Pros & Cons #
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Facilitates connections between tons of unrelated apps
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Lots of ways to customize automations
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Ample support for business-focused services
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Bevy of capable AI features
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No mobile apps
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Expensive
If you use a wide range of business and productivity apps, you need a way to connect them all. Zapier (which rhymes with "happier") is an online tool that helps you create interlinked functions across such services. You can chain commands with an "If X happens, do Y" structure, where X and Y can involve practically any app. The real selling point of these automations (which Zapier calls Zaps) is that you can easily combine multiple actions and services, including many AI platforms. We wish Zapier offered dedicated mobile apps, but it's an Editors' Choice winner regardless, thanks to its flexibility and unique capabilities. If your automation needs are simpler or exclusively for personal use, look to IFTTT, another Editors' Choice winner.
Zapier vs. IFTTT: Lots of Overlap, But Not Identical #
Both Zapier and IFTTT support many different kinds of apps, from Asana to Wrike, but not all of the same ones. For example, Zapier provides a variety of business-focused integrations that IFTTT doesn’t, such as for SQL Server and Zendesk. Functionality for services that both apps support can also be different. For example, Zapier works with Siri through Apple Shortcuts, whereas IFTTT interacts with it via Apple Reminders, email, and more. You should check out Zapier's and IFTTT's full lists of compatible apps before choosing between them; one might be a clear winner if it alone supports the service you need.
Another key differentiator is that IFTTT offers apps for both Android and iOS. Zapier doesn't maintain mobile apps for any platform. Thus, if you intend to create and automate tasks from your phone, IFTTT is the better choice. That's not to say that Zapier doesn't offer some mobile functionality; you can use it to send texts to your phone, for example.
Pricing: An Expensive Proposition, But Worth the Money #
You can use Zapier for free, albeit with some limitations. For example, you can run only up to 100 tasks per month (actions and triggers count as tasks) across forms, tables, and workflows. The free plan also includes limited access to Zapier Copilot, an AI assistant that helps you build automations. You can’t automate anything related to “premium apps” for free, while Zapier also only checks for new information to trigger Zaps every 15 minutes.
With Zapier Professional ($19.99 per month, billed annually), you get everything in the free plan, alongside access to AI fields (if you connect an OpenAI account), conditional form logic, premium apps, live support, webhooks, and multistep Zaps, among other things. If you want the full Zapier experience for personal use, this is the plan to get.
For businesses, Zapier offers Team ($69 per month, billed annually) and Enterprise (custom pricing) plans. The Team tier lets you share Zap workflows and folders with up to 25 users and unlocks luxuries such as priority support. The Enterprise tier allows for unlimited users on top of advanced deployment options, permission controls, and more. Beyond its core plans, Zapier also offers add-ons for AI agents (starting at $33.33 per month, billed annually) and chatbots (starting at $13.33 per month, billed annually). Both add-ons have free versions, meaning you can at least try some of the agent and chatbot functionality. Paid Agent plans increase the number of activities they can do per month. Paid Chatbot plans increase the number of chatbots you can build and how many knowledge sources they can draw from. These plans also add the ability to connect models other than GPT-3.5 via API keys.
Zapier’s free plan is slightly less generous than IFTTT’s, which allows you to run community-created automations and up to two custom automations an unlimited number of times. However, it also limits access to AI features and more advanced automations, as well as makes automations react more slowly. IFTTT’s paid plans (either $2.99 or $8.99 per month, billed annually) are significantly cheaper than Zapier’s paid offerings. Considering Zapier’s stronger focus on businesses, higher costs make sense, but as a result, you might find Zapier hard to justify for personal use.
Ease of Use and Interface: All Substance, No Flash #
To sign up for Zapier, you need only provide an email address, name, and password. Signing up automatically enrolls you in a 14-day trial of Zapier Pro; you don't need to provide any payment information, unlike with IFTTT’s free trial. Zapier’s free trial does have limits, though, such as how many tasks you can complete and more.
Zapier's web interface is clean and straightforward, albeit slightly utilitarian. It’s not quite as easy to navigate as IFTTT's colorful, tile-based user experience, but it allows for more granular customization. You can create automations by clicking on tiles or prompting Zapier’s AI assistant in the center of the home page, as well as with the Create button at the top left. The left-hand menu provides tabs for assets, connected apps, history, templates, and more, while you can find whatever you’re looking for in the search field at the top of the screen.
The Zap history tab shows you all the times your Zaps have run. The ability to organize Zaps into folders here is a nice touch. Clicking on an individual Zap brings you to a separate page with details on its input and output data, where you can also change how the Zap works. You can also view task usage in Zap history, which lets you track how many tasks each Zap uses within a designated date range.
Beyond Zaps, the Assets tab lets you create agents, canvases, chatbots, forms, and tables. Agents and chatbots are AI features I’ll explain later. Use canvases to build diagrams for planning, documenting, and improving your workflow. With forms, you can create a way for customers to submit support tickets, which, when filled out, trigger a new support ticket in your help desk software. Tables are no-code databases where you can automate, edit, share, and store data. For instance, you can copy data from a Google Sheet, records from AirTable, or import emails from Gmail.
Setting Up Zaps: Build Your Perfect Automation #
Zapier continues to simplify the Zap editor. The interface includes a slim menu on the left that gives you access to (in order) Linked Assets, Recent Zaps, Zap Details, Notes, Change History, Zap Runs, Status, Advanced Settings, and Versions. The actual Zap and all its steps appear in the middle of the screen.
You can think of a Zap as consisting of two main elements: the trigger (When This Happens) and the action (Then Do This). Let's say you want Zapier to send you the weather forecast every day via SMS. To start, you select the Weather by Zapier service as the trigger app and the trigger event, in this case, as today's forecast. If you choose a trigger app that requires a sign-in, you need to enter your credentials at this stage. You might also need to fill in additional information before moving on to the next step. For instance, with this weather forecast example, you enter latitude and longitude values as well as choose the units of measurement. Zapier even gives you the option to test this initial action before you continue.
The next step is to choose an action app and a related action. Continuing with the weather example, you select SMS by Zapier and then Send SMS as the action event. Next, you provide sender and receiver details and specify the content of the actual message. The message can contain text and any fields that Zapier pulls from the trigger app. Options vary based on the trigger app you chose, such as humidity, summary, UV index, and wind speed for the weather forecast.
That's just one example of a Zap. You can combine any number of services to work together in ways that benefit you. For example, you can link Slack and Trello to help communicate goals and assign tasks more efficiently. Maybe you want to share new time entries from Toggl Track to Asana. However simple or complex your needs, Zapier likely offers some combination of functions that can help. You can add as many steps to a Zap as you want by simply hitting the plus button below the last action you created.
Advanced Zap Options: Customize Zaps Endlessly
The above is just the beginning of what you can do with Zaps. To customize them further, you can use Zapier’s Flow controls, which include adding delays, filters, loops, manual controls, paths, schedules, and sub-Zaps. Most of these tools are self-explanatory, such as delays, but some are a little harder to understand at a glance.
Take paths, for example, which you can think of as conditional logic you can define between steps. For example, if step one occurs and it has X quality, then choose path A. If step one occurs and has Y quality, then choose path B. In the context of our weather example, you could customize the SMS message Zapier sends you depending on whether the temperature is above or below freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit).
On the other hand, filters allow Zaps to continue only in the event of certain conditions. This is similar to the conditional logic of paths, but the difference here is that filters are firm thresholds a Zap must meet, not multiple options. With our weather example, a filter could require the maximum temperature of the daily forecast to be greater than 70 degrees before Zapier sends an SMS message, independent of the content of the message.
While Zapier’s Flow controls are largely straightforward, just keep in mind that the more complex your Zaps are (especially if they contain more than a few steps), the more tweaking you might have to do to dial them in perfectly.
Zapier AI: Tons of Functionality, But Will You Use It? #
Zapier has a significant number of AI features, but they break down into three core categories: AI-powered Zaps, Copilot, and business-focused agents and chatbots.
AI-powered Zaps are exactly what they sound like: Zaps that incorporate AI actions, which can be anything from AI summarization to prompts for an AI chatbot and more. During the Zap creation process, you select your trigger as usual, and then you can choose an AI action. For example, in our weather automation example, you could add a step in between the weather app trigger and SMS message action for Zapier AI to write a summary of the forecast.
Rather than leveraging AI within your Zaps, you can use Copilot, Zapier’s AI assistant (don't confuse it with Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot), to create Zaps. So, instead of going through all the steps outlined above to create that weather forecast automation, you can, instead, tell Copilot what you want it to create. Copilot then selects the appropriate trigger and action, prompting you to input any other required information. Especially for simple Zaps, this AI functionality usually works without issue.
Lastly, Zapier lets you create AI agents and chatbots. Agents are customizable, no-code AI assistants that can perform actions. For example, you can create a customer support agent with the instruction to monitor an email for customer questions, search an internal document for answers, and then reply to the original email, alongside turning questions without concrete answers into Slack messages you can respond to directly with guidance. Meanwhile, a Zapier AI chatbot narrowly focuses on interacting with customers. For example, you can feed a Zapier chatbot your company’s policy on returns, and then customers can ask it questions about your return policy. Naturally, Zapier’s AI agents and chatbots target enterprise use, but that's outside the scope of this review.
In general, if you use (or want to use) AI services and features, Zapier makes doing so easy. On the other hand, Zapier’s AI capabilities don’t intrude if you aren’t interested in using them, which I appreciate.
Security: Is Your Data Safe With Zapier? #
Zapier’s privacy policy is neither overly invasive nor especially respectful of your privacy. The company collects a healthy variety of information, spanning from account information to log data and much more, and it retains full control over that data, including the ability to share it with advertising partners. However, you can export or delete your Zapier data at any time, pending Zapier’s data retention policy, which usually lasts up to four months.
Unfortunately, Zapier has a mixed history with safeguarding user data. In 2025, an unauthorized user accessed “certain Zapier code repositories” and “may have gained access to customer information as a result,” according to a report. In 2026, a researcher identified a potential Zapier exploit targeting authenticated Zapier sessions. Data breaches and exploits are just a fact of life in the modern era, but it’s still something you should be aware of, especially when sharing sensitive information with Zapier. For the security-conscious, Zapier supports multi-factor authentication on all its plans.
Final Thoughts #
Zapier is a slick online service that lets you quickly build reliable automations between disparate business and productivity apps, all without any coding knowledge.