Power Automate alternatives: 11 robotic process automation tools compared
The typical searcher started on Power Automate because it came with a Microsoft 365 tenant, built a few cloud flows, then found that desktop automation is licensed per user for attended bots and per bot for unattended ones. They move to RPA platforms with their own licensing and orchestration, to a workflow tool priced by executions, or to an open-source robot with no licence fee.
Short answer: The closest replacements for Power Automate in our robotic process automation ranking are UiPath, Automation Anywhere and n8n. Choose UiPath if RPA is the main workload and you want a vendor built around it, including on-premises hosting. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best RPA Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Power Automate.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this site; it never changes what we say
about a product. How that works.
Pricing: Premium $15 per user per month, published; unattended bots $150 and hosted bots $215 per bot per month
Established in: United States
Built for: Microsoft-standardised companies automating small tasks around Office, Teams and Dataverse
Not for: Teams needing complex unattended robots at low cost
01
Why buyers look past Power Automate
01
Three licences for three kinds of bot
Microsoft lists Power Automate Premium at $15.00 per user per month, paid yearly, covering cloud flows and desktop flows in attended mode. Unattended desktop automation is a separate Power Automate Process licence at $150.00 per bot per month, paid yearly. The Hosted Process licence is $215.00 per bot per month. Planning a bot estate means adding up all three.
02
Unattended automation is a per-bot cost from the start
Premium covers a person running a bot on their own desktop. The moment a process must run without a person present, the bill moves to the bot licences above. A team with a dozen scheduled processes can price that against an RPA platform whose licence is built around robots and orchestration from the beginning.
03
Tied to the Microsoft stack
Power Automate sits inside Microsoft Power Platform and uses Dataverse for storage. Premium includes a 250 MB database allowance, the Process licence 50 MB. That suits an organisation already on Microsoft 365 and Azure. It suits less well a team that needs to automate across SAP, mainframe or other estates, or wants to host the automation layer somewhere else.
Attended desktop robots built for contact centre agents
your process automation is customer-service heavy and you are open to an AI-agent approach instead of scripted bots
#13
03
What each one does differently
1
UiPath
United States · Basic from $25 per month, published; Standard and Enterprise quoted; users and robots licensed separately
Dedicated RPA vendor with a Free tier, Basic from $25 per month (hosted in a European region, limited users and robots) and quoted Standard and Enterprise plans. Standard can be hosted in a chosen region or on your own premises, and comes with a 60-day trial. Basic is described as evolving.
Switch from Power Automate if RPA is the main workload and you want a vendor built around it, including on-premises hosting.
United States · Quoted per organisation; Community Edition at no cost for learners and small businesses
RPA and agentic process automation platform with a free Cloud Community Edition for students, developers and small businesses on its Automation 360 cloud. We found no published price list for production plans on the site, so enterprise cost is a sales conversation.
Switch from Power Automate if you want to prototype free on a full cloud RPA platform before negotiating an enterprise contract.
Germany · Self-hosting free under a source-available licence; cloud published per month
Not an RPA robot product but a workflow tool from n8n GmbH in Berlin. Pricing is by monthly workflow executions (Starter EUR 20 per month billed annually for 2,500 executions, Pro EUR 50 for 10,000), all plans with unlimited users. The code is under the Sustainable Use License, and self-hosting is possible.
Switch from Power Automate if your flows connect APIs and apps, not legacy screens, and you want to pay per execution.
United Kingdom · Quoted per digital worker per year
Sold as SS&C Blue Prism, with products named Blue Prism Enterprise, Blue Prism Cloud, Desktop and Decipher IDP, positioned for large organisations and regulated industries. The pages we read show no prices, so licensing is negotiated.
Switch from Power Automate if you run a central RPA programme in a regulated enterprise and want a governance-first product.
Combines workflow and RPA in one low-code tool from SAP, sold on SAP's business technology platform. Its pricing page lists add-ons at EUR 5 per 10,000 extra API calls and EUR 2.50 per extra GB of storage. It is sensible mainly for organisations whose core processes already run on SAP.
Switch from Power Automate if your processes are SAP processes and you want automation sold and supported by SAP.
United States · SaaS or on-premises from USD 981 per month, published; 30-day trial
Offered as software as a service or on premises, with a no-cost 30-day trial. IBM shows indicative prices starting at USD 981 per month for the paid options, excluding taxes. It includes attended and unattended bots, a Studio build environment, OCR and an intelligent virtual agent.
Switch from Power Automate if you want one bundle with attended and unattended bots, OCR and the choice of SaaS or on premises.
United States · Quoted per organisation; attended and unattended bots unlimited
Package pricing is quoted through sales. Its RPA and Integrations package lists unlimited attended and unattended bots, with orchestration as SaaS or on premises, a GenAI co-pilot for development and OCR. Separate packages cover document processing and AI agents with process management.
Switch from Power Automate if per-bot licence fees are your main complaint and you accept a quoted package instead.
Denmark · Free and open source; paid hosting and support available
Open-source robot published under the MPL-2.0 licence on GitHub, described by its maintainers as free open source enterprise-grade RPA, with a link to commercial support. No licence fee, so you carry the setup, hosting and support yourself. It lacks the managed cloud, governance and vendor SLA of the commercial platforms.
Switch from Power Automate if you have developers who can run it and the fee per bot is what you are trying to remove.
Part of the Nintex process automation line, which also covers workflow, forms and document generation. Nintex describes drag-and-drop bot design, attended bots and machine learning with OCR. A free trial is offered, but we found no published price, so cost is quoted.
Switch from Power Automate if you already use Nintex for workflow and want bots in the same vendor relationship.
Tungsten RPA is part of Tungsten's wider workflow automation platform, and is described as automating multi-step tasks without coding. It can be deployed on premises or in the cloud, and uses Git to manage versions of many robots. Pricing is not shown on the page we read.
Switch from Power Automate if you want robots managed like code, with Git, across development, test and production.
NiCE now describes its automation offer as agentic AI for enterprise processes, set explicitly against traditional RPA with rigid scripts. On the pages we could read it does not describe attended or unattended robots or RPA pricing, so check the current product scope with NiCE before shortlisting.
Switch from Power Automate if your process automation is customer-service heavy and you are open to an AI-agent approach instead of scripted bots.
Power Automate remains the right choice when most of your applications are Microsoft ones, when the work is cloud flows plus a handful of attended desktop flows, and when the Premium licence at $15.00 per user per month covers the people who need it. It starts with a 30-day free trial, it sits inside the tenant and identity setup you already run, and it avoids a second vendor relationship. Dedicated RPA platforms start to pay back once unattended bots, orchestration across many processes or non-Microsoft hosting become the main requirement.
05
What moving off Power Automate involves
01
Inventory the flows before you pick a platform
Separate cloud flows (API and connector based) from desktop flows (screen based) and attended from unattended. API-style flows often move to a workflow tool, screen-based unattended flows move to an RPA platform, and the split decides which alternative on this list fits.
02
Flows are rebuilt, not exported
Flow definitions are not portable between vendors, so each process has to be rebuilt and tested on the new platform. Budget for running the old and new bot in parallel on one process first, and check how the new platform handles credentials, since the stored connections in Microsoft will not move with you.
06
Questions about replacing Power Automate
6 answers
How much does Power Automate cost compared with a dedicated RPA platform?
Microsoft publishes $15.00 per user per month (paid yearly) for Premium with attended desktop flows, $150.00 per bot per month for unattended Process licences and $215.00 per bot per month for Hosted Process.
UiPath shows Basic from $25 per month and IBM shows prices from USD 981 per month, while most other vendors quote.
Is there a free alternative to Power Automate for RPA?
OpenRPA is open source under MPL-2.0 and UiPath lists a Free tier. Automation Anywhere offers a free Community Edition on its cloud platform, and n8n's code is available under its Sustainable Use License for self-hosting.
Each free option has limits, such as scale, support or permitted use.
Does Power Automate have a free trial?
Yes. Microsoft lists a free 30-day trial that covers UI-based cloud flows and standard connectors. UiPath's Standard plan has a 60-day trial and IBM offers a no-cost 30-day trial of its RPA.
Which alternatives can run on premises?
IBM RPA is offered on premises, UiPath Standard can be hosted on your own premises, Tungsten RPA can be deployed on premises, and ElectroNeek lists SaaS or on-premises orchestration. OpenRPA and n8n can be self-hosted.
Is n8n a replacement for Power Automate?
For API and app integration flows, often yes, with execution-based pricing and unlimited users. For screen-based automation of desktop applications, no, since n8n is a workflow engine and not a desktop RPA robot.
Why do some alternatives show no prices?
We found no published prices for Blue Prism, Nintex, Tungsten, Automation Anywhere or NiCE, and SAP lists only add-on prices. ElectroNeek and UiPath's higher plans are quoted. Contact the vendor with your robot count and process volume, and compare quotes on the same assumptions.
—
Sources
Checked 8 October 2026
Microsoft Power Automate pricing: Premium, Process and Hosted Process prices, attended and unattended desktop flows, Dataverse entitlements, 30-day trial.
UiPath pricing: Free, Basic from $25, European region hosting, Standard and Enterprise quoted, 60-day trial, on-premises hosting.
