Zapier reaches thousands of apps and Ray reaches far fewer. Why would we pick Ray?

Because coverage and depth are different things. Ray's integrations are hand-curated so the actions that matter are wired properly and every write is approval-gated, and Ray reaches them from the conversation rather than from a builder. If your deciding factor is reaching an unusual app, pick Zapier.

Yes, and plenty of teams should. Zapier handles the scheduled and webhook-driven automation you design. Ray handles the work that starts with somebody saying something in a channel.

What happens when Ray hits its limit?

Ray tells you in the thread and offers the upgrade, then picks the same task back up once it goes through. Nothing is silently dropped, and failed work is never counted or billed.

It depends entirely on volume, which is the point. Zapier's free tier covers 400 agent activities a month, and costs climb with tasks, activities and model tiers as you use it more. Ray is one flat price for your team's size whatever the month looks like.

Zapier reaches everything. Ray lives where you talk.

Zapier reaches 9,000 apps. Ray reaches a curated set and lives in your channels. Here is which of those two facts matters more for your team.

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Compared against Zapier Agents's own pages. Last checked August 2026.

What Zapier Agents is

Zapier Agents, formerly Zapier Central, are agents you build at agents.zapier.com and equip with company knowledge, in their words to do work across 9,000-plus apps on command and while you sleep. They run from Zapier's own surface and a Chrome extension, and connect to Slack as a trigger and action rather than as a member of your channels. Zapier Agents's own page

One message, two outcomes.

What happens to the same sentence in your channel, depending on which of the two is in the room.

Marcoin #growth

That enterprise lead from the webinar needs to be in HubSpot before Friday.

Ray

Picks it up in the channel where it was said
Shows you the approval card before it writes anything
Keeps working when the month resets

Zapier Agents

Starts a run if the message matches a trigger
Reaches 9,000 apps once that run has started
Pauses only if you wrote that into its instructions

The difference, in one table.

What each one is for, side by side. Zapier Agents's column comes from their own pages, checked August 2026.

Dimension	Ray	Zapier Agents
Where it lives	Inside your Slack channels, reading what it is invited to	At agents.zapier.com, plus a Chrome extension
App coverage	A curated set, each one wired deliberately	9,000-plus apps
Pricing model	Flat by team size. Using Ray more never costs more	Activities for agents, tasks for Zaps, model multipliers on AI steps
At the limit	A plan gate explains itself in the thread, work resumes on upgrade	Agents stop running until the month resets
Approvals	An approval card in code around every write tool	Documented as an instruction you write into the agent's prompt

What Ray costs

Free covers 25 tasks a month plus a one-time 50-task starter grant that never expires. Pro is one flat price for your team’s size: $49 a month for 1 to 3 people, $99 a month for 4 to 10 people, $199 a month for 11 to 25 people. No seats, and using Ray more never costs more.

The full pricing page

What Zapier Agents costs

Metered in activities, and billed separately from a Zapier plan. An activity is any billable action an agent takes, which includes running an action, answering from a knowledge source, browsing, searching and messages from the Chrome extension. Free covers 400 activities a month, Pro starts around $33 a month billed annually for 1,500, and at the cap agents stop running until it resets. The underlying Zapier plans meter tasks separately, and from June 2026 AI steps multiply by model tier. their pricing page

Which one you should pick

The honest version, their side first.

Choose Zapier Agents if

You need long-tail app coverage. Nine thousand apps against a hand-picked list is not a close call, and if your stack includes something niche, Zapier probably reaches it and Ray does not.
You want to design deterministic multi-step automation yourself, with branching and filters you control. That is what Zapier has been perfecting for over a decade.
Your automations are not conversational. If the work starts from a form, a webhook or a schedule rather than something someone said, Slack is not where it needs to live.

Choose Ray if

The work starts in conversation. Ray is a member of the channel, so it reads what was said and acts on it without anybody opening another surface.
You want a bill you can predict. Ray is flat by team size, where agent activities, Zap tasks and model multipliers each meter separately.
You want the approval gate to be structural rather than a sentence in a prompt that a model might not honour.

What Zapier Agents does not do

Each one checked against their own documentation, August 2026. If any of this changes, tell us and we will fix it.

There is no Zapier agent that sits inside a Slack channel. Slack is a trigger and an action, so a message can start an agent run, but the agent itself lives on Zapier's surface. their docs
Zapier's documented way to get an agent to pause for a human is to write the confirmation request into the agent's instructions. The enforced human-in-the-loop step belongs to Zaps, not to agents. their docs

The rest of the field

If you are still drawing up the shortlist, these are the other tools people weigh against Zapier Agents and against Ray. Each one says where it is the better pick.

Questions people ask.

The short answers are here. If we have not covered something, just ask.

Try Ray with your own team.

Free to start, no card. Ray sees only the channels you invite it to, and nothing sensitive happens without your approval. Or read Zapier Agents for their side of it.