPR compliant AI tools for Europe 2026 is worth reading — especially if your audience includes European readers.

Make.com and the Future of AI-Powered Automation

The rise of free AI APIs like Groq has made Make.com's free tier dramatically more powerful than it was even a year ago. You can now chain multiple AI calls inside a single scenario — generating titles, content, images, and metadata — all within the free operation limit. This was not practical before because AI APIs were expensive. Now they are free, and Make.com is the glue that holds the whole workflow together.

As search continues to evolve, understanding how AI-generated content fits into a broader SEO strategy matters more than ever. Our guide on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for 2026 covers exactly this — how to optimise not just for Google but for AI-powered search engines that are changing how content gets discovered.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do unused operations roll over to the next month on the free plan?
No. Make.com resets your operation count at the start of each billing cycle. Unused operations do not carry forward.

Q: Can I have more than 2 scenarios saved on the free plan?
Yes. You can save as many scenarios as you like. The limit is on how many can be active (switched on) at the same time — that limit is 2.

Q: What happens when I run out of operations?
Your active scenarios stop executing until your operations reset at the start of the next month. Make.com will notify you by email when you are running low.

Q: Can I use webhooks on the free plan?
Yes. Webhooks are available on the free plan and are one of the most efficient trigger types because they only fire when an event actually happens — unlike scheduled polling which runs on a timer regardless of whether there is new data.

Q: Is the 15-minute scheduling limit a hard limit?
Yes. On the free plan, the shortest interval you can schedule a scenario is every 15 minutes. To run scenarios every 5 minutes or every 1 minute, you need a paid plan.

Final Verdict

Make.com's free tier is one of the most generous free plans in the automation space — but only if you understand how operations work and design your scenarios accordingly. For bloggers, content creators, and affiliate marketers running lean AI-powered workflows, 1,000 operations per month is genuinely enough to build something that produces real results without spending a single dollar.

The key is to keep your scenarios focused, use filters to prevent unnecessary module executions, and pair Make.com with the growing ecosystem of free AI APIs that have emerged in 2025 and 2026. Start with one well-built scenario, validate that it works, and scale from there.