RPA Evaluation:

UiPath vs Power Automate

General
Market
Outlook
Background:
UiPath RPA
UiPath is a company created in 2005, traded on New York Stock
Exchange, originally focused on providing tools for the
robotization of business processes. Nowadays UiPath positions
itself more as a provider of a comprehensive platform
supporting automation of processes in other firms.
According to the reports of research institutes such as Forrester
or Gartner, UiPath is the world leader in the domain of Robotic
Process Automation solutions.
Power Automate RPA
Microsoft Power Automate is a solution supporting the
automation of business processes provided by Microsoft. The
current Power Automate platform is an effect of Microsoft Flow
packet transformation and Microsoft’s acquisition of Softmotive,
a firm developing WinAutomation software.
Power Automate belongs to the broader solutions packet, where
together with PowerBi, PowerApps, and Virtual Agents they form
Microsoft Power Platform. Additionally, this solution functions in
the so-called Common Data Model, which allows for very easy
integration with other Microsoft systems such as Office365,
Dynamics365, Teams, or Azure.
 UiPath RPA Power Automate RPA

UiPath provides administration within the client’s environment (on-premise) and Power Automate bot management and monitoring can be done only within the
within UiPath Cloud Microsoft Cloud.

UiPath has built considerable catalogs of integrations, connectors, and templates that Power Automate has a large number of integrations and connectors (>400). This is
are available to UiPath’s Marketplace users. It’s worth noting that with UiPath it’s because Power Automate works within the larger Microsoft platform. Thanks to that it
possible to create your own plug-ins. natively integrates with solutions working within Office365, Dynamics, or Sharepoint.

Additionally in 2021 UiPath announced the acquisition of Cloud Elements, a company Power Automate also allows for automation using API, but compared to UiPath, it’s
that has focused on data integration on the API level. Thanks to that the integration much more complicated and requires advanced programming knowledge.
possibilities offered by UiPath rose substantially. From that point on, UiPath makes
advanced automation connecting the user’s interface with automation on API level
possible.

UiPath from the very beginning they have been building their solutions with respect Power Automate is a product “added” to the Microsoft platform. Hence, many of the
to broadly understood process automation in the organization. Which is why the functionalities are not well thought out from the perspective of hyper-automation.
forthcoming functionalities and solutions support this attitude and are well thought
out in that respect.

UiPath is a much more business-user and centralized management and monitoring It seems that Microsoft prefers the users to independently automate their tasks within
automation-friendly platform. Moreover, UiPath adapted its products to a given their work environments. Centralized management is decidedly more complicated and

Architecture: position of the user:

• non-technical persons occurring in the processes - in UiPath we can find a

suited rather for teams that deal with IT environments administration rather than
automation administration and management.

product such as Action Center, allowing people involved in the process to

come into interactions with the bot.

• Citizen Developer - UiPath owns the dedicated studio allowing advanced

business users to create automation independently.

• RPA Developers - dedicated studio offering the possibility to take full

advantage of bot building

• Process Analysts - tools supporting process mining and process mapping for
automation

• Businesspersons - reporting products, allowing ROI tracking within the

automation programs

All of the above solutions are connected with each other and it’s possible to manage
them within UiPath Cloud.

When it comes to bot creation, UiPath and PowerAutomate alike possess desktop tools that allow building automation. In both cases, bots are run within separately
installed agents.
Licensing:
UiPath RPA (Yearly) Power Automate RPA (Monthly)
License per user - all the licenses intended for the users, depending on the per-user plan - allow running any number of automations and processes within
role, beginning with Citizen Developers, through RPA programmers, and users one named user, who owns the license.
responsible for Process Mining.

License per bot - all the licenses allowing to use the bots including test bots, per-user plan with supervised bot (technically called per-user plan with attended
production bots, Chatbots, and AI Bots. RPA)

Licenses for administration and maintenance - all the licenses allowing to per-flow plan - allow building automation aimed at a larger team or even the
manage automation in the organization, such as Orchestrators, apps for Task whole organization without needing to license each user separately. Within one
Mining, or reporting platforms. license per-flow you can run 5 flows maximally. Keep in mind that if you want to
use the AI mechanisms, you need to purchase the AI Builder addon separately.

Bot Creation – separate license Bot Creation – no costs

Note: Simplified licensing such that some packages include multiple products Note: within licenses no 2 and 3 it’s possible to add an add-on for running
from different categories within one license. unattended automation.
Power Automate licensing becomes quite complicated when you’d like to scale
automation and keep adding more unsupervised bots.
Advantages:

UiPath RPA (Yearly) Power Automate RPA (Monthly)

Solution dedicated to automation and robotization of Native integration with other Microsoft solutions
business process from the very beginning.

support for automation starting from the process Low-cost entry threshold for the solution
discovery through measurements and central
management

Vast user community supported by the producer Simple licensing for a start

A large number of outside integrations and partners Easy management for people administering Microsoft
solutions

An extensive system of trainings and certifications Straightforward automation creation in Office365

environment from the perspective of the business user

Ease of scaling
 Disadvantages:

UiPath RPA (Yearly) Power Automate RPA (Monthly)

Quite a high solution entry threshold Architecture that is difficult to understand from the business
perspective

Complicated licensing with numerous positions in the pricing Rather complicated licensing that is hard to predict at the start of
menu the architecture building

Focused mostly on enterprise client Lack of advanced reporting

Difficult to scale

Rigidity of the producer

Lack of well-organized community

 • Is Power Automate an alternative/complementary platform for RPA in
the Bank – Yes
• What nature of licenses would be required to run enterprise grade
processes?
• Since the intention is to Migrate SoftMotive workloads to
PowerAutomate, the following should guide the licensing
assessment:
• Number Developers to build the BOTs
• Number of current Supervised BOTs
Conclusion and • Number of Unsupervised BOTs
• Engage Microsoft licensing cost advice department to with the
Recommendations: above information to advice on the optimal and sufficient
licenses required.
• The deployment model for power automate – as illustrated in slide 4,
Microsoft only has cloud based for BOT management.
• High-level approach and effort needed to migrate SoftMotive
processes into Power Automate – this requires extensive engagement
with business and development teams working with SoftMotive BOTs
to gain an indepth understanding of the BOTs and come up with a
realistic plan.