What is Webhook?
A webhook is an automatic message one app sends to another the moment an event happens, so workflows start instantly instead of on a schedule.
A webhook is the push version of an API. Instead of your automation asking a service every few minutes whether anything changed, the service sends a small message the instant something happens — a form was submitted, a payment cleared, a deal moved stage. Your automation platform receives that message at a unique URL and runs the workflow immediately. The practical difference is latency and cost: polling every five minutes burns operations and delays the result, while a webhook fires in seconds and consumes nothing while idle. Most automation platforms give you a catch webhook trigger and a send webhook action, which together let you connect tools that have no official integration. Things worth checking: whether the sending app supports webhooks on your plan, whether the receiving platform charges per webhook call, and whether it retries when your endpoint is temporarily down. Webhooks plus AI make a common pattern — an event fires, a model classifies or drafts something, the result is written back.
Also known as
- web hook
- HTTP callback
Related tools
- Zapier — Automate workflows and connect thousands of apps without coding.
- Make (Integromat) — Design complex, branching automations visually — richer logic than Zapier at roughly 1/3 the per-task cost.
- n8n — Open-source, self-hostable workflow automation for developers.
- Activepieces — Free, open-source automation platform with a clean visual builder.
- Bardeen — Automate browser tasks like data scraping and form filling with AI.
Related terms
- API (Application Programming Interface) — An API is a defined way for one piece of software to request data or actions from another, and it is how AI tools plug into your stack.
- Workflow Automation — Workflow automation is connecting apps so a trigger in one automatically runs steps in others, with no manual copying between tools.
- No-Code — No-code describes software that lets you build apps, sites, and automations visually, without writing programming code.
- AI Agent — An AI agent is a system that plans multi-step work and uses tools or APIs to complete a goal, instead of just answering one question.
Category: Automation