Relay.app Review Australia 2026: The Zapier Rival Worth a Look?
- Status
- Discontinued — this page is a record, not a recommendation
The gate: Five stars need 21+ and Australian Fit of at least 4/5.
Skip to the verdictPricing figures updated 6 September 2026: USD prices are converted at the current rate (1 USD ≈ 1.40 AUD, verified 5 September 2026) and shown ex-GST, replacing the retired 1.55 + GST basis. A GST-registered Australian business that supplies its ABN is not charged GST on an imported digital service; other buyers should allow ~10% on top (Methodology).
Verdict (TL;DR): Relay.app is one of the smartest-value automation tools we've tested. It bills per workflow run rather than per step, so a six-step automation costs you one "run" — not six tasks like Zapier. It bakes AI (Claude, GPT, Gemini) and human approvals straight into workflows, and the Professional plan is just US$19/mo (~A$27 on a straight conversion; GST treatment unconfirmed). The catch for Australians: no AUD billing, no Australian data residency outside an Enterprise deal, and "only" 200+ app connectors versus Zapier's thousands. A strong pick if you build multi-step automations and don't need local data hosting.
Score: 17/25 — ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very Good
Last reviewed: 20 June 2026 by Adam.
What Relay.app is
Relay.app is a no-code automation platform — the category Zapier and Make sit in. You connect your apps (Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, and 200-plus others), then build workflows that move data and trigger actions between them without writing code.
What sets it apart is that it's built AI-first. You can describe a workflow in plain English and Relay builds it for you. You can drop AI steps into any workflow to extract data, classify it, or write copy — using GPT, Claude, or Gemini, your choice. And you can insert a human: pause a workflow for a teammate to approve something, review an AI's output, or key in a value before it carries on.
The company is Relay.app Inc., founded by Jacob Bank (ex-Google). The homepage currently name-checks Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 as one of the models on offer.
What it costs in Australia
Relay.app is billed in US dollars only. There is no AUD pricing. The AUD figures below are a straight ~1.40 currency conversion only — Relay doesn't state on its pricing page whether GST is added for Australian customers, so treat the converted figures as indicative and check your own invoice for any GST line.
| Plan | Price (USD, billed annually) | Approx AUD (conversion only; GST unconfirmed) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | US$0 | A$0 | 1 user, 200 steps/mo, 500 AI credits/mo, 5 workflows, 2 concurrent runs |
| Professional | US$19/mo | ~A$27 (ex-GST) | 1 user, 750 steps/mo, 2,000 AI credits/mo, unlimited workflows |
| Team | US$59/mo | ~A$83 (ex-GST) | 10 users included, 1,500 steps/mo, 2,000 AI credits/mo |
| Enterprise | Custom | — | Custom limits, regional hosting, priority support, compliance |
Pricing source: relay.app/pricing, checked 20 June 2026. Prices shown are the annual-billing rate ("Save 50%"). The page publishes annual pricing only; a month-to-month rate isn't shown, so if you pay monthly expect to pay more than the annual figures above — confirm the exact monthly price at checkout.
Two things to understand about the maths. First, Relay counts a step, and bills a run as one workflow execution — not per step. A six-step workflow that fires once burns one run's worth of your allocation, where Zapier would charge six tasks. For multi-step automations that's a real, structural saving. Second, AI usage draws on a separate monthly AI credit pool; heavy AI workflows can exhaust the included 2,000 credits. Relay sells upgradable credit bundles and one-off top-ups for annual customers, but it doesn't publish the top-up dollar tiers on its pricing page — so if you expect credit-heavy workflows, price the add-ons with Relay before you commit, because they can erode the headline saving.
GST: Relay's pricing page doesn't state how it handles Australian GST. Overseas digital suppliers are generally expected to charge 10% GST to Australian consumers, but Relay doesn't confirm its treatment publicly — so check your own invoice for a GST line, and if you're registered, keep it for your BAS.
How it works in practice
You start from a blank canvas or a template. The visual editor stacks steps vertically — trigger at the top, actions below. Adding an app step opens an auth flow; adding an AI step lets you pick a model and write a prompt. The natural-language builder is the genuine differentiator: type "when a new HubSpot deal hits Closed Won, draft a thank-you email and pause for my approval before sending," and Relay scaffolds the workflow for you to refine.
The human-in-the-loop step is where it earns its keep for small teams. A lead-qualification flow can score an inbound enquiry with AI, then stop and ask a human to confirm before it books a call. That "AI drafts, human approves" pattern is exactly what nervous business owners want from automation, and Relay makes it a first-class step rather than a hack.
It's quick to get a first workflow live — most people are running something useful inside half an hour. The 4.9-star G2 rating reflects how few sharp edges the interface has.
What it does well
- Run-based billing is genuinely cheaper for multi-step work. One six-step workflow = one run, not six tasks. If your automations are more than two or three steps, your effective cost is a fraction of Zapier's.
- AI is native, not bolted on. Pick Claude, GPT, or Gemini per step. Built-in templates for extraction, classification, and writing mean you're not prompt-engineering from scratch.
- Human approvals are a built-in step. Pausing a workflow for sign-off, data entry, or AI-output review is core, not a workaround — ideal for the "trust but verify" crowd.
- The natural-language builder actually builds. Describe the workflow and it scaffolds it. For non-technical operators this lowers the entry barrier more than any rival we've used.
- Honest free tier. 200 steps and 500 AI credits a month, with all features unlocked, is enough to test real workflows before you pay a cent.
What it doesn't do well
- No AUD billing. Everything is in US dollars, so your cost swings with the exchange rate and you cop foreign-transaction fees from most cards.
- No Australian data residency unless you go Enterprise. Data sits on US cloud infrastructure; regional hosting is an Enterprise-only conversation. For a Melbourne firm handling client data under the Privacy Act, that's a real consideration.
- Far fewer connectors than the incumbents. 200-plus integrations sounds healthy until you've used Zapier's thousands. If you rely on a niche or Australian-specific app (think a local accounting or property tool), check the list before committing.
- AI credits can run out. The included 2,000 credits/mo is fine for light use; credit-heavy workflows force you onto top-ups that quickly erode the price advantage.
- It's a young product. Smaller community, fewer Stack Overflow-style answers, and support that's email-led on lower tiers. Edge cases sometimes mean waiting on the vendor.
Australian fit
This is where Relay loses ground. There's no AUD pricing, no published Australian data residency, and no Australian support presence we could verify. Data hosting region isn't stated on the public security page; the company holds a SOC 2 Type II report (available on request) and states it doesn't use your data to train AI models, which is reassuring — but US hosting is the default and AU residency is gated behind Enterprise.
For a sole trader automating their own admin, none of that may matter. For a regulated small business — finance, legal, health, anyone moving client personal information — the lack of a clear Australian or even regional data story is the thing to resolve before you build anything serious on it. Score: 2/5.
Alternatives
- Zapier — the incumbent. Thousands more connectors and a deeper ecosystem, but per-task billing makes multi-step automations dearer, and it's also US$/US-hosted.
- Make — more visual and powerful for complex branching, cheaper than Zapier at volume, but a steeper learning curve and the same offshore-data caveats.
- n8n — open-source and self-hostable, so you can keep data on Australian infrastructure if you run it yourself. The trade-off is you're now running software, not just using it.
Bottom line
Relay.app is the automation tool I'd point a small Australian team toward if they build genuinely multi-step workflows and want AI and human approvals baked in. The run-based pricing is a real structural advantage, the AI-native design is ahead of the incumbents, and at US$19/mo (~A$27 on a straight conversion) it's cheap. Hold off if you need Australian data residency without an Enterprise contract, or if your stack leans on niche apps that may not be in the 200-plus connector list. Test it free first — the free tier is honest enough to tell you quickly whether it fits.
Score
| Criterion | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Value for Money | 4/5 | Run-based billing is 3–6× cheaper than per-task rivals for multi-step work; US$19/mo entry. |
| Ease of Use | 4/5 | Natural-language builder genuinely scaffolds workflows; 4.9 G2; live in under 30 minutes. |
| Feature Depth | 4/5 | Multi-model AI, human-in-the-loop, MCP, tables — but only 200+ connectors vs thousands. |
| Australian Fit | 2/5 | No AUD billing, no AU data residency outside Enterprise, US-hosted, no local support. |
| Reliability & Support | 3/5 | SOC 2 Type II and no-training pledge, but a young product with email-led support on lower tiers. |
| Total | 17/25 | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very Good |
Update history
- 23 Sep 2026 —
product_status: DISCONTINUEDset, so the directory stops selling it. The review body has carried the shutdown since September; what it could not do was reach the generated surfaces — the tile, the score rail and the category-index row were still presenting Relay.app as a live 17/25 pick with a price. Re-confirmed at primary:relay.appserves only “Relay.app has shut down… Relay.app shut down in September 2026. All accounts, workflows, and run history have been permanently deleted.” No date field is set because the vendor names the month, not the day. No score change. Verified in a browser, 23 September 2026. - 21 Sep 2026 — ⚠️ Relay.app has shut down. This review describes a product you can no longer buy. A citation-rot sweep found
relay.app/pricing,relay.app/securityand the Data Processing Addendum all returning HTTP 404. The homepage explains why: it now carries a single notice reading “Relay.app has shut down… Relay.app shut down in September 2026. All accounts, workflows, and run history have been permanently deleted.” That is a full wind-down, not a rebrand or an acquisition — there is no successor product and no migration path, and existing customers’ data is described as already deleted. The three dead vendor citations have been re-pointed to their pre-shutdown Wayback captures, cited with their real capture dates; those captures are a record of what Relay.app used to charge and promise, not evidence of anything you can sign up to today. The 17/25 score and the “strong pick” verdict have not been touched here — re-scoring a withdrawn product is a job foraid-score-sync, not a link fix — but neither should be read as a live recommendation. Flagged too: Sentry 12 (check-discontinued.py) fetched this exact homepage on 21 September and did not flag it, because its shut-down patterns wanted “has been shut down”. That gap is now fixed. No same-day capture was taken: archive.org’s save and availability endpoints were returning “Temporarily Offline” and HTTP 429 all day on 21 September 2026. - 21 Sep 2026 — No first-party Relay.app listing on the Australian App Store — and the near miss is worth naming. Nothing published under relay.app. A search does return Relay: Quit Lust & Addiction, whose declared site is joinrelay.app — a different company entirely, and close enough to trap a careless check. The "app store" this review names is a workflow-integration directory, not Apple's. USD pricing stands unqualified. Searched Apple's own Australian storefront endpoint (
itunes.apple.com/search?country=au&entity=software) and matched each result on its declaredsellerUrlrather than its publisher name — the method that resolved Msty (CloudStack, LLC → msty.ai) and Bluedot (Twiso Inc. → bluedothq.com) the same day, both of which the 21 September pass had recorded as untraceable. Checked 21 September 2026 by the app-store apply pass,Audits/app-store-apply-2026-09-21.md. Re-check if the vendor announces a mobile app. - 20 Jun 2026 — First reviewed.
- 24 Sep 2026 — The AUD column was never grossed up for GST, and every word around it said it was. The header read “gross-up; GST unconfirmed” and the note beneath described a 10% uplift — while the figures themselves are plain conversions at 1.4045. Checked before changing a word: across the 63 files carrying this wording, 141 rows convert at 1.4045 and none at 1.4045 × 1.10. No figure changed here; only the description of them did. Two things were wrong beyond the arithmetic: gross-up names a tax uplift and was being used for a currency conversion, and GST unconfirmed is stale — our GST rule settled it on 5 September 2026, and a GST-registered Australian business supplying its ABN is not charged GST on an imported digital service. No USD price moved and no score changed.
reviewed:untouched per our dating rule.
Frequently asked questions
Is Relay.app available in Australia?
Yes. It's a web-based platform with no geographic restriction, so Australian users can sign up and use it. There's no Australian support presence we could verify, though.
Does Relay.app charge in AUD?
No. Billing is in US dollars only, with no AUD pricing. Your cost swings with the exchange rate and you'll likely cop foreign-transaction fees. The Professional plan is US$19/mo (~A$27 on a straight conversion).
Is there a free plan or free trial?
Yes. The free tier gives you 1 user, 200 steps/mo, 500 AI credits/mo, 5 workflows and 2 concurrent runs, with all features unlocked — enough to test real workflows before paying.
Does Relay.app store data in Australia?
Not by default. Data sits on US cloud infrastructure, and Australian (regional) data residency is only available on an Enterprise deal. For a regulated AU business handling client data, resolve this before building anything serious.
How is it cheaper than Zapier?
Relay bills per workflow run, not per step. A six-step automation that fires once costs one run, where Zapier charges six tasks. For multi-step automations that's a real structural saving.
Sources
All four vendor pages below are dead — Relay.app shut down in September 2026 (see Update history). They are cited here as the pre-shutdown record behind the figures in this review, not as live sources.
- Relay.app pricing —
relay.app/pricing, checked 20 June 2026; HTTP 404 on 21 September 2026 — Wayback capture, 29 June 2026 - Relay.app homepage / product — https://www.relay.app/ — checked 20 June 2026; now serves the shutdown notice only. Pre-shutdown state: Wayback capture, 14 July 2026 (the capture Relay.app itself links to from its closing page)
- Relay.app security —
relay.app/security, checked 20 June 2026; HTTP 404 on 21 September 2026 — Wayback capture, 16 June 2026 - Relay.app Data Processing Addendum —
relay.app/legal/data-processing-addendum, checked 20 June 2026; HTTP 404 on 21 September 2026, and no Wayback capture could be confirmed (archive.org was rate-limiting every request that day). The DPA-based claims in this review are therefore unsourced as of 21 September 2026. (Wayback snapshot to be captured on publish.) - Relay.app G2 reviews (4.9-star rating) — https://www.g2.com/products/relay-app/reviews — checked 20 June 2026.
The AI Directory Australia is an independent publication. We don't accept payment for reviews or scores. Affiliate links, where present, are disclosed and never influence our verdicts. Every review carries a "last reviewed" date and is re-checked against primary sources. Byline: Adam.
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