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Three tools, three prices that all look like “under $20 a month”: Albato from $15, Pabbly Connect from $16, Integrately from $19.99. All three automate the same boring jobs — a form submission becomes a CRM contact, a spreadsheet row, a notification. So the cheapest one wins, right?
Not until you read the meters. Each platform counts a different thing, caps a different thing, and defines its billing unit so that its own pricing page looks best. Albato doesn’t count triggers. Pabbly doesn’t count its own internal steps. Integrately counts almost everything and caps how many automations you may build. The sticker prices are within five dollars of each other; the cost of the same workload is not.
This audit lines up the three pricing pages as they stood in October 2026, converts everything to cost per 1,000 counted actions, and runs one identical workload through all three meters.
Three tools, three different meters
Albato counts “transactions.” A transaction is one successfully executed action step — create a contact, send a message, add a record. The trigger that starts the automation is free. Albato rebuilt its plans in 2026: the old Basic/Standard ladder is gone, replaced by Free, Pro and Teams tiers with a transaction package you size separately.
Pabbly Connect counts “tasks.” A task is an action step in another app. The crucial detail: Pabbly’s own internal steps — Filter, Router, Text Formatter, Iterator handling inside the platform — do not consume tasks. A workflow with five internal logic steps and two real actions bills as two tasks.
Integrately counts “tasks” too, but more of them. Each completed action step counts, and the plans meter something the other two don’t emphasize: the number of automations themselves (5 on Free, 20 on Starter) and how often your automations check for new data (15 minutes on Free, 5 on Starter, 2 on Professional and up).
Same word on three pricing pages. Three different bills.
The pricing pages, October 2026
Albato
| Plan | Price | Included | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 transactions/mo, 5 automations | Max 2 steps per automation, 15-min checks |
| Pro | $22/mo monthly, $15/mo billed annually | 1,000 transactions/mo base package | Unlimited automations and steps; extra transactions ≈ $0.033 each |
| Teams | $93/mo monthly, $65/mo billed annually | From 5,000 transactions/mo | 5 seats, shared workspaces, priority support |
The Pro base package is small — 1,000 transactions is a testing allowance, not a working one — and the overage rate is the trap: at roughly $0.033 per extra transaction, running 5,000 transactions over your package costs about $165 in overages, far more than sizing the package up. Albato’s model rewards predicting your volume correctly and punishes guessing low.
Pabbly Connect
| Plan | Price | Included | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 tasks/mo | 2 workflows, max 2 steps each |
| Standard | $19/mo monthly, $16/mo billed annually | 10,000 tasks/mo | Unlimited workflows; internal tasks free |
| Pro | $39/mo monthly | 24,000 tasks/mo | Everything in Standard |
| Ultimate | $79/mo monthly | 50,000 tasks/mo | Adds auto re-execution, folder management |
One honesty note: Pabbly’s own pages have shown both 10,000 and 12,000 tasks for Standard in recent months. The price ($19/$16) is consistent everywhere; the task count is not. Check the live page before checkout — and know that Pabbly also sells one-time lifetime plans starting at $249, which none of the other tools here offer at all. Whether a lifetime deal is smart depends on how much you trust the vendor’s longevity — the math is in our Pabbly vs Make vs n8n comparison.
Integrately
| Plan | Price | Included | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 tasks/mo, 5 automations | Single-step only, 15-min checks |
| Starter | $29.99/mo monthly, $19.99/mo billed annually | 2,000 tasks, 20 automations | 3 premium apps, 5-min checks |
| Professional | $49/mo monthly, $39/mo billed annually | 10,000 tasks, unlimited automations | Branching, Iterator, AutoRetry, 2-min checks |
| Growth | $124/mo monthly, $99/mo billed annually | 30,000 tasks | Unlimited users, dedicated account manager |
| Business | $299/mo monthly, $239/mo billed annually | 150,000 tasks | Unlimited Iterator use |
Integrately’s pitch is one-click templates — 8 million pre-built automations is its marketing claim — and the friendliest setup of the three. The audit finding is structural: the Starter tier’s 2,000 tasks and 20-automation cap both bind early, and the jump to Professional nearly doubles the bill to unlock branching and retries that Pabbly includes at $19.
Cost per 1,000 counted actions (entry paid tier, annual billing)
| Platform | Entry paid plan | Included units | Cost per 1,000 units |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pabbly Connect | Standard, $16/mo | 10,000 tasks | $1.60 |
| Integrately | Professional, $39/mo | 10,000 tasks | $3.90 |
| Integrately | Starter, $19.99/mo | 2,000 tasks | $10.00 |
| Albato | Pro, $15/mo | 1,000 transactions | $15.00 (base package) |
Read this table with the meters in mind. Pabbly’s $1.60 is genuinely the cheapest unit here and its unit is the most forgiving, because internal logic steps are free. Albato’s $15.00 is the base-package rate — larger transaction packages bring the per-unit price down substantially, and Albato doesn’t publish a simple ladder, which is itself an audit finding: you cannot fully price Albato from its public pages without entering the billing flow. Integrately is the most transparent and the most expensive per unit at realistic tiers.
One workload, three bills
The test workload (a model, not a benchmark): a typical solo-business automation — new lead arrives → add to CRM → send a notification. Two counted actions per run on every platform (the trigger is free everywhere; neither action is an internal logic step). Run it 2,000 times a month = 4,000 counted units.
- Pabbly Connect: Standard’s 10,000 tasks absorb it with room to spare. $16–19/month. Add a filter and a router to the workflow and the bill doesn’t move — internal steps are free.
- Integrately: Starter caps at 2,000 tasks — half the workload. You need Professional at $39–49/month, bought for the task allowance, not the features.
- Albato: Pro’s 1,000-transaction base package covers a quarter of it. You either size up toward the Teams tier (from 5,000 transactions, $65/month billed annually) or eat overages at ~$0.033 × 3,000 ≈ $99 in overage alone on top of Pro. The correct Albato buy is the bigger package; the incorrect one is the $15 headline.
Same workload. $16, $39, or $65-plus depending on which meter you feed it to — and the $15 “cheapest” sticker produces the worst outcome if you buy the headline instead of the allowance.
The feature audit at the cheap tier
| Capability | Albato Pro ($15–22) | Pabbly Standard ($16–19) | Integrately Starter ($19.99–29.99) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Check interval | 5 min | Webhooks instant; polling varies | 5 min |
| Branching / routers | Yes | Yes — and internal steps are free | No (Professional and up) |
| Iterator / loops | Yes | Yes, not counted as tasks | No (Professional and up) |
| Auto-retry on failure | Limited | Re-execution (Ultimate adds auto) | No (Professional and up) |
| Automation count cap | None | None | 20 |
| Premium apps | Included | Included | Only 3 |
The pattern: Integrately gates capabilities behind the $39 tier; Pabbly gates almost nothing but charges for volume; Albato gates volume hardest of all. If your workflows are simple and numerous, volume pricing wins. If they’re few but branching, capability gating is what you’ll actually hit.
Where Make fits: the step-up that costs less than the step
The uncomfortable finding of this audit: the “budget” tier’s natural step-up undercuts it. Make Core costs $9/month billed annually for 10,000 credits — less than every entry paid plan above — with unlimited scenarios and a 3,000+ app catalog. Make counts every module that runs (one credit per module action, filters free), so a three-module scenario bills 3 credits where Pabbly bills 2 tasks — but at $0.90 per 1,000 credits, Make’s unit is still the cheapest in this article.
Why would anyone here not just buy Make? Three honest reasons: Pabbly’s lifetime deal deletes the monthly bill entirely for high-volume simple flows; Albato has the stronger embedded/white-label story if you’re building integrations into a product; Integrately’s template library genuinely is faster for a non-technical user wiring two well-known apps. But if none of those is your situation, the budget tier is a toll booth on the way to Make. We priced Make’s own credit traps in Make credits explained and its AI-credit repricing in the Make AI credit shake-up.
Related reading on this site:
FAQ
Which is the cheapest automation tool under $20/month?
By sticker, Albato Pro at $15/month billed annually. By cost of a real workload, Pabbly Connect Standard — $16/month billed annually buys 10,000 tasks, and internal logic steps don’t consume them. Albato’s 1,000-transaction base package is the smallest working allowance of the three.
Why does Pabbly look so much cheaper per task?
Two reasons: a bigger included allowance (10,000 tasks vs Albato’s 1,000 base transactions), and the most forgiving meter — filters, routers and formatters are internal steps and bill as zero tasks. A logic-heavy workflow can cost half as much on Pabbly as its step count suggests.
Is Pabbly’s lifetime deal worth it?
At $249 one-time for Standard, it breaks even against the $16/month annual plan in about 16 months — if the company and the deal terms survive, and if your workflows stay inside its app catalog. It’s a longevity bet, not a pricing trick. The deal’s task allowances have changed over time, so verify the current allowance on the checkout page.
What does Integrately do better than the other two?
Setup speed for common app pairs. Its pre-built automation templates mean a non-technical user can have a working two-app flow in minutes. You pay for that convenience in per-task price and in capability gates (branching, iterators and retries start at Professional, $39/month billed annually).
Does Albato charge for triggers?
No. A transaction is a successfully executed action step; the trigger that starts an automation doesn’t consume one. Failed steps are the gray area on every platform here — assume any step that executes may bill, and check each vendor’s current help docs.
When should I skip all three and buy Make?
When your workflows have more than a handful of steps, when you need the widest app catalog, or when 10,000 units a month is your starting volume. Make Core at $9/month billed annually is cheaper than all three entry tiers and counts more honestly. The budget tools win on specific edges — lifetime pricing, embedding, templates — not on general value.
Methodology
What we did: Read the three vendors’ published pricing structures as reported by pricing trackers and the vendors’ own pages in October 2026, normalized them to cost per 1,000 counted units, and ran one fixed hypothetical workload (2,000 runs/month, 2 counted actions per run) through each platform’s billing rules. All arithmetic is shown above and re-runnable from the tables.
What we did NOT do: We did not buy plans, run the workload live, or measure reliability, latency or support quality. The workload is a cost model, not a benchmark. Where sources disagreed — Pabbly’s Standard task count appears as both 10,000 and 12,000; Albato’s larger transaction-package prices aren’t fully public — we said so in the text rather than picking the convenient number.
Conflict disclosure: Albato, Pabbly and Make are affiliate partners of this site. Albato’s affiliate program offers 30–50% commission by tier per its published affiliate page; that did not soften the finding that its base package is the easiest to under-buy. Prices checked October 2026.
AWL verdict
Under $20 a month is a real tier, but the sticker is the least informative number on it. Pabbly Connect Standard is the budget pick for volume: the biggest allowance, the most forgiving meter, and a lifetime deal if you’re willing to bet on the vendor. Integrately is the pick only if template-driven setup speed is worth a 2–6× higher per-task cost. Albato’s $15 headline is a starting package you’ll outgrow in the first month of real use — size the transaction package to your workload or don’t buy it. And if none of those specific edges is yours, Make Core at $9 quietly beats the whole budget tier at its own game.
Sources
- Albato plan structure and transaction pricing (Free/Pro/Teams, overage ≈ $0.033/transaction), via ToolQuestor comparison, October 2026: https://toolquestor.com/vs/albato-vs-integrately
- Albato pricing review — transaction definition, Pro/Teams pricing, update intervals (October 2026): https://ampifire.com/blog/albato-reviews-pricing-features-is-this-no-code-automation-tool-legit/
- Pabbly Connect pricing as listed October 2026 (Free 100 tasks; Standard $19/mo, 10,000 tasks; Unlimited $79/mo; lifetime from $349), via The Unhacked review: https://theunhacked.com/pabbly-connect-review/
- Pabbly Connect plan table (Standard $19/$16, 12,000 tasks; Pro $39, 24,000; Ultimate $79, 50,000; LTD $249/$499/$699), via WPBlogging101, October 2026: https://wpblogging101.com/pabbly-connect-lifetime-deal/
- Pabbly lifetime-deal economics and internal-task policy, via The Automations Guide, September 2026: https://theautomationsguide.com/blog/2026-09-11-pabbly-pricing-in-2026-ltd-monthly-plans-and-when-it-beats-m/
- Integrately pricing tiers (Starter $29.99/$19.99, 2,000 tasks; Professional $49/$39, 10,000 tasks; Growth; Business), via The Digital Project Manager, October 2026: https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/tools/integrately-pricing/
- Integrately plan details (update intervals, automation caps, premium apps), via SaaSworthy, October 2026: https://www.saasworthy.com/product/integrately
- Make pricing (Core $9/mo billed annually, 10,000 credits; September 2026 price cut), via dev.to pricing analysis, September 2026: https://dev.to/2pizza/make-pricing-explained-what-you-actually-pay-59p3
