Key findings
- Triggers, Filters, Paths, Formatter, Looping, Delay, and failed steps use no tasks. One builder reconciled a paid account and found the meter matched the 45 actions it ran.
- Higher tiers lower the task price. GILD calculates Professional annual billing at about US$26.65 per 1,000 tasks on the 750-task tier and US$1.69 at 2 million.
- Monthly billing costs about 1.5x the annual rate across tiers, for example US$29.99 against US$19.99 on the smallest tier.
- Annual-plan overage costs 1.25x the base task rate. Monthly-plan overage costs 2.5x, or about 3x the annual overage price per task. Usage pauses at 3x the plan's tasks.
- A Premium AI step with two tool calls uses 15 tasks, against 3 for the same step on your own model key.
Buy Zapier on annual billing and set each AI step's model tier on purpose, because billing period and AI tier move the bill more than the number of steps. On monthly billing every tier runs about 1.5x its annual price, and monthly-plan overage comes to about 3x the annual plan's overage rate. A Zap run costs its successful actions, AI steps add 1, 3, or 5 tasks per run and per tool call, and each MCP call adds 2.
Per-task cost by tier
Professional gets cheaper per task at every step up in tier. GILD divided its US-dollar list prices, by each tier's task allowance. Team costs more at the same tier, starting at US$69 a month billed annually for 2,000 tasks, and adds 25 users, shared connections, and SAML SSO.
| Monthly tasks | Annual billing, per month | Monthly billing, per month | US$ per 1,000 tasks, annual billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 750 | US$19.99 | US$29.99 | |
| 2,000 | US$49 | US$73.50 | |
| 10,000 | US$129 | US$193.50 | |
| 50,000 | US$289 | US$433.50 | |
| 100,000 | US$489 | US$733.50 | |
| 500,000 | US$1,499 | US$2,199 | |
| 2,000,000 | US$3,389 | US$5,099 |
Zapier pricing reference, Professional plan list prices, checked Oct 12, 2026; GILD divided each price by the tier's tasks.
Overage is cheap on annual plans and expensive on monthly ones
Pay-per-task bills extra tasks at 1.25x the base rate on annual plans and 2.5x on monthly plans. On Professional's 2,000-task tier, GILD calculates about US$0.031 per extra task annually and US$0.092 monthly.
Usage pauses at 3x the plan's tasks, so the same plan allows 4,000 overage tasks. GILD calculates those at an extra US$122.50 on annual billing or US$367.50 on monthly billing. Pay-per-task defaults to on for accounts created after January 2024.
AI steps and MCP calls
AI by Zapier bills each run and tool call at the model-tier rate. Standard costs 1x without tools, Advanced 3x, and Premium 5x. Your own provider key costs 1x, plus the provider's token bill. New paid-plan steps default to Premium.
GILD calculates 17 tasks for a triage Zap with a Premium AI step that calls two tools, posts in Slack, and creates a Jira issue. At 1,000 monthly runs, it needs the 20,000-task tier at US$189 a month billed annually. Advanced uses 11 tasks per run. Your own key uses 5.
Zapier MCP costs 2 tasks per successful tool call. Searching and updating 10 records takes 11 calls and 22 tasks. One Free plan user exhausted the allowance through MCP while the Zap usage graph showed 25 tasks.
- Standard step, no tools: 1 task per run.
- Advanced step, one tool call: 6 tasks per run.
- Premium step, two tool calls: 15 tasks per run.
- Your own model key, four tool calls: 5 tasks per run, and your model vendor bills the tokens.
Agents bill separately until they move
Zapier Agents uses activities, with 400 a month on Free and 1,500 on Pro. Pro starts at about US$33.33 a month billed annually. As Zapier moves Agents into AI by Zapier, migrated work uses tasks at the model-tier rates above. Budgets for agent work move to the task line as each agent migrates.
Methodology
GILD analysis of Zapier's pricing page, its machine-readable pricing reference, and the task usage rates page, checked October 12, 2026. It also draws on Help Center articles on task usage, pay-per-task billing, AI by Zapier tiers, Zapier MCP, and Agents usage. Per-task figures divide list prices by tier size; overage figures apply the published multipliers to the base rate. Practitioner figures are the posters' own, from the public accounts linked in Sources, including bills their authors paid, such as the US$178.50 a month one company paid for a single Stripe-to-Slack Zap, as its builder posted on X on October 18, 2026, which is also Zapier's Team list price for 5,000 tasks billed monthly.
Products in this piece
Sources
- Official documentation
- 9
- Public source
- 3
- Zapier pricing
- Zapier pricing reference (machine-readable)
- Zapier: Task usage rates
- Zapier Help: How is task usage measured in Zapier?
- Zapier Help: How pay-per-task billing works
- Zapier Help: AI by Zapier model tier pricing
- Zapier MCP docs: Usage and billing
- Zapier Help: How is Zapier Agents usage measured?
- Zapier Help: Migrating from Agents to AI by Zapier
- Reddit r/zapier: I ran the same workflows 5,000+ times on Zapier, Make and n8n (Jul 22, 2026)
- Zapier Community: Zapier says I'm over my 100-task limit after using 25 task (Sep 26, 2026)
- X post: a company's US$178.50-a-month Zapier bill for one Stripe-to-Slack Zap (Oct 18, 2026)