Our users want to explore different topics about RPA tools, feel free to jump to the topic that interests you the most:
- Learn about different types of RPA tools including their advantages and limitations
- See the full list of RPA tools
- See the full list of open-source/ free trial/ freemium RPA tools [Separate article]
- Read our approach to compare different RPA vendors and identify the right one for your business. [Separate article] I would recommend reading that if you are already trying to decide between one or two vendors.
- If you don’t know much about RPA, you may need an intro before we explain the different RPA tools in detail. If that’s the case you can check out our great guide for that or get our whitepaper:
What are RPA tools?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools help developers or non-technical personnel develop RPA bots. RPA bots can automate clerical tasks mainly via manipulation of user interfaces.
For more, feel free to read the definition of RPA.
Complete list of RPA tools by all RPA companies/vendors
Below, you can find a list of 55 RPA tools. We have the latest and greatest version of this list with a much better interface under aimultiple.com. The updated list allows you to sort/filter the results and learn more about the products, hope you enjoy it.
The most comprehensive, objective and transparent comparison of RPA vendors. We could not provide detailed data on especially new companies, feel free to comment here so we can enrich the list.Vendor | Free version? | Pricing | Selected partners | Geo coverage | Minimum system requirements | Support for OS beyond Windows | Marketplace |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Another Monday | KPMG PwC | Europe | |||||
AntWorks ANTstein | |||||||
Arago's Hiro | |||||||
Argos Labs | 14 day free trial | per bot | Global | Low | Supported | Python integration | |
Atos Syntel SyntBots | |||||||
Automai RPA | |||||||
Automation Anywhere | per process | Accenture Capgemini Cognizant Deloitte EY IBM KPMG PwC | Global | High | No support | Automation Anywhere | |
AutomationEdge | |||||||
be informed | Global | ||||||
Blueprism | per bot | Accenture Capgemini Cognizant Deloitte EY IBM KPMG PwC | Global | High | No support | BluePrism | |
Celaton inSTREAM | |||||||
Cicero Automation | |||||||
ClearSoftware ClearProcess | |||||||
CloudStorm | Deloitte | Global | |||||
Contextor | Accenture Capgemini EY IBM | EMEA & North America | |||||
Cortex Intelligent Automation | |||||||
Datamatics RPA | Global | ||||||
EnableSoft Foxtrot | Global | No Support | N/A | ||||
Epiance Epigenie RPA | |||||||
Exilant Fusion | |||||||
G1ant | G1ant Developer license | ||||||
GIBots | |||||||
GridOne AutomateOne | South Korea | ||||||
Help Systems Automate | 30 day free trial | Global | TBD - not tested yet | ||||
Ikarus | |||||||
Infosys EdgeVerve Systems Assistedge | Assistedge Community Edition | ||||||
IntelliBot | |||||||
Jacada | Accenture Cognizant | ||||||
Jidoka | Based in Spain & Colombia | ||||||
Kofax Kapow | Accenture IBM | Global | |||||
Kryon Systems Leo | |||||||
Microsoft Power Automate | Free trial | per user | All major system integrators and consultants | Global | No support | ||
NICE Systems RPA | Accenture Cognizant IBM | Global | |||||
Nissho Electronics Bizrobo! Basic | Japan | Medium | Supported | ||||
Nividous RPA | |||||||
NTT-AT WinActor | NTT Data | Japan | Low | No support | |||
Olive AI | |||||||
OnviSource ia.Enterprise | |||||||
OpenConnect AutoiQ | |||||||
OpenRPA | Open Source | Free | |||||
Option3 JiffyRPA | Global | ||||||
Pega Robotic Automation | Accenture Capgemini Cognizant EY | Global | |||||
Perpetuuiti | Cognizant IBM | ||||||
Redwood Software | Accenture Capgemini Deloitte IBM KPMG | Global | |||||
Rimilia | |||||||
Softomotive ProcessRobot | |||||||
Softomotive WinAutomation | 30 day free trial | lifetime license | Global | TBD - not tested yet | |||
Symphony Ventures | |||||||
TagUI - AI Singapore | Open Source | Free | N/A | Supported | |||
Thoughtonomy | |||||||
UiPath | UiPath Community Edition | per bot | Accenture Capgemini Cognizant Deloitte EY IBM PwC | Global | High | No support | UiPath |
Verint | Accenture Capgemini IBM | ||||||
VisualCron | 45 day free trial | per server | |||||
WINWAI | |||||||
WorkFusion | WorkFusion RPA Express | per process | Capgemini Cognizant Deloitte PwC | Global | High | No support |
Key features of RPA tools
The right RPA tool for a specific process in a specific industry depends on the capabilities of the tool. RPA bots from all RPA companies can be categorized by the functionality they provide in these 3 dimensions:
- Programming options: RPA bots need to be programmed and there are 5 ways to program bots: Coding, low code (UX supported), recording, no code tools, self-learning tools
- Cognitive capabilities: Programmed bots need to have cognitive capabilities to determine their actions based on inputs they gather from other systems. RPA tools provide a range of cognitive capabilities: No capabilities, built-in cognitive capabilities, marketplace supported capabilities
- Usage: Bots serve specific functions. Though most RPA tools can be used to build bots that serve all these functions, some tools are more optimized for attended or unattended automation: Attended, unattended or hybrid
Programming options
RPA programming is relatively simple compared to other types of programming and there are code-free ways to program RPA bots. There are 5 ways to program RPA bots:
1- Coding
As expected, the most powerful interfaces for programming bots is coding the program with a programming language. Need to explicitly code the tool to perform the necessary actions to replicate a process or functionality. However, coding requires training and patience so this method is relevant for technically inclined personnel. Programming instructions essentially tell the bot which programs to use and how to interact with those programs.
Limitations
Though these tools can be programmed in extremely flexible ways and can automate up to 40-50% of the activities in an enterprise, they have some limitations:
- non-Windows environments: Most RPA vendors do not offer solutions for non-Windows operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux. This is not a major problem most of the time because a majority of human dependent company processes are conducted on Windows machines.
- Reliance on programming effort: From a purely theoretical perspective, any process can be fully automated. However, as process complexity increases, programming time and cost make automation financially infeasible.
- Reliance on programmers: While bots are relatively easy to program, they still need to be programmed by tech-savy personnel. Enterprises solve this problem with several measures:
- Enterprises are founding centers of excellence (CoE) where they gather RPA talent who help departments with their automation efforts and guide them in their RPA journey
- Enterprises outsource programming to RPA implementations specialists or other consultants
- Edge cases: These are problematic for all automation solutions. When bots encounter cases that programmers had not anticipated, results can be unexpected. This requires auditing bots during first roll-out to ensure that such cases are encountered and fixed. However, not all edge cases can be identified during the first week of operations. For example changing market conditions can generate new cases months after bots are rolled out. This requires building a warning system and carrying out regular audits in light of changing market, regulatory or technology conditions.
2- Low code solutions: Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)
Most modern RPA vendors offer solutions to program simple RPA bots with drag&drop interfaces. Technically proficient personnel (those that can code excel macros) should be capable of setting up simple bots. For more technical users, these tools also offer code based bot programming interfaces.
Limitations
As these tools also rely on coding for more complex bots, they share most of the limitations of tools that require coding.
3- Recording
Just like macros in excel, bots can complete recorded actions. Recording a complex set actions and having them automatically translated into a bot program facilitates programming. Most vendors offer such macro recorders. Recorded actions can involve numerous enterprise software such as taking data from Salesforce, merging it with a report from mailchimp in excel to identify which customers to target during the company’s routine customer activation SMS campaign.
Recorder function is an important advantage in an RPA tool because it enables rapid bot programming. However, recorders have some limitations as well:
- Recording a complex set of functionality can be difficult and error prone
- Maintaining recorded bots is difficult as their code is machine produced and may not be easy to read. Re-recording actions after each small change in the process can also be time consuming
4- No code solutions
Some vendors are also developing no code RPA solutions. These solutions provide a powerful GUI and recorder function to enable programming even relatively complex bots without coding.
5- Self-learning bots
These bots watch recorded employee activity to learn automatable tasks. They are the easiest to deploy bots but they are currently a relatively emerging field of RPA.
Programmable RPA solutions interact with other systems but programming them is a significant undertaking and is the primary job to be automated to enable faster RPA roll-out. Self-learning solutions program themselves.
There are various approaches to learning for RPA tools:
- Using historical (when available) and current data, these tools can monitor hours of employee activity to understand the tasks completed and to start completing them after they have reached enough confidence to complete the process.
- Employees can use the tool as they complete tasks in the manual manner as they used to. As tasks are completed, tools learn the necessary activities and start automating them. Employees provide feedback to the tool as it increases its automation levels. WorkFusion demonstrates this below:

Over time, the level of automation provided by such tools improve as demonstrated by WorkFusion:

Most of these tools are in beta stage. During our podcast with WorkFusion leadership, they mentioned that they had been using such solutions for years but we have not yet spoken to one of their customers on the effectiveness of these solutions.
Limitations
There are 3 major limitations to self learning:
1- Time requirement: As we all know, learning takes time and machines are no different in this situation. You may have heard about how DeepMind’s AlphaZero learnt chess in 4 hours and defeated the best chess playing computer program. So why does learning in RPA take longer?
Unfortunately, while you can play chess against yourself, you can’t run a business process by yourself. There’s just too many possible inputs in a process. The key ingredient in machine learning is data and you need to feed a bot months of data for it to be an effective learner. If such data is available, that’s great. However, most of the time enterprises have access to the outcomes of a process, the structured data but the unstructured inputs are not stored for more than a month. If that’s the case, then data collection will need to start ASAP and can take a few months depending on the specific process to be automated
2- Lack of maturity of the solution: This is more of an area of research now. There are a few vendors that claim this capability but we have not been able to verify their effectiveness from their customers yet.
3- Learning errors: Learning from screenshots is not always perfect since learning relies on identifying images in scraped screenshots. Especially during initial deployment, these bots could be making mistakes and their activity needs to be audited. Most of the time mistakes are avoided as bots understand when they see cases they don’t know how to complete. In such cases, they contact employees for guidance.
Cognitive capabilities
Intelligent/cognitive automation tools allow RPA tools to handle unstructured information and make decisions based on complex, unstructured input. Cognitive automation (also called smart or intelligent automation) is an emerging field that augments RPA tools with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities like optical character recognition (OCR) or natural language processing (NLP). Cognitive automation is the future of RPA. It deals with both structured and unstructured data including text heavy reports.
These are the solutions that get consultants and executives most excited. Vendors claim that 70-80% of corporate knowledge tasks can be automated with increased cognitive capabilities. To deal with unstructured data, cognitive bots need to be capable of machine learning and natural language processing. See our cognitive automation guide for more info. Cognitive automation is the current focus for most RPA companies’ product teams.
There are 4 types of RPA tools in terms of the cognitive capabilities they provide:
No cognitive capabilities
RPA tools without cognitive capabilities are relatively dumb and simple; should be used for simple, repetitive business processes.
While this seems like a big disadvantage, there is a mitigation. Even if the RPA tool does not have built-in cognitive automation capabilities, most tools are flexible enough to allow cognitive software vendors to build extensions. Therefore, required cognitive functionality can be added on these tools.
However, it is likely to take longer to implement these solutions as your company would need to find a capable cognitive solution provider on top of the RPA provider. Only the simplest tools, initially built in 2000s before the explosion of interest in RPA are in this bucket.
Built-in cognitive capabilities
Most RPA tools are in this bucket. Most RPA companies have been investing in various ways to build cognitive capabilities but cognitive capabilities of different tools vary of course. The ideal way would be to test the RPA tool to be procured against the cognitive capabilities required by the process you will automate in your company.
Marketplace supported cognitive capabilities
Realising that they can not build every cognitive solution, top RPA companies are investing in encouraging developers to contribute to their marketplaces where a variety of cognitive solutions from different vendors can be purchased.
RPA tools by usage
There are 3 types of RPA automation that serves different needs:
Attended automation (also called Robotic Desktop Automation)
These bots reside on the user’s machine and are invoked by the user. They are appropriate for tasks that are triggered at programmatically hard-to-detect points. For example, a customer service rep will understand the customer’s inquiry and need to complete a transaction in the system. Let’s assume that due to system limitations, customer service rep would normally need to work with 3 screens and complete 5 manual steps to complete this transaction. Instead of doing those, rep launches the attended automation code. RPA bot works like the rep, performs the necessary operations and asks for guidance from the rep if needed. RPA bot can actually work a lot better than the rep, perform regulatory and compliance checks and would never do manual mistakes due to fatigue or boredom.
Attended automation is a good way to augment your employees that face customers but still need to complete manual work. Read our in-depth article on attended automation for more info.
Unattended automation
Unattended bots are like batch processes on the cloud. They complete a data processing task in the background. They are ideal for reducing work of back-office employees.
There are a few options for launching unattended automation:
- Data input in a specified location: Most unattended bots are triggered when data is input in the system. Whether it is new transactions or employees, additional data processing is generally required to serve regulatory or marketing-related needs.
- Bot initiated: A bot can also launch another bot. This can be useful when a bot operation has various different outcomes. For example, a KYC inquiry may either require manual investigation or automated processing to complete the customer’s registration. Based on the outcome, bot can notify the investigation team or launch another bot to complete registration.
- Orchestrator initiated: RPA administrators can use orchestrator software to stop or launch bots.
- Specified intervals: Bots can be launched at specific times to batch process data.
Hybrid RPA
Attended and unattended RPA bots are combined to provide automation for both front office and back office activities, allowing end-to-end automation of a process.
Best RPA software
With more than 50 players in the market, it is hard to identify the best RPA solution. The best solution for your company depends on your specific requirements and our article on RPA vendor selection provides a lot more detail on how to choose RPA software.
You can also check out our article on best RPA software where we used vanity metrics like funding and online traffic to rank RPA tools by popularity.
We also provide more RPA information with our whitepaper and help companies find AI solutions:
29 comments
Reprise Assistant not mentioned
Thank you for reaching out. We never heard it mentioned by anyone except you. Its website does not have a measurable number visitors according to similarWeb. Please reach out once this tool is enjoying measurable usage or correct us on its usage level with data that we can confirm.
Hi,
Great to have Kryon systems on this article 🙂
Please add more details to Kryon systems:
Free version? – yes
Selected partners – AWS, Verint, Microsoft, Htperscience
Geo coverage – Global
Thank you for your interest. Please sign up at https://grow.aimultiple.com to appear in our lists,
Hi,
I would like to recommend to review “AAPNA Infotech” for your rpa companies list. Please spare some time and check out services. https://www.aapnainfotech.com/services/robotic-process-automation/
Great article and very insightful! We’ve launched 2 years ago our own RPA product, RAX Automation Suite. We are pioneering RPA here in the Philippines as the first locally developed RPA tool. The software is currently used in Japan and Philippines. Feel free to check us out: www.raxsuite.com.
Thanks, feel free to get in touch with us via email if you want us to test your RPA solution and see if we can feature it,
Hi… Please add T-Plan… we are on the image but not on the list!
Thanks for the great article.
Charlie
CEO
Hi Charlie! We are not keeping the table above up to date but you can add T-plan to the list here http://aimultiple.com/rpa-software by registering @ https://grow.aimultiple.com/signup
Thank you
We should have these parameters while selecting the automation tool:
Automation capabilities: web-based, drag & drop and Cloud ready.
Scaling: has to be elastic
Document Processing: has to be ML based
AI based decision making: has to be applied beyond document processing. And “Train-as-you-go”capability is MUST-HAVE
Data Interface and HIL: The interface must have cognitive capabilities and integrated with HIL
Full fledged Analytics Platform: MUST-HAVE huge data storage and processing capabilities. Good to have in-built visualization capabilities.
Hi Payeli,
Great set of criteria indeed. We are working on adding additional dimensions to our RPA vendor list, we will review these as we prepare those updated RPA vendor lists.
OpenRPA missing from your list
Sure added. However, we no longer actively maintain this list. You can be part of the updated list @ https://aimultiple.com/rpa-software by registering @ https://grow.aimultiple.com/
Great post, thank you so much, really comprehensive! As far as I know there are more ‘low key’ companies which also perform pretty well and they seem to offer an alternative to RPA. I recently saw some ads of HTI Labs (www.htilabs.com) who are a self-funded startup and they seems to be doing great since they have some big clients like Gazprom or Microsoft. You might consider giving us some more information about this in the future? Thanks!
Comments on Another Monday, change adds to exiting record:
1. Free version: 30 day Free trial license of AM Muse and AM Composer (designer)
2. Pricing: Low Pay Per Minute Licences. Concurrent licenses, Unlimited processes. Success only Fees.
3. Usability Drag n Drop: Available
4. Usability Macro recording: Available
5. Usability No Code RPA: Available
6. Selected Partners: KPMG, PwC, EY, Deloitte
7. GEO Coverage: Global
8. Minimum system requirements: Low
9. Support beyond OS for windows: Available
10. Marketplace: N/A
Many Thanks
Thank you! Please register at https://grow.aimultiple.com/ to automatically update your company profile
Your web site is so beautiful.
Great article, really useful information.
One issue: I’m viewing this on Chrome, so maybe it’s a browser specific problem, but the “Complete list of RPA tools” is rather unwieldy to view. It isn’t completely viewable due to your right side banner taking up ~30% of the page. Is there a way to shrink that? Can you set the “Complete list of RPA tools” headline to a link where ONLY this list is shown? Or maybe set the slider to show no matter where you are on the list, not just at the bottom?
Hi Edward, thank you for your attention and interest! We are aware of the problem, unfortunately it is too complicated to fix this in the blog. We are working on a greatly improved UI on our main website, AIMultiple.com, which will go live in April.
Comments on Foxtrot (EnableSoft):
1. Free version: Free trial license
2. Pricing: Concurrent licenses, unlimited processes
3. Usability Drag n Drop: Available
4. Usability Macro recording: N/A
5. Usability No Code RPA: Available
6. Selected Partners:
7. GEO Coverage: Global
8. Minimum system requirements: Low
9. Support beyond OS for windows: No Support
10. Marketplace: N/A
Hi Kenn, thank you for the useful information. Could you clarify 2 points?
– What is the link for downloading the free trial?
– Can you explain pricing a bit more? Is it priced per user license? If yes, would be good if you could share the price.
Thank you,
Nice post! It is interesting to read and really useful. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for sharing That amazing article with us.We Will stay connected with your blogs for the future posts.
Extremely informative. I lead a team of recruiters hiring across various RPA segments and this article will help them having a well-rounded understanding in the subject.
Best!
Enjoyed reading the article above , really explains everything in detail,the article is very interesting and effective.Thank you and good luck for the upcoming articles
AA pricing is per process. They don’t have bots, they have running processes.
Thank you for the heads up! Where did you learn their pricing? Are you using AA in your organization?
the hyperlink to “the most comprehensive public list of RPA solution providers” is not available.Please check.
Fixed, thank you very much for the heads up! We upgraded our main website and some URLs needed to be changed. We forgot to fix some of the old links from the blog.