Relay.app closed, with free users losing access on August 15, 2026 and paying customers required to migrate by September 14, 2026. The abrupt shutdown forces teams to pick either Zapier or n8n.

Why Relay mattered

Relay.app was one of the few services that baked a “human-in-the-loop” checkpoint into AI-generated tasks. Instead of letting an AI finish a transaction, draft a contract clause, or trigger a data update on its own, Relay forced a designated person to approve the result before it executed.

The migration dilemma

With Relay gone, users must rebuild their pipelines on tools that treat human review as an optional add-on. Zapier and n8n differ sharply in cost, technical demand, and scalability.

Zapier

  • Ease of use – Built for non-technical staff; drag-and-drop works out of the box.
  • App coverage – Connects to more than 8,000 services, covering most SaaS stacks.
  • Pricing opacity – Predicting costs is hard, especially when each AI step counts as three to five tasks.
  • Task limits – Complex AI agents quickly burn monthly task quotas, pushing teams to upgrade or throttle usage.

n8n

  • Execution-based pricing – Charges per workflow run, not per individual task; a 20-step flow costs the same as a 2-step one.
  • Cost efficiency – Handles high-volume, intricate agents that would overwhelm Zapier’s limits.
  • Technical overhead – Requires more engineering skill; many teams host n8n on their own servers to control performance and data residency.

Choosing Zapier means faster onboarding and broader app support. Opting for n8n promises tighter cost control and scalability, but demands a steeper learning curve.

Governance under pressure

Relay’s core value was governance: every AI decision passed through a human gatekeeper. Zapier and n8n can mimic that pattern by inserting a manual step into an otherwise automated flow.

Takeaway

Relay.app’s shutdown forces teams to rebuild the structured approval layer it provided. Whether they lean on Zapier’s simplicity or n8n’s pricing model, they will need to re-engineer human oversight when using these tools.