Make.com Pricing: When Free Runs Out and What Core Costs

Make Core costs $10.59 a month for 10,000 credits, or $9.00 a month if you pay for the year (make.com/pricing, checked 18 September 2026). In our own Make account, one booking confirmation that sends the email, adds the calendar event and updates the sheet used 4 credits. That makes Core worth 2,500 of those bookings a month, 0.42 cents each at full use. The Free plan's 1,000 credits cover 250.

So the upgrade question has a clear answer for a service business. Stay on Free while you run two automations or fewer, trigger them with a webhook, and take under about 250 bookings a month. Move to Core the month you need a third automation, a check more often than every 15 minutes, or more than 1,000 credits. Below are the measurements, the math, and the one Core setting that can burn its credits in a week.

Where these numbers come from

Two sources, and we keep them apart:

We have not paid for Core. Everything below about Core comes from Make's pricing page, not from a Core account. The credit numbers come from real runs on Free, and the pricing page defines a credit the same way for every plan: "Each module action in your scenario ... counts as one credit." How we run these checks is on how we test.

What one booking costs in Make credits (measured)

The automation is a small studio's booking confirmation: a new booking arrives, the client gets an email, the owner's calendar gets the event, and the booking sheet row is marked "Confirmed". We built it two ways on Free.

The counter agreed with the history to the credit: 4 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 2 = 12 credits used after five runs.

That last line decides most of the pricing question. A polling trigger ("Watch New Rows" on a schedule) pays 1 credit every time it looks, even when there is nothing to find. A webhook trigger pays nothing until a booking arrives. The booking app guide shows how to build the form side so it can post to a webhook.

Make Free: exactly when it runs out

Free gives 1,000 credits a month, a 15-minute minimum between scheduled runs, and 2 active scenarios (make.com/pricing, 18 Sept 2026). With our measured costs:

The polling line is our arithmetic from the measured 1 credit per empty check. Make's Google Sheets "Watch New Rows" trigger works this way.

The other two walls on Free are not about credits:

• A third always-on automation. When we switched on a third scenario, Make answered "The limit on the Free plan is 2 active scenarios" and "Maximum number of active scenarios has been exceeded - Payment Required". You can build a third scenario on Free. You cannot run it.
• Anything faster than every 15 minutes on a schedule. Our polled booking took 14 minutes 18 seconds to get its confirmation email. The webhook version took 3 seconds, on Free.

What happens at zero credits, per Make's pricing FAQ: "Your scenarios won't continue to run, until credits are added again." Make says it notifies you at 75% and again at 90%. Incoming webhooks are queued up to your webhook queue storage and processed when scenarios resume. Scheduled scenarios look back to their last successful run. On Free, credits come back when the month resets, so a booking confirmation can wait days. We left a polling scenario running on purpose to watch this happen in our own account, and we will add what we see.

What Make Core costs per booking

Core is $10.59 a month billed monthly, or $9.00 a month billed yearly, for 10,000 credits a month (make.com/pricing, 18 Sept 2026). That is 0.106 cents per credit on monthly billing.

Core is a flat fee, so your real cost per booking depends on how many bookings you take. On monthly billing, for the full 4-step flow:

The break-even question is simpler than the table: Core pays for itself if it keeps one booking a month worth more than $10.59 from waiting or going unconfirmed. If one of your appointments is worth more than $10.59, that is a single booking.

What Core unlocks that we hit on Free

Every row below is from the comparison table on make.com/pricing, 18 September 2026. The Free column is also what we ran into ourselves.

For a booking business, the rows that force the upgrade are the first four. The rest start to matter when you move files around, such as intake forms with attachments or PDFs.

The Core setting that can burn 10,000 credits in a week

Core lets a schedule run every minute. With the 1 credit per empty check we measured, the interval you choose is a monthly bill before any booking:

So upgrade for the unlimited scenarios and the credits, but trigger bookings with a webhook. The webhook answered in 3 seconds on Free, costs nothing while idle, and makes the fastest interval unnecessary. Our Make vs Zapier comparison walks through building that webhook scenario step by step.

Monthly or yearly billing?

Yearly is $9.00 a month ($108 a year) against $10.59 a month ($127.08 a year) on monthly billing. Make's page advertises "Save 15% or more", and that matches: $19.08 a year saved. Two things to know first:

• Credits do not roll over. The pricing FAQ says "Credits expire at the end of the term". When we looked in our own account on 16 September 2026, the Core yearly card said "Credits expire each month".
• If you run out mid-month, Make's FAQ lists three routes: upgrade, buy extra credits in bundles of 1,000 or 10,000, or turn on automatic purchase of 10,000 credits (Core, Pro and Teams only).

If your volume is still settling, start monthly. Switch to yearly once you know which tier of credits you actually use.

Core or Pro?

Pro is $18.82 a month, or $16.00 billed yearly, for the same 10,000 credits. Make lists what it adds over Core as priority scenario execution, custom variables and full-text search of the execution log. Our booking flow used none of those. For confirmations, reminders and sheet updates, Core removes every limit we hit on Free.

Who should stay on Free

If you run two automations or fewer, trigger them with webhooks, and take under about 250 bookings a month (500 if the automation only sends an email), Free covers you, and paying would buy capacity you do not use. Set a reminder to recheck when Make's 75% warning arrives. That warning is your signal to upgrade. If you have not built the booking side yet, start with the no-code booking app guide and add Make once bookings come in.

The short version

• Measured: 4 credits per booking for the full flow, 2 for email only, 1 per empty scheduled check, 0 while a webhook waits.
• Free: 1,000 credits, which is 250 full bookings or 500 email-only bookings a month, 2 active scenarios, 15-minute schedule. A 15-minute poll alone uses its credits in about 10 days.
• Core: $10.59 a month, or $9.00 billed yearly, for 10,000 credits. That is 2,500 full bookings at 0.42 cents each, with unlimited scenarios and a 1-minute schedule.
• Upgrade when you need a third automation, pass about 250 bookings a month, or need a schedule faster than 15 minutes. Use webhooks either way.