Tracking 5 Automation Vendors: USTA Pricing Index

A content-hash change is not a price increase. On August 23, 2026 the USTA Automation Pricing Index sealed 5 automation vendors across 7 pricing and changelog sources, and this page is a census of that freeze — not a ranking of who raised prices.

Point-in-time published pricing and changelog state for the automation/orchestration platforms US Tech Automations is genuinely compared against (ActiveCampaign, GoHighLevel, Keap, n8n, Zapier), captured by the US Tech Automations automation-pricing clock on August 23, 2026.

The prior clock day in this snapshot is August 22, 2026. That date is a hash-diff baseline for this freeze, not a license to invent a price movement. The June 2026 edition was the first dated seal in the series; this August page does not borrow its figures and does not write a trend on top of them.

A sealed hash delta means the fetched page was not byte-identical to the prior clock day. It does not prove a named plan price moved.

5 automation vendors were sealed across 7 sources on August 23, 2026.

Key Takeaways

• 5 vendors sit across 7 sources on the August 23, 2026 freeze: ActiveCampaign, GoHighLevel, Keap, n8n, and Zapier.

• 6 sources carry a changed hash versus August 22, 2026; Zapier plans help is unchanged.

• 3 priced sources exposed static dollar figures: GoHighLevel 15, Keap 12, Zapier 27.

• n8n pricing is client-side (14 price keys in embedded JSON; no price points in static HTML) — reported as no static figures, not as $0.

• This is a census. A hash change is not a claim that a vendor raised prices.

What This Freeze Can and Cannot Say

The index is a daily content-hashed seal of peer automation-vendor pricing and changelog pages. It records what static HTML actually contained on the fetch, then stores a content hash so a later fetch can be compared. That is a change detector, not a price list for buyers to paste into a contract.

The June 2026 automation pricing index is a separate sealed day. This page does not subtract from it, does not rank vendors by cost, and does not map any dollar figure to a named plan tier. If you need a practical tradeoff discussion that is not this census, the Zapier versus n8n small-business walkthrough stays on workflow fit rather than list-price theater.

GoHighLevel, Keap, and Zapier are the 3 sources that yielded well-formed static dollar figures. ActiveCampaign is tracked as a changelog. n8n is tracked twice: release notes as a changelog, and a pricing page that renders client-side. Zapier is tracked twice as well: a price_anchor page and a price_reference plans-help document.

6 of 7 sealed sources show a content-hash change.

The one unchanged source is Zapier plans help. That is useful precisely because it is boring: the clock can hold still. The 6 changed rows are the opposite temptation — they invite a "who raised prices" headline this census refuses to write.

The Census at a Glance

Sources at baseline is 0 because this freeze is not a first seal. Every source already had a prior hash from August 22, 2026. The honesty rule still stands: the first seal in a clock has no prior to diff against, and even after that, a changed label is a content_sha256 delta, not a price-direction claim.

Priced sources are 3 because only static HTML figures are extracted. A changelog is not expected to carry plan prices. A client-side pricing page is not treated as a free product.

Observed Dollar Figures, Copied Verbatim

These figures are the distinct, well-formed dollar values shown on the page the clock actually fetched. They are not mapped to named plan tiers. No minimum or starting price is asserted: the lowest figure on a marketing page is usually not the entry plan price.

Zapier pricing showed 27 distinct dollar figures.

Zapier's list is the widest static set in this freeze, and it is also the easiest to misread. $1 sits next to $800 on the same page. That spread is what a marketing page looks like when monthly and annual equivalents, per-task fragments, seat prices, and add-on anchors share one HTML document. None of those labels is assigned here.

GoHighLevel's 15 figures run from $10 through $4,970, with $2,970 and $4,970 sitting on the same page as $10. That pattern is typical of an agency or white-label surface that also prints smaller plan stickers. It is still not a tier map.

Keap's 12 figures run from $6 through $299. The page is quieter than Zapier's 27-figure set, which does not make Keap cheaper for any given workflow. Comparing $6 on Keap to $5 on Zapier is not a buying decision; it is two strings that happened to render in static HTML on the same day.

n8n is the integrity row. The pricing source is logged as client-side (14 price keys in embedded JSON; no price points in static HTML). The clock does not promote those JSON keys into display prices, and it does not print $0 as if the product were free. Zero static figures is a rendering note, not a sticker price.

The lowest dollar figure on a marketing page is usually not the entry plan price.

If you are costing accounting-firm workflows rather than collecting sticker strings, the accounting firm workflow automation pricing guide is the sibling that talks about work, not about raw HTML figures.

Source Hashes and Change Labels

Each source is sealed with a truncated content hash. A matching hash on a later fetch means the page bytes matched. A different hash means something on the page moved — copy, layout, a figure, a script tag, or all of those at once. Investigation is a separate step from the census.

n8n pricing listed 14 keys and no static figures.

ActiveCampaign's changelog hash dabdd828df41 is changed. That is expected churn for a what's-new page and is not a price event. n8n release notes f2b98fcf6b0b are changed for the same reason. n8n pricing e04f609c6b46 is also changed even though this freeze still extracted no static dollar points — the HTML or embedded JSON can move without becoming a figure list.

GoHighLevel 99a060c3687f, Keap 31d0d1845a31, and Zapier pricing 3b70f2ac8e00 are the three priced-page hashes that moved. Zapier plans help afbc4c3fbc7e did not. Holding one Zapier document still while the other moves is exactly why the clock tracks two Zapier URLs instead of pretending one page is the whole vendor.

The July AI Price Index uses the same sealed-day discipline on a different marketplace. It is a sibling method page, not a conversion of these vendor figures into model tokens.

How the Clock Reads a Pricing Page

Price figures are the distinct, well-formed dollar values shown on the page the clock actually fetched — validated to a canonical currency form, deduplicated, and clamped to the plan-price band [$1, $100,000] (sub-$1 per-unit fractions and six-figure marketing copy are excluded). They are NOT mapped to named plan tiers and NO minimum/starting price is asserted.

A "change" is a content_sha256 delta versus the most recent prior snapshot in the clock; the first seal is a baseline with no prior to diff against. Sources whose prices render client-side (e.g. n8n) expose zero static price figures and are reported as such, not as $0.

All figures on this page are copied from the sealed snapshot; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. Sub-$1 per-unit fractions and six-figure marketing copy are excluded by the band. The clock does not compute a cost-per-action, a seat-normalized bill, or a "starting at" price from the raw list.

1. Fetch. Pull each vendor pricing or changelog URL on the clock day and keep the raw response.

2. Extract. From static HTML, keep well-formed dollar figures inside the [$1, $100,000] band; deduplicate within the source; leave client-side pages as a rendering note.

3. Hash. Compute a content hash of the fetched page so the next clock day has something to diff.

4. Seal. Store the hash, the change label versus the prior clock day, and the verbatim figure list. Publish only from that freeze.

This edition's prior clock day is August 22, 2026. Sources at baseline are 0. Sources changed are 6. Those three sentences are the whole movement story this census is allowed to tell.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Did any of these 5 vendors raise prices?
A: This page does not say. 6 sources have a changed content hash versus August 22, 2026, and that is a page-byte delta. A hash change is not proof a named plan price moved, and no added or removed figure list is published here.

Q: Why these 5 vendors and 7 sources?
A: They are the automation and orchestration platforms this index is built to sit next to: ActiveCampaign, GoHighLevel, Keap, n8n, and Zapier. Zapier and n8n each have two URLs because pricing and supporting docs do not live on one page.

Q: Why does n8n show no dollar figures?
A: The pricing source renders client-side. The freeze records client-side (14 price keys in embedded JSON; no price points in static HTML). That is reported as no static figures, not as $0, because $0 would read as a free tier.

Q: Are the Zapier 27 figures monthly plan prices?
A: Not as classified here. The 27 strings are what static HTML contained on August 23, 2026, including values such as $13.33, $19.99, $33.33, and $66.67 that look like converted fragments. No billing period is assigned.

Q: What does sources at baseline 0 mean?
A: This freeze is not a first seal. Every source already had a prior hash from August 22, 2026, so none of the 7 rows is a first-time baseline. The unchanged row is Zapier plans help.

Q: Can I pick the cheapest vendor from $6, $10, and $1?
A: No. Those are three strings from three pages. They are not normalized to seats, tasks, or features, and the lowest figure on a page is usually not the entry plan price.

Put Pricing Data to Work

A RevOps lead running a vendor shortlist can treat the 7 hashes as a watchlist: refetch on a cadence, and open the live page only when a hash flips from unchanged to changed. That is cheaper than reading five marketing sites every Monday and hoping you notice a buried figure.

A procurement analyst preparing a renewal can keep the verbatim lists — GoHighLevel's 15 figures, Keap's 12, Zapier's 27 — as the last sealed screenshot of what the page was willing to print. When a later freeze shows a different list, the work is to read the live page, not to assume the delta is an increase.

A founder comparing platforms should not buy from this table. Use it to know when a page moved, then judge the product. US Tech Automations automates that monitoring: hash the peer pages, route a changed event, and draft the review task so a person only looks when the bytes moved. Current platform pricing is on the pricing page.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from the sealed automation-pricing snapshot, August 23, 2026.