Make Credit Calculator: Will the Free Plan Last?
Make's free plan gives 1,000 credits a month, and a scenario that polls on a schedule spends credits even when there is nothing new. Enter your schedule and how much new data you expect, and this page does the arithmetic. The counting rule comes from what we measured in our own run history on October 11, 2026: a check with nothing new cost 1 credit, and a run that reached Gmail cost 2. We're a Make affiliate; this page has no affiliate link.
Calculator
– credits a month, – of the free 1,000.
The formula
checks a month + (new items a month × modules after the trigger), times the number of scenarios.
Checks a month = 30 days × 1,440 minutes ÷ the interval in minutes. At 15 minutes that is 96 checks a day, 2,880 in a 30-day month. The calculator uses a 30-day month; Make's own billing period may differ by a day or two.
What the interval alone costs
The trigger alone, with no new items at all, over a 30-day month:
| Run every | Checks a month | Share of 1,000 |
|---|---|---|
| 15 minutes | 2,880 | 288% |
| 1 hour | 720 | 72% |
| 6 hours (360 minutes) | 120 | 12% |
| 24 hours (1,440 minutes) | 30 | 3% |
One scenario left on the default 15-minute schedule uses the whole free allowance in about 10 days, before it has sent anything. That is the surprise the free plan hides, and the reason to change the schedule before you switch a scenario on.
What this does not cover
- We measured 1 credit for an empty check and 2 for a two-module run (RSS plus Gmail). Longer chains are the same rule applied to more modules; we did not measure them.
- Make's help pages say AI modules and some other apps can cost more than one credit per action. The calculator assumes one credit per module.
- Aggregator and iterator modules, and a trigger that returns several items in one check, can change the count. The calculator assumes each new item runs the downstream modules once.
- Webhook triggers don't poll, so the interval part doesn't apply to them. We didn't test those.
- Prices and limits change. Check Make's pricing and credits pages before relying on a number here.
To see where the 1-credit rule came from, read how Make and n8n count an empty poll. For the other free-plan limits, see what Make's free plan actually gets you. To build the scenario this page assumes, see the RSS-to-Gmail tutorial.