Claude Cowork, n8n or Duct?
Three taps to your answer.
855 connectors, over 1,000 integrations, or 12 built for growth. The count is not the question. The job is.
Your match lands here.
One answer on each line. Honest answers get an honest pick, even when it is not us.
Duct is your tool.
It reads your ads, analytics and revenue together, tells you why the number moved, and waits for your Apply.
Claude Cowork is your tool.
The best generalist for documents, research and the web. Keep Duct in mind for the day signups drop.
n8n is your tool.
Draw the process once and it runs the same way every time. Add Duct when you need the why.
You need two of them.
Your answers span jobs. Let each tool take the one it wins.
See how they fit togetherWhere each one wins
Each one wins somewhere.
Here is where.
| The job | Cowork | n8n | Duct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write a doc from your files | Built for it | Not its job | Not its job |
| Research the web, build a deck | Built for it | Can do it | Not its job |
| Hand off a task from your phone | Built for it | Not its job | Not its job |
| A form lead into your CRM | Not its job | Built for it | Not its job |
| A fixed process across many apps | Can do it | Built for it | Not its job |
| Why signups dropped, across tools | Can do it | Can do it | Built for it |
| Change a campaign, with a rollback | Can do it | Can do it | Built for it |
| Missed the CPA target? Say why | Can do it | Can do it | Built for it |
| An SEO audit, no account | Can do it | Not its job | Built for it |
| Self-host, no licence fee | Not its job | Built for it | Built for it |
Better together
You don't have to pick one.
Give each the job it wins.
Only after an ads plugin for the chat you already use? Adspirer and PaidSync add ad write tools to Claude and ChatGPT, and AdLoop is an MIT console for Google Ads. They go deeper on each ad network; Duct reads the ads next to your revenue.
Every row, side by side Ten criteria, with sources
| Criterion | Claude Cowork | n8n | Duct |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Claude's agent for knowledge work. Give it a goal; it works across your files, apps and a built-in browser, and shows each step. | A workflow automation platform with AI agent steps. You draw the workflow; it runs the same way every time. | An AI marketing agent for growth data. It reads your tools together, writes a cited brief and proposes the change. |
| Reaching your marketing data | 855 connectors in Claude's directory, HubSpot and Amplitude among them. Supermetrics covers Google Ads, Meta, GA4 and over 200 platforms; Google's own Google Ads server is read-only. | Over 1,000 integrations, with nodes for Google Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot and Stripe, and an HTTP node for any other API. | Twelve, built in: Google Ads, Meta Ads, Apple Search Ads, OpenAI Ads, GA4, Search Console, Tag Manager, Mixpanel, Clarity, GrowthBook, Stripe and RevenueCat. What each one reads. |
| “Why did this move?” | Yes, once the connectors are in. Claude does the join inside the conversation. | You design the join as a workflow; then it runs it on schedule, identically. | The core job. The joins are wired in, and the brief cites the source of each number. |
| Changes, and who approves | Manual mode, the default, asks before each action; Auto and Skip modes ask less or not at all. What it can change depends on the connector. | Human-in-the-loop can hold any AI tool call for an approval in Slack, email, Teams or n8n Chat. Its Google Ads node only reads. | A change set previews what it touches. Per-account guardrails block a change that breaks them, nothing applies until you press Apply, and applied changes roll back. The model has no approve tool. |
| Memory and record | Memory shared with your Claude chats, and each step shown as it works. | An execution log for every run; anything else it remembers is what you store. | A memory timeline of targets and decisions you can correct, and an activity log of who proposed, approved, applied or rolled back each change. |
| On a schedule | Scheduled tasks, daily, weekly or monthly, with your connectors. | Its home ground: schedules, webhooks and app triggers. | Scheduled briefs, which run with a stored model key. |
| Models | Claude. | The provider you pick for each AI step. | Your OpenAI, Anthropic or Google key, or your ChatGPT plan. |
| Licence and where it runs | Proprietary. Desktop, web and mobile; cloud sessions, in beta, run on Anthropic's servers. | Fair-code under the Sustainable Use License: source public, free for internal use and self-hosting, commercial resale restricted. Or n8n Cloud. | MIT, the whole product. A desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, or a self-host build. |
| Price | With a paid Claude plan: Pro at $20 a month ($17 billed annually), Max from $100, Team from $20 a seat billed annually. | Community Edition free to self-host. Cloud Starter €20 and Pro €50 a month, billed annually, priced by workflow executions. | Free with your own keys or your ChatGPT plan. You pay the model provider for what you use. |
| Also in the box | Everything else Claude does: documents, research, code, and a browser that fills forms. | A community with 206,000 GitHub stars and thousands of marketing workflow templates. | A free SEO audit for any URL, no account, and a content studio that plans, drafts and publishes to nine networks. |
Sources, read on September 29, 2026: Anthropic's Cowork page, pricing, Cowork guide and Supermetrics connector; Google's Google Ads MCP server; n8n's pricing, licence, human-in-the-loop docs, Google Ads node and repository. If a cell is wrong, open an issue and it will be corrected with the date.
FAQ
Before you choose
Is Duct a Claude Cowork alternative?
For one job, yes: finding why your growth numbers moved and making the change inside your guardrails, with a rollback. For everything else Cowork does, from documents to browsing the web, no, and it does not try to be. Running both is reasonable.
Can n8n do what Duct does?
Much of it, if you build it. n8n can pull Google Ads, GA4 and Stripe data, put an AI agent on it, and hold its tool calls for an approval in Slack. Duct ships that as the product: the connectors, the joins, the change preview, the guardrails and the rollback, with nothing to wire.
Is n8n open source?
n8n is fair-code under its Sustainable Use License. The source is public and self-hosting for your own business is free, but commercial resale is restricted, so it is not open source in the OSI sense. Duct is MIT licensed.
Which one is cheapest?
Duct is free with your own model keys or your ChatGPT plan; you pay the model provider for what you use. n8n is free to self-host, and its cloud starts at 20 euros a month billed annually. Cowork comes with a paid Claude plan, from 20 dollars a month.
How current is this page?
Every cell was checked against the vendor's own site, pricing page or documentation on September 29, 2026. Plans and features change without notice. If a cell is wrong, open an issue on the Duct repository and it will be corrected with the date.