Make sits in the “power middle” of automation: more flexible than Zapier, less infrastructure-heavy than n8n. The canvas-based scenario builder is the headline feature — once a workflow has more than three steps or any branching, seeing the whole graph at once changes how fast you can debug.
Where Make really pulls ahead is AI middleware. Wiring a Claude or GPT call into a loop that processes Airtable rows, enriches each one, and writes back is straightforward on Make and painfully verbose on Zapier. As more solopreneur workflows turn into “trigger → AI judgment → conditional action”, that shape favors Make’s model.
The trap to avoid: per-credit pricing means inefficient scenarios cost you in dollars, not just speed. A scenario that runs an iterator inside another iterator can burn through 100k credits in a day if you’re not careful. Build defensively (dedupe, filter early, cap with breakpoints) and Make stays cheap. Build naively and the bill grows faster than expected.