Make.com Free Plan: What Happens at 1,000 Credits

Make's free plan gives you 1,000 credits a month and 2 active automations, and how long that lasts depends on one setting: the trigger. We ran our own Make Free account until it hit zero. One Google Sheets trigger checking every 15 minutes used 998 of the 1,000 credits in 10 days and 7 hours, while a webhook automation beside it used 2. At zero, Make kept showing both as Active and kept answering our booking form with Accepted. If you take bookings on Make, use webhooks to stay free, and move to Core the month you need a polled trigger or a third automation.

What we ran, and for how long

This is our own account, on the free plan, with no card added and no upgrade taken at any point. We built a small studio's booking confirmation on 18 September 2026 for our Make vs Zapier free plan test: 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 and left both switched on:

• A polled trigger. Google Sheets "Watch New Rows", checking the sheet every 15 minutes, the fastest schedule Free allows. This is the setup most tutorials hand you.
• An instant webhook. The booking form posts to a Make webhook, and Make sends the email the moment it arrives.

Then we left them alone and came back on 29 September to read what Make did at the limit. Every number below comes from Make's own dashboard, run history and credit usage page, and every screen is in the gallery on this page. Plan prices are Make's own, with the date we read them. How we run these checks is on how we test.

Make's free plan limits, as Make lists them

Our subscription page on 29 September 2026 showed the Free plan as:

Two of these decide everything for a service business. The 2 active scenarios cap is enforced loudly: when we switched on a third, Make refused with "Maximum number of active scenarios has been exceeded - Payment Required". The 1,000 credits cap is where the surprise is, because a credit is spent every time a module runs, including a trigger that looks and finds nothing.

How long 1,000 free credits lasted: 10 days, 7 hours

The polled scenario was switched on at 09:52 UTC on 18 September. Its last run ever was at 16:52 UTC on 28 September. Make's credit usage page split the month like this:

The dashboard put the average at 94 credits a day, which is simply the schedule: 96 checks a day at 1 credit each, whether or not anyone booked. A free month bought about ten days of one automation, and the counter does not refill until 16 October 2026, 17 days later. If you want to check your own plan before you build, our Make credits calculator does the same arithmetic for your trigger and booking count.

What Make shows when the credits hit zero

This is the part we did not expect, and the reason we would not put a client's booking system on Make Free without a check in place. The dashboard banner is clear: "You've used all your credits on the Free plan. Your scenarios will remain paused until your monthly limit resets in 17 days." Everywhere you actually manage an automation, nothing changes:

The only place the app said it in plain words was a manual test. Pressing Run once printed "Scenario is paused (because of exceeded limits)" in the log and opened an upgrade box: "You've rocked the Free plan - let's level up!"

The booking form still said Accepted

The webhook is the setup we recommend for staying on Free, so we tested it at zero too. At 07:11 UTC on 29 September, with 0 credits left, we posted a test booking to our Make webhook. Make answered HTTP 200 with the body Accepted, and the webhook's queue went from 0 of 50 to 1 of 50. No email went out, no calendar event was created, no run appeared in the history, and the credit usage page recorded nothing.

For a booking form, that means the customer sees a normal thank-you and hears nothing after it. The queue holds 50 bookings, so the 51st has nowhere to go.

What happens to the queued booking when credits return is Make's promise, not our measurement yet. Make's pricing FAQ (read 18 September 2026) says incoming webhooks are queued and "will then be processed once your scenarios resume with added credits", and that polling scenarios "search for records since the last time they ran successfully". Our reset is on 16 October. We will check whether the parked booking goes through and add the result here with the date.

In Make's favour: it warned us twice by email

Make emailed our account three times, each naming the usage window:

• 26 September, 01:14 UTC: 75% of the credits used.
• 27 September, 14:44 UTC: 90% used.
• 28 September, 16:53 UTC: all credits used, scenarios paused. It arrived within a minute of the last run.

That is more warning than most free plans give. The problem is only that it lives in the inbox, not in the product. If the address on your Make account is one you rarely read, treat the counter as invisible.

The setup that stays free: webhooks, not schedules

The whole difference between 998 credits and 2 was the trigger. A webhook runs only when a booking arrives, so it spends nothing while it waits. With our measured costs:

The webhook was also the faster one. Our webhook confirmation reached the inbox 3 seconds after the booking. The polled one took 14 minutes and 18 seconds, because it waited for the next check. The booking app guide shows how to build the form side so it can post to a webhook, and our best booking setup for coaches puts the whole chain together.

When Core pays for itself

Make Core was $10.59 a month, or $9.00 a month billed yearly, for 10,000 credits, unlimited active scenarios and a 1-minute schedule (make.com/pricing, 18 September 2026; our subscription page showed the same $9.00 yearly price on 29 September). The measurements above make the decision concrete:

• You need a polled trigger. Some tools cannot post to a webhook, and a spreadsheet or inbox watcher has to poll. Our 15-minute poll used about 97 credits a day, around 2,900 a month. That is almost three times Free, and under a third of Core's 10,000, with room for about 1,700 full bookings on top.
• You need a third automation. A booking confirmation, a reminder and a follow-up are three scenarios. Free runs two.
• You cannot afford a silent 17-day stop. On Free, running out mid-month means waiting for the reset. On Core the same month's usage sits well inside the allowance.

Our dashboard on 29 September also showed a one-time offer: upgrade to any plan with yearly billing within your first 30 days and Make adds 100,000 bonus credits. It is tied to the account's first month, so check your own dashboard before you choose monthly billing. If you do go to Core, keep the schedule at 15 minutes or use webhooks: the page on Make.com pricing shows how the 1-minute setting can burn 10,000 credits in about a week.

A checklist before a client's bookings run on Make Free

• Use a webhook trigger for anything a form, app or payment tool can post. Keep scheduled triggers for jobs that really have no push option.
• Count your scenarios. Two can be on at once. Plan which two.
• Read the counter weekly. Credits left and the reset date are on the organization dashboard. The scenario pages will not warn you.
• Test with Run once if bookings go quiet. It is the one screen that prints "Scenario is paused" at zero credits.
• Keep the Make email address one you read. The 75% and 90% warnings are the only early signal.
• Mind the logins. Make had signed us out after 11 days away, and our Gmail connection showed a re-authorize date of 17 March 2027. An expired connection stops the email step.

Who should stay on Free

If you run two automations or fewer, trigger both with webhooks, and take under about 250 bookings a month (500 if the automation only sends the email), Free covers you, and paying would buy capacity you would not use. The two things to do anyway are the weekly look at the counter and a Run once test when things go quiet, because at zero Make will keep telling you everything is Active.

The short version

• Measured: one 15-minute Sheets trigger used 998 of 1,000 free credits in 10 days 7 hours. A webhook used 2 in the same time and handled a test booking.
• At zero: the scenario still says Active, the history ends on Success, and a webhook still answers 200 Accepted. Only Run once admits it is paused.
• Stay free with: webhooks, two automations at most, and a weekly look at the counter.
• Move to Core when: you need a polled trigger, a third automation, or you cannot risk a 17-day stop. $9.00 a month billed yearly.