Zapier, Inc.
To make automation work for everyone. Zapier unlocks transformative AI to safely scale workflows, agents, and MCP with the world's most connected ecosystem.
Founding Story
Zapier was founded to solve a common B2B problem: the inability of businesses to connect disparate SaaS applications without writing custom code. Wade Foster and Bryan Helmig were colleagues at Veterans United in Missouri, where they frequently brainstormed business ideas. After Bryan suggested a product to integrate different business tools, they took the concept to Startup Weekend in Columbia, Missouri in September-October 2011. Along with Mike Knoop, they built the initial prototype over a single weekend. Because they were operating outside of Silicon Valley, they initially kept their jobs and worked on the project during nights and weekends to ensure profitability from the start. Their first paying customer, Andrew Warner, paid $100 for beta access in November 2011. The founders eventually relocated to Mountain View, California to join Y Combinator in June 2012, launching their public beta in May 2012.
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Leadership
Founders
Wade Foster
Co-founder and CEO. Previously worked at Veterans United Home Loans in Missouri. Had a background in marketing and entrepreneurship. Attended the University of Missouri. Struggled with complex APIs like Marketo, which motivated him to start Zapier.
Bryan Helmig
Co-founder and CTO. Previously worked at Veterans United Home Loans in Missouri alongside Wade Foster. Attended the University of Missouri. Initially suggested the idea of building an integration product for tools like Salesforce, MailChimp, and Zendesk.
Mike Knoop
Co-founder. Attended the University of Missouri. Was a freelancer building software integrations before co-founding Zapier. Helped build the original prototype during a 2011 hackathon in Columbia, Missouri.
Executive Team
Wade Foster
Co-Founder and CEO
Previously worked at Veterans United Home Loans. Attended University of Missouri. Y Combinator Summer 2012 and S18 Growth Program participant.
Bryan Helmig
Co-Founder and CTO
Previously worked at Veterans United Home Loans. Attended University of Missouri. Technical leader behind Zapier's integration platform.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Subscription-based SaaS model with tiered pricing based on features and usage volume. Pricing scales based on tasks (for orchestration), activities (for agents), or chatbot count. Includes freemium tier, pay-per-task overage model at 1.25x base cost when limits are reached, and custom enterprise pricing. Annual billing offers 33% discount versus monthly. 15% nonprofit discount available.
Pricing Tiers
100 tasks/month, unlimited Zaps, Tables, and Forms, two-step Zaps, Zapier Copilot
Multi-step Zaps, unlimited premium apps, webhooks, email and live chat support, AI fields, conditional form logic. Task tiers range from 750 to 2M per month.
25 users, shared Zaps and folders, shared app connections, SAML SSO, Premier Support
Unlimited users, advanced admin permissions and app controls, VPC Peering, annual task limits, observability, Technical Account Manager
400 activities/month, live data sources, web browsing, Chrome Extension
1,500 activities/month
Custom number of activities per month
2 chatbots, GPT-4o mini and GPT-4.1 mini, conversation history, suggestions
5 chatbots, embedding, 10 knowledge sources per chatbot, 100K table records, lead collection
20 chatbots, removal of Zapier logo, 20 knowledge sources per chatbot
More than 20 chatbots
Target Markets
- Marketing teams
- Sales teams
- Product teams
- IT teams
- Small and mid-sized businesses
- Enterprise organizations (Fortune 500)
- Handling IT support tickets
- Turning sales calls into coaching moments
- Employee onboarding automation
- Lead qualification
- Answering FAQs
- Content repurposing
- Block
- Canva
- The Carlyle Group
- The Estée Lauder Companies
History & Milestones
Published internal AI rollout playbook with 89% employee AI adoption reported
Became available on AWS Marketplace and integrated with AWS Bedrock
Acquired Utopian Labs (Netherlands-based AI agents company)
Laudable team joined Zapier
Acquired Vowel (AI-powered video conferencing tool) and launched Zapier Central
5 AI Tools by Zapier, Inc.
Zapier MCP
6moZapier’s Model Context Protocol server exposes Zaps and app actions as MCP tools for AI agents like Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf.
Serverless TypeScript/JavaScript inside Zapier—build custom logic and mini-apps that plug into 8,000+ integrations, Zaps, and Interfaces.
Build AI teammates that browse, reason over your knowledge, and perform actions across 8,000+ apps. Pro plan starts at $50/month.
Build embeddable AI chatbots trained on your URLs/files and hand them off to Zaps to take action—14-day free trial.
AI-assisted workflow diagramming to map processes and generate Zaps. Canvas is currently free for Zapier users.
