Boomi vs n8n

Boomi is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) from Boomi, LP, headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Rick Nucci founded it in 2000, its cloud integration service launched in 2007, Dell bought it in 2010, and Francisco Partners and TPG acquired it from Dell in 2021 for about $4 billion. Steve Lucas has been chairman and CEO since 2022. It connects applications, data and APIs across cloud and on-premise systems for more than 30,000 customers, by its own count.

The platform covers low-code integration with a large connector library and runtimes that can run in Boomi's cloud or on your own servers, B2B/EDI, event streams, Flow for low-code apps, and managed file transfer from the 2025 Thru acquisition. API Management grew through the 2024 purchases of Mashery and APIIDA's business, Data Hub handles master data, and Data Integration (from Rivery) adds ELT and CDC. Agentstudio and Agent Control Plane build and govern AI agents with MCP tools. Pricing is a $99/month pay-as-you-go tier plus usage, or annual editions quoted by sales.

Boomi fits mid-size and large IT teams with hybrid estates of ERP, CRM and legacy systems. It is complex for business users, edition pricing is opaque, and Zapier or Make are far simpler for SaaS-to-SaaS automation. Workato targets business-led automation, while Fivetran and Matillion focus on warehouse ELT.

In March 2026 Boomi was named a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for iPaaS for the 12th year in a row, placed highest for Ability to Execute. Prototype on the 30-day trial or pay-as-you-go before negotiating an annual edition.

n8n is a workflow automation platform from Berlin, founded in 2019 by Jan Oberhauser. It uses a node-based visual editor where each step is a node, and it lets you mix ready-made integrations with custom JavaScript or Python whenever the visual tools are not enough. Its source is available under a fair-code license, so companies can self-host it for free with unlimited workflows and executions, which is its biggest advantage over Zapier and Make.

n8n ships with hundreds of integrations plus generic HTTP, webhook, database and code nodes that reach almost any API. It has become a favorite for AI automation: agent nodes built on LangChain, chat triggers, vector stores, memory and tool calling let teams build chatbots, RAG pipelines and agents that act on business data, using models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral or local models. The cloud edition is priced by workflow executions, counting a full run rather than each step, and Enterprise adds SSO, environments with git, log streaming and scaling with queue mode.

n8n fits technical teams, agencies and operations engineers who want automation they can control, inspect and host themselves, including in Turkey or the EU for data residency. It requires more technical comfort than Zapier, self-hosting means owning updates and uptime, and some integrations are less polished. Zapier remains easiest for non-technical users, Make offers a visual middle ground, Pipedream suits developers who prefer code-first workflows, and Windmill is stronger for script-based internal tools.