10 Best RPA Tools (May 2026)

Robotic process automation has become essential infrastructure for organizations looking to eliminate repetitive manual work. The technology has matured significantly in 2026 — modern RPA platforms now combine traditional bot-driven task execution with agentic AI capabilities, intelligent document processing, natural language understanding, and autonomous decision-making. The market continues to consolidate around platforms that blend RPA with broader automation orchestration.

Choosing the right RPA tool depends on your existing tech stack, the complexity of the processes you need to automate, and whether you need attended automation (bots assisting human workers in real time) or unattended automation (bots running independently on servers). Some platforms excel in regulated industries where governance is non-negotiable. Others prioritize accessibility and low-code design for citizen developers.

Below are the 10 best RPA tools available right now.

Comparison Table of Best RPA Tools

1. UiPath

UiPath is the market leader in enterprise RPA, offering an agentic automation platform that handles everything from simple data entry to complex multi-system workflows. The platform now spans three tiers: a Basic plan starting at $25/month for individuals and small teams, plus Standard and Enterprise tiers (contact sales) for organizations that need full-scale agent orchestration, self-healing UI automation, and process mining. Its drag-and-drop Studio interface and Autopilot feature let both developers and business users build automations.

The Enterprise tier adds capabilities like bringing your own AI models, managing encryption keys, and running multi-region deployments. UiPath’s extensive library of pre-built activities, strong OCR capabilities, and integration ecosystem make it well-suited for automating processes across ERP systems, legacy applications, and cloud services. The free Community Edition remains available for teams evaluating RPA before committing to enterprise licensing.

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2. Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere delivers its Agentic Process Automation System through a cloud-native platform that has evolved well beyond traditional RPA. The standout additions are the Process Reasoning Engine, which brings enterprise context and dynamic decision-making to workflows, and AI Agent Studio, a low-code workspace for creating custom AI agents that execute cognitive tasks. Automator AI auto-creates workflows and adapts automations to accelerate the development lifecycle.

The platform’s Document Automation handles intelligent document processing embedded directly in workflows, while Process Discovery provides visibility into business processes to identify optimization opportunities. Automation Anywhere offers a free Community Edition for students and developers. Enterprise pricing requires contacting sales. The platform is best suited for large organizations that need AI-native automation with strong security controls, cloud-native architecture, and hybrid deployment flexibility.

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3. Microsoft Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate remains the most accessible and affordable entry point into RPA for organizations using Microsoft 365. The Premium tier costs $15/user/month and includes cloud flows, attended desktop flows, and process mining with 50 MB of data storage. For unattended automation, the Process tier runs $150/bot/month, while the Hosted Process tier at $215/bot/month adds a Microsoft-managed Azure virtual machine.

Power Automate supports both cloud flows (API-based triggers and actions with 1,000+ connectors) and desktop flows (screen-level RPA for legacy applications). Microsoft Copilot Studio integration ($200/month for 25,000 Copilot Credits) adds conversational AI and agent-building capabilities. A 30-day free trial is available. The platform is ideal for business teams automating departmental processes — expense approvals, data entry from forms, email routing — without enterprise RPA budgets or dedicated developer resources.

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4. SS&C Blue Prism

SS&C Blue Prism has evolved from a pure RPA vendor into an agentic automation platform built for environments where governance, auditability, and security are as important as automation itself. The new WorkHQ platform unifies humans, digital workers, and AI agents on a single fabric, while the AI Gateway provides enterprise-grade governance for deploying AI safely. Chorus handles end-to-end process orchestration at scale. SS&C reports 3,571 automated agents in production internally, processing over 500,000 transactions across 35 AI agents.

Blue Prism’s strength remains in regulated industries — banking, insurance, healthcare, and government — where every automated action needs a full audit trail. The platform has been named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for RPA for seven consecutive years and earned Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice recognition with a 4.5/5 rating. Pricing requires contacting sales. This is an enterprise-only product with no free tier, reflecting its governance-first design for large-scale deployments.

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5. Pega Platform

Pega Platform approaches RPA as one component of a broader enterprise transformation toolkit. Robot Studio provides an easy-to-use, low-code environment for designing and deploying bots, while Robot Manager handles work queue management, bot performance monitoring, and self-healing capabilities from a single interface. The platform supports both attended RPA (digital assistants for real-time employee support) and unattended RPA (24/7 background processing), with claims of automating up to 90% of manual work in some deployments.

What sets Pega apart is the unified integration of RPA with agentic AI, process mining, Process AI for predictive analytics, and Pega Blueprint for accelerated transformation planning. Starbucks uses Pega’s automation capabilities and has reported saving thousands of hours in manual tasks. Pega was recognized in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for BOAT Platforms. Pricing requires contacting sales. The platform is best suited for large enterprises running complex, multi-step processes that require dynamic decision-making across multiple systems.

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6. WorkFusion

WorkFusion has fully specialized in AI agents for financial crime compliance, focusing on anti-money laundering, sanctions screening, adverse media monitoring, KYC, and transaction monitoring. Rather than general-purpose RPA, its AI agents act as trained digital analysts that review and resolve Level 1 alerts and conduct Level 2 investigations. The platform is trusted by 10 of the top 20 global banks, with customers including Deutsche Bank, Scotiabank, and Raymond James.

WorkFusion’s AI agents onboard in 4-6 weeks with minimal training and achieve up to 95% straight-through processing rates when enhanced with GenAI. Every decision is documented with detailed narratives and complete audit trails for regulators. The platform is SOC 2 certified and has won multiple industry awards including the 2026 FinTech Breakthrough Award. Pricing requires contacting sales. WorkFusion is purpose-built for Fortune 500 financial institutions that need automation capable of handling compliance-sensitive processes where accuracy and explainability are mandatory.

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7. Appian

Appian embeds RPA directly into a comprehensive low-code automation platform, with bots operating within the same environment as workflows, data models, AI agents, and user interfaces. The platform offers three pricing tiers (Standard, Advanced, Premium) on a per-user, per-month, per-app basis. Standard includes 5 RPA bots, Advanced provides 25 bots with AI Agent Studio and Copilot access, and Premium offers unlimited bots with full AI capabilities. A free Community Edition is available for exploration.

Appian was named a Leader in both the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for BOAT and for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms. The Advanced and Premium tiers include Agent Studio for building AI agents, AI Copilot for both developers and business users, and DocCenter for intelligent document processing. The platform’s Data Fabric connects to multiple data sources, and Process HQ provides process intelligence. Appian deploys across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments with a 99.8-99.99% cloud SLA.

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8. NICE Robotic Automation

NICE Robotic Automation is purpose-built for desktop and contact center environments where bots need to work alongside human agents in real time. Its NEVA (NICE Employee Virtual Attendant) provides attended automation that guides agents through processes, auto-populates fields, and handles backend lookups while the agent manages the customer interaction. NEVA Studio supports development of both attended and unattended automations from a single platform.

NEVA Discover uses AI-powered task mining and process analytics to identify automation opportunities and uncover inefficient processes. The platform also supports unattended automation for high-volume backend processing. NICE has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA and in Everest Group’s Task Mining Products PEAK Matrix. A free trial is available. NICE is the strongest choice for organizations with large contact center operations that need to improve agent efficiency and reduce average handle time.

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9. Tungsten Automation

Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax) has evolved into an AI-powered workflow automation platform with particular strength in intelligent document processing. The company was recognized as a Leader in the inaugural 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IDP and in the 2025 Everest Group Process Orchestration PEAK Matrix. With 40 years of document automation expertise, the platform applies purpose-built AI for document automation, workflow orchestration, AP/AR automation, and knowledge discovery.

The Tungsten Automation Platform focuses on applying the right AI for each specific task rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Its AP and AR automation streamlines invoices and ensures compliance, while document and workflow automation turns document-heavy processes into actionable insights. The platform also includes print and workplace automation for hybrid cloud environments and PDF/eSignature solutions. Trusted by enterprises including Pfizer, Kroger, and Schneider Electric, pricing requires contacting sales.

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10. SAP Build Process Automation

SAP Build Process Automation is the natural RPA choice for organizations running SAP as their core business system. The platform combines workflow management, robotic process automation, and AI-powered document processing in a unified low-code environment, with deep native integration into S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, Ariba, and other SAP products. It uses flexible usage-based billing through SAP BTP, with contracts ranging from 3 to 12 months.

The platform offers three user types: Advanced users (builders with full workflow creation access), Standard users (end users who participate in workflows), and Attended/Unattended automation licenses for RPA bot execution. Unattended automation runs $578/connection/month. Additional API calls cost $5.78 per 10,000/month, and storage is $2.89/GB/month. A free trial is available through SAP BTP. For non-SAP environments, however, the value proposition weakens significantly — this is an ecosystem play first and a general-purpose RPA tool second.

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Which RPA Tool Should You Choose?

The right RPA platform depends on your organization’s size, existing technology stack, and automation maturity. Microsoft Power Automate and SAP Build Process Automation are strong ecosystem-specific choices — if you are already invested in Microsoft 365 or SAP, they offer the fastest path to value at the lowest cost.

For enterprise-scale automation programs, UiPath and Automation Anywhere remain the market leaders, with UiPath offering the broader developer ecosystem and Automation Anywhere pushing further into agentic AI capabilities.

If governance and compliance drive your requirements, SS&C Blue Prism and WorkFusion are purpose-built for those constraints, with WorkFusion now exclusively focused on financial crime compliance.

Organizations that want RPA integrated into a broader low-code platform should evaluate Appian and Pega. For contact center-specific use cases, NICE Robotic Automation’s attended automation capabilities remain unmatched. And for document-heavy workflows requiring intelligent processing, Tungsten Automation brings 40 years of domain expertise.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is robotic process automation (RPA)?

RPA is software technology that automates repetitive, rule-based tasks by mimicking human interactions with digital systems. Bots can log into applications, enter data, extract information, move files, and execute multi-step workflows across different software systems without requiring changes to the underlying applications.

What is the difference between attended and unattended RPA?

Attended RPA bots work alongside human users in real time, assisting with tasks as they happen – common in contact centers and customer service roles. Tools like NICE NEVA excel here. Unattended bots run independently on servers without human intervention, typically handling high-volume backend processing like invoice reconciliation or data migration. Most enterprise platforms including UiPath, Blue Prism, and Power Automate support both modes.

How much does RPA software cost?

RPA pricing varies widely. Microsoft Power Automate starts at $15/user/month for attended desktop automation. UiPath’s Basic tier begins at $25/month. SAP Build uses usage-based billing with unattended automation at $578/connection/month. Enterprise solutions from Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, Pega, and others typically require custom pricing based on the number of bots, users, and deployment model.

What is agentic process automation?

Agentic process automation represents the evolution beyond traditional rule-based RPA. It combines RPA execution with AI agents that can understand context, make decisions, and adapt to variations in processes. Platforms like Automation Anywhere (with its Process Reasoning Engine), SS&C Blue Prism (WorkHQ platform), and Appian (Agent Studio) are leading this shift. These AI agents go beyond following scripts – they reason about tasks and handle exceptions autonomously.

Can RPA tools work with legacy systems?

Yes. One of RPA’s core strengths is automating processes on legacy systems that lack modern APIs. Bots interact with applications at the user interface level – clicking buttons, reading screens, entering data – which means they can automate any system a human can use, including mainframes, terminal emulators, and older desktop applications. Pega and UiPath both offer self-healing bots that automatically adapt when application UIs change.