IFTTT Alternatives

Home Assistant is open source home automation software (Apache 2.0 license) that you run on your own hardware at home. It talks to your devices directly on your network, so an automation such as "turn the porch light on when the door opens" can fire right away instead of waiting for a cloud service to poll. That speed is a common reason smart home users leave IFTTT, whose Free plan checks for new triggers every hour. It works with over 1,000 brands of devices and services, through more than 1,600 integrations.

The software is free. The optional paid part is Home Assistant Link, the subscription called Home Assistant Cloud until its 2026 renaming: $6.50 a month on the monthly plan, or $65 a year (a year for the price of 10 months), tax not included, with a 31-day free trial and no card details required. It adds remote access from anywhere, offsite backups, voice control through Alexa and Google Home, voice processing and a dedicated support team for those features. Against IFTTT Pro at $65.88 billed annually, the annual Link plan costs almost exactly the same for a year, with no credit allowance: your automations run as often as they need to.

The limit is the setup. You need a small always-on computer at home, an afternoon to install it, and the patience to learn its automation editor. It does not connect web apps the way IFTTT does with Gmail or Google Sheets; for that, pair it with n8n or Make.

n8n is a workflow automation tool with a visual editor where each step is a node: triggers, apps, conditions, loops, code and AI agents. Where an IFTTT Applet links one trigger to a few actions, an n8n workflow can branch, wait, call an API, run JavaScript and ask a language model to decide what happens next. Its source code is public, but it is not open source in the strict sense: it is published under the Sustainable Use License, which lets you self-host it for your own use but not resell it as a service.

The self-hosted Community Edition costs nothing beyond your server. The cloud plans are priced on workflow executions, a run from start to finish however many steps it has: Starter costs $20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions, Pro $50 a month billed annually for 10,000 executions. Compared with IFTTT Pro+ at $167.88 a year, n8n Starter costs $240 a year, but one execution covers a ten-step workflow that would need several IFTTT Applets.

The limit is the learning curve. n8n expects you to understand data, JSON and APIs; it is not the tool for "save my Instagram photos to Dropbox" in two clicks. Read our full n8n review and the n8n pricing breakdown before choosing a plan.

Make, formerly Integromat, builds automations called scenarios on a visual canvas: modules connected by lines, with routers to split a flow, filters to stop it and iterators to loop over a list. It sits between IFTTT and n8n: much more capable than an Applet, easier to read than n8n for a non-developer.

Make counts credits: most module actions use one credit, so a five-step scenario uses about five credits per run. The Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month. Core starts at $9 a month billed yearly for 10,000 credits ($10.59 month to month). IFTTT Pro+, at $13.99 a month billed annually, gives 100,000 credits, but an IFTTT credit and a Make credit are not the same unit, so compare on your own runs, not on the number. Read our Make review and the Make pricing guide for a real bill.

The limit: a trigger that checks an app for new data uses a credit on every check, even when nothing happened, and each item a module returns multiplies the credits used by the modules after it. Set a longer schedule on triggers that rarely change. Moving step by step? Make's IFTTT integration receives data from an Applet and sends data back to one, so IFTTT and Make can run side by side while you rebuild.

Power Automate is Microsoft's automation platform. It covers cloud flows, which connect apps the way IFTTT does, and desktop flows, which automate clicks and typing on a Windows computer (robotic process automation). It answers the question many IFTTT users ask: what is the Microsoft equivalent of IFTTT?

Power Automate Premium costs $15 per user per month, paid yearly, with cloud flows, attended desktop flows and standard, premium and custom connectors. A 30-day free trial lets you experiment with cloud flows. Unattended automation is sold per bot: Power Automate Process costs $150 per bot per month, paid yearly. The desktop side has a free entry point: Power Automate for desktop comes at no additional cost on Windows Home and above, ships with Windows 11, and you sign in with a personal Microsoft account to record desktop flows on your own PC. Against IFTTT Pro at $65.88 a year, Premium costs $180 a year per user: it is a business tool, priced like one.

The limit is the Microsoft world. Outside Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel, connectors exist but the experience is less smooth, and the licensing has several layers. If you are leaving it, see what to switch to from Power Automate.

Zapier is the best-known automation tool for web apps, and the closest in spirit to IFTTT: a trigger, then actions, built in a few clicks. Its strength is breadth: it connects more than 9,000 apps.

Zapier counts tasks: every step in a Zap uses tasks, with rates that vary by step type. The Free plan includes 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps only, with a 15-minute polling time. Professional starts at $19.99 a month billed yearly ($29.99 month to month) for 750 tasks, with multi-step Zaps, premium apps and webhooks, and a 2-minute polling time. Against IFTTT Pro at $5.49 a month billed annually, Zapier Professional costs nearly four times more; what you buy is a faster, broader and more reliable tool for work apps. See our Zapier review and the Make vs Zapier comparison.

The limit is the bill at volume: 750 tasks go fast on multi-step Zaps, and 10,000 tasks cost $129 a month billed yearly on Professional.

Activepieces is a newer automation platform with a clean, step-by-step builder, AI agents, tables and MCP support. Its core is published under the MIT license (enterprise folders excepted), so you can run it on your own server, and it also runs in the cloud.

The unit is easy to read: a run is one credit, however many steps it has. AI steps are the exception: on Activepieces' own models, a step costs 2 credits on a fast model, 10 on a smart one and 20 on a frontier model, unless you bring your own AI keys on Plus or Team, which brings every AI step back to 1 credit. The Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month, unlimited flows and up to 5 users; its credits reset daily, and runs past the quota wait for the next day. Plus costs $20 flat per month for 10,000 credits, then $0.007 per extra credit. Team costs $200 a month for 50,000 credits and 25 users. Against IFTTT, Free is the same 1,000 credits a month, but each Activepieces credit covers a whole multi-step run.

The limit is maturity: about 770 integrations against more than 9,000 on Zapier, and support on Free and Plus is the community.