Lindy gives a team one shared AI employee in Slack and other channels. Most people who look elsewhere want one of three things: a different billing model, more control over how the work runs, or a tool that also holds the company's records.
The six options below aren't ranked. Each has a different idea of who sets up the AI and where it runs, so the right one depends on who at your company will own it.
The six options at a glance
All prices come from each vendor's own page as of October 2026. Credits and tasks aren't comparable units across vendors.
| Option | Who sets it up | Starting price | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier Agents | Anyone comfortable with no-code tools | $0 tier with 400 agent activities; paid Zapier plans from $19.99 a month billed annually | Teams already automating with Zapier |
| n8n | A technical person | Self-hosted Community Edition, or from €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions | Teams wanting visibility and control of data |
| Gumloop | Business teams, with IT oversight | Pro from $37 a month after a 14-day trial | Repeated jobs such as lead enrichment |
| Relevance AI | A company team, with help from the vendor | Not published; talk to sales | Larger go-to-market organizations |
| Claude with Cowork | The person using it | $17 a month billed annually or $20 monthly on Pro | One person handing off multi-step work |
| Nautis | A founder, in about four minutes for first setup | $49 a month after a 14-day trial with no card | Startups wanting a shared record of the company |
Why do people look for Lindy alternatives?
Three reasons can be traced back to Lindy's own pricing page, read in October 2026. The other reason is simply scope.
- Billing per active user. Anyone who uses Lindy takes a seat, including someone who only @mentions it in Slack. That adds up if ten people need it for one task a week.
- Credit swings. The page says a task can cost anywhere from 2 to 2,500 credits, depending on how big it is. Monthly credits don't roll over, and credit-using work pauses when they run out. That's fair but hard to budget.
- An entry price that varies. Repeat loads of the pricing page on one day showed Team starting at either $29.99 for 3,000 credits or $49.99 for 5,000, per active user a month. The feature list also puts computer use on Pro and Max, names the visible plan cards don't use.
- Scope. Lindy's pages describe it working on records held in your other tools. If your problem is that the records don't exist or are scattered, that's a separate job.
What each alternative does well
Zapier Agents
Zapier Agents are AI teammates you build, drawing on company knowledge and working across 9,000+ apps. Zapier's examples include preparing meeting dossiers on attendees and qualifying leads from forms. The pricing page gives 400 activities a month at $0 and 1,500 on Pro. New accounts get a 14-day Professional trial without a card. Agent usage has its own meter separate from Zapier tasks, with paid agent pricing listed from about $33.33 a month billed annually, so budget for both. The agents page mentions monitoring activity but doesn't describe an approval process, which is worth asking about.
n8n
n8n is for teams who want to open any step and see what it does. It offers a visual builder with the option to drop into code, 500+ native integrations, and human approval steps you add where needed. You can self-host the Community Edition, or use its cloud at €20 or €50 a month billed annually, priced by executions, with unlimited users and workflows. That pricing is the clearest contrast with per-seat billing. The trade-off is that someone has to design and maintain the workflows.
Gumloop
Gumloop calls itself a multiplayer AI agent builder: staff build agents with any model and integration while IT controls access. Its own list of good uses includes lead enrichment, CRM updates, support ticket triage and scheduled reports, and it says it isn't meant for one-off text generation without tools. Its pricing page data lists Pro from $37 a month, with 20,000 credits including a 12,600 bonus, and team members can share a credit pool. Check whether that bonus lasts beyond your first period.
Relevance AI
Relevance AI describes itself as the home of the AI workforce, and its examples lean toward sales and customer teams: a pre-meeting prepper, a post-call actioner, a deal reviewer. It lists human-in-the-loop approvals, role-based access and an embedded deployment team. Its pricing page shows only an Enterprise plan with a talk-to-sales button, so a five-person startup should probably look elsewhere first.
Claude with Cowork
If you want one capable delegate and no shared employee, Claude's Cowork takes a goal, works across folders and tools you choose, and hands back finished work. You can schedule a task to run unattended. It bills per person with usage limits, and the page warns that Cowork uses limits faster than chat. It's well suited to an individual, and the setup is mostly writing good instructions. We've written a fuller comparison of Nautis and Claude.
Nautis
Nautis takes a different route: it holds your CRM, fundraising, runway, invoices and task boards itself, and its Chief of Staff produces a ranked briefing from them each morning. Plans cost $49, $99 or $129 a month, covering 5, 10 or 25 team members, so adding people doesn't change the bill until you hit a cap. On the other side, it launched only in July 2026, its AI credits are capped per organization, and you'd have to move records into it. It also won't suit a team that wants agents working across its existing tools without moving its records. There's a direct Nautis and Lindy comparison if you're down to those two.
Matching the tool to a real week
Say you're the first operations hire at a 12-person startup, and your manager asks you to reduce the manual work. Here's what you might be facing, and where each item points.
- Every demo request needs enriching and routing to a rep. That's a defined, repeated flow with clear inputs. Gumloop or Zapier fits, or n8n if you have someone technical and high volume.
- Legal asks that customer data stays on your own servers. That rules out a lot, and it makes self-hosted n8n the obvious first look.
- The CEO wants a Monday summary of everything. If the data is spread across a dozen tools, Lindy or Claude with a scheduled task can gather it. If half of it isn't written anywhere, a workspace such as Nautis gives it a place to live.
- Sales leadership wants agents on every account, with evaluation and rollout support. That's a Relevance AI conversation.
- You need to compare ten vendors' contracts by Thursday. That's a one-off for an assistant, and none of the workflow tools would be worth setting up for it.
Notice that the first and last items don't need the same kind of tool at all. Listing your jobs this way usually narrows the field to two. Our guide on human-in-the-loop AI agents has more on deciding which steps should wait for a person.
When is staying with Lindy the better call?
Stay if your team really does use it in Slack every day and credits aren't running out. Rebuilding working skills elsewhere takes time, and few of these alternatives offer the same mix of Slack, iMessage, phone calls and Watch and Learn in one product, going by their own pages.
It's also worth staying if the actual complaint is cost for occasional users. Before migrating, remove seats for people who rarely use it, since removed seats stop billing after the paid cycle. Try that for a month. And if you've found one or two heavy jobs that burn most of the credits, moving only those into a workflow tool may be cheaper than replacing the whole thing.
FAQ
Which Lindy alternatives suit a small startup?
It depends on who will maintain it. A no-code team could start with Zapier Agents or Gumloop, a technical team with n8n, and a solo founder with Claude. A founder who wants company records and a daily briefing in one place could look at Nautis.
Is there a free alternative to Lindy?
Some have a no-cost way in. As of October 2026, n8n's Community Edition can be self-hosted, and Zapier offers 400 agent activities a month at $0. Lindy itself offers $50 in credits for 7 days. Nautis offers a 14-day trial, and has no free tier after that.
Which Lindy alternative lets me self-host?
n8n, based on the sites read for this page. It offers a self-hosted Community Edition on GitHub, plus a self-hosted Business plan at €667 a month billed annually. Gumloop lists VPC deployments for enterprise customers.
Do these tools ask for approval before acting?
It varies. n8n and Relevance AI list human approval steps, Claude has per-connector permission settings, and Nautis defaults to Ask every time. Zapier's agents page mentions monitoring but doesn't describe an approval flow, so test that on a harmless action first.
Disclosure: We make Nautis, one of the options on this page, so we have a stake in this list. It's based on published information, not a scored hands-on test. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.
Sources
- Lindy: pricing (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Lindy: homepage (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Zapier: Agents (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Zapier: pricing (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- n8n: homepage (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- n8n: pricing (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Gumloop: homepage (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Gumloop: pricing (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Relevance AI: homepage (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Relevance AI: pricing (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Claude: Cowork (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- Claude: pricing (checked Oct 31, 2026)