Appian vs Flowable comparison

Appian and Flowable are both solutions in the Process Automation category. Appian is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.7, while Flowable is ranked #23. Additionally, 95% of Appian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Flowable users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Appian and Flowable are competitors in the business process management space. Appian is seen to have an edge in terms of quick setup and robust enterprise integrations, while Flowable stands out for its flexibility and customization options.

Features: Appian is known for low-code automation, dynamic case management, and comprehensive analytics. Flowable is praised for its adaptive, cloud-native architecture, strong BPMN compliance, and more granular control over processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian provides a streamlined deployment process supported by extensive documentation and proactive client service. Flowable offers flexible deployment options, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid solutions, with customer service noted for deep technical expertise, aiding in complex custom integrations.

Pricing and ROI: Appian's setup costs are higher, but rapid deployment leads to quicker ROI for those valuing speed and ease. Flowable's open-source model offers a cost-efficient initial setup with potentially lower long-term costs, appealing to organizations capable of leveraging its model effectively.

To learn more, read our detailed Process Automation Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Process Automation

June 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash

Management Consultant at Accenture

Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions

Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.

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Shad Bhowmik

Finance Specialist at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Automated remittance workflows have boosted speed and accuracy but still need geo-tagging improvements

Remittance is a crucial part of my integral operation, so any disruption would majorly impact our clients. After switching to Appian, we never faced any disruption as it is reliable and we can generate data at any point in time, quite faster than other tools in my personal opinion. Regulators can ask for data from us at any time, and with Appian, we download data from our Appian tools to share it with them whenever they ask. I would share a real-life example: a customer's transaction processed more than a year ago. Suddenly the customer came back asking for all the details. In our previous tool, it was quite difficult to generate transaction details from over a year ago; however, while using Appian, we can pull up data using different key search fields, such as a customer's cell phone number, remittance tracking number, or MT103 reference number. We shared it with the customer instantly, and the customer was surprised we could provide all the details in such a short time. It added reputational value for our organization, thanks to Appian.You have pointed out two major things: time-saving and reduction of error, which are key points while processing remittance. Previously, while using another tool, it was quite time-consuming to process remittance, but after switching to Appian, it can extract data from MT103, eliminating the need for manual data entry. The process has become fully automated. Previously we could process only five to ten transactions within an hour, but now, after switching to Appian, we can process about 100 transactions in an hour, making it 10 times faster. In terms of error detection, since Appian extracts data from MT103, the extraction rate is quite good, and the error rate is negligible, lower than 0.001%. We can share accurate, error-free data with the regulator, which is essential for us. Appian benefits us significantly. After receiving an MT103, we check what the remitter is, the amount, if it is under threshold for processing, and if it is from a high-priority remitter or client. Since Appian extracts data from MT103 messages and identifies top-level clients from the database, it can notify us to process their transactions with priority. Due to automated data extraction, there are fewer instances of error. In our previous tool, we reported regulatory data to the central bank manually and often received complaints about invalid purpose codes due to manual data entry. Appian handles this automatically, and after switching, our error rate has dropped significantly, resulting in positive feedback from the Central Bank of Bangladesh regarding our reduced error rates. This has greatly enhanced our organization's reputation. Appian is fully on-premises, and we have our own system.

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Simon Greener

Solutions Architect at Cohga Pty Ltd

Helps to control the workflow and business process components of customers' operations but OSGi integration can be challenging

I'd rate my experience with the initial setup of Flowable at about a three out of ten, but for our developers, it's probably closer to a six. I found it challenging due to the complexity of the user and help documents and the fact that much of the Flowable documentation and tutorials are focused on cloud-based implementations. Since we're primarily interested in basic components like BPMN models and form design, which aren't included in the product, the learning process was more difficult for me. In contrast, our developers are more comfortable diving into the code and technology stack, which allows them to be more proactive in their approach. The deployment took three months to complete. We're still in the deployment process. Our main challenge is integrating the Flowable process engine into our product, which uses OSGi. This has led to complexity in managing the Java versions and dependencies, as the tool has around 150 Java files. We could have chosen to interact with Flowable via a Docker container and the REST API, which would have isolated the OSGi Java dependencies, but we decided to integrate it directly. This has required resolving Java version control issues and upgrades, leading to various development challenges that must be addressed. It is a learning process for all of us. As an integrated solutions architect, I would have probably opted for the Docker route rather than the direct OSGi integration chosen by the developers. However, since they went with the OSGi integration, it's taking us longer to complete the deployment. Currently, we have one full-time developer dedicated to deployment, along with one part-time developer, and my involvement at about a quarter of my time. So, we have about two people working on deployment. As for maintenance, we're not entirely sure yet. Given our direct OSGi integration choice instead of Docker and REST, maintenance may be more challenging. However, we'll have a clearer picture once deployment is complete.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The robust and flexible nature of the product gives it the capability to automate almost all rule-based processes in each and every ERP application that is currently available in the market."

"Automation is very important if you want to grow your business to the next level because of the transparency, speed, and scalability for any organization."

"This product is easy to use, and it helps business users to more easily understand RPA."

"This solution has helped us in several ways, the first of which is scheduling processes."

"It is easily understandable and very well structured."

"I have enjoyed using all the features of this tool, not just one feature, e.g., object cloning, Excel automation, and the web recorder."

"So far, the experience with Automation Anywhere in the last two and a half years has been wonderful."

"The overall UI of the tool is so user-friendly that even a beginner can use it easily."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"It is easy for me to define the process and create configurable workflows."

"We used this solution for the digitalization of all our legal processes, as it has very flexible adaptation and the ability to save and automate processes."

"Technical support has been amazing overall."

"Technical support is quite responsive."

"Appian has enabled us to automate business processes much faster so that our users can replicate them and use them on a daily basis to improve their productivity."

"It's heavy on business processing in terms of logic, process workflows, and primarily on the process design modeler. Appian is really great at that. In terms of the full stack set from a low-code platform perspective, it's definitely an eye opener since it can be deployed via mobile app and on the web as well."

"All in all, Appian gives the best coverage of all the features needed for an automation platform."

"The valuable features include process automation, Appian Portal, and Appian RPA."

More Appian pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is the process engine. It allows us to define BPM-based workflows, deploy them into our process engine, and interact with them within our product."

Cons

"The integration in UiPath is much better. Automation Anywhere's latest version has improved. It's fine but not as good as UiPath."

"Especially while using v11, I often experience freezes with OCR extraction from PDF files."

"While it is easy to develop automation, deploying and running them requires some technical knowledge."

"We have in-house, a few variables, which we use from technical perspectives. We don't have them in Automation Anywhere, but they introduced them yesterday."

"There are a lot of things that need to be improved, especially related to the Control Room, but you can develop and scale with this tool very, very fast."

"In the debugging mode, it writes all the logs to text files, but it doesn't ever clean them up. We had one that got to 200K, and it bogged our whole machine down. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we found out that we had a 200K file sitting out there. We would like some sort of maintenance on the log files going forward."

"There should be more available Data Analytics and more AI Front and Deep Learn concepts."

"Extracting customer addresses from Google that are not in a standard URL format is a challenge for Automation Anywhere."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"Newer features, especially in terms of scalability, have to become more scalable than what it is today, and it needs better integration with our existing application ecosystem."

"Occasionally, certain pre-made modules may not be necessary and customers may desire greater customization options. Instead of being limited to pre-designed features, they may prefer a more flexible version that allows for greater customization."

"It is very expensive. It is also not easy to learn."

"The main challenge with Appian has been our inability to customize the user interface."

"Sometimes, clients expect us to implement ERP using Appian, which is very complicated. In such cases, I don't believe that Appian is a good tool for that."

"Native mobile capabilities or hybrid mobile app capabilities are very limited. Things like offline sync, offline storage, access to smartphone device features, etc. are not supported by the Appian platform yet."

"I would like to see more features for enterprises. They would also benefit from adding documentation and training on their site."

"The solution needs to have more features."

More Appian cons

"In my opinion, areas of improvement for Flowable include the management and creation of forms within the open-source components and the documentation and examples provided. While the cloud-based Flowable implementation with no-code features is attractive, we prefer more control over integration, especially since we deploy our product onto AWS. We also want to avoid additional licensing fees for Flowable runtime user components on top of our software development and implementation charges."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't agree with the IQ Bot licensing costs, which depends on the consumption of the document rather than per bot or user. This is confusing for me, because most of the cases for us in a possible future scenario, there would be a lot of invalid data to be scanned to get to real data. E.g., we would have to supply approximately 100 pages of scanned data to extract two pages of original data. In these type of cases, the IQ Bot might be a costly venture."

"The cost can be reduced a little for users."

"I think the pricing is reasonable, but clients often perceive it as expensive."

"It is expensive. Automation Anywhere has reduced the price slightly, as we have grown. However, the price is still excessive enough that we are engaged in PoCs on other tools."

"It looks like it will be right around $115,000, not counting IQ Bot, which we won't renew until later."

"When I started working on it, it was difficult to obtain a trial version (barrier to entry). Now, they have a Community Edition, which may make it easy to get started."

"It is fantastic. It has been great. It is perfectly priced for the quality received. When paying for quality, that is exactly what you get."

"The control room access gives the ability to create different roles, which helps when purchasing additional licensing."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"The price of this solution is a little high here in Mongolia."

"The cost is a bit higher than other low-code competitors, OutSystems and Mendix. The price needs to be more competitive."

"The price of the solution is reasonable and is paid annually. The price of the solution depends on how many users use the solution. It can range from $50,000 to $200,000. For example, for 20,000 users the price can be approximately $200,000."

"I think that if somebody is really serious at looking at business value, then by all means, the product is well worth the value. You get representative business value for the price that you pay for the product, and for the implementation of the product."

"If you're doing an enterprise-wide digital transformation, Appian is worthwhile, but not for just one or two use cases because the license costs are higher."

"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."

"The licensing will be on a monthly basis. We are estimating that cost to be around $2000 to maybe $3,000 per month. We don't foresee any costs above that."

"The solution offers a monthly subscription model. That's what we use. I recall it being about $90 a month. They do have different tiers."

More Appian pricing and cost advice

"Since the tool is open-source, we don't have to pay anything for it. It's free to download and use, which is great for us. If Flowable hadn't been available as open source and required a license fee for us to integrate it into our product, we might not have chosen it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	154
Midsize Enterprise	82
Large Enterprise	536

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	46

No data available

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.

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Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?

Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with...

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Is Appian a suitable solution for beginners who have no additional preparation?

Appian is actually pretty big on educating its users, including with courses that reward you with certifications. The...

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Is it easy to set up Appian or did you have to resort to professional help?

We had some issues when we were setting up Appian. It was quite surprising, since this is a low-code tool which, in i...

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Comparisons

UiPath Platform vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

WorkFusion vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 2% of the time

Pega Platform vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 2% of the time

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Camunda vs Appian

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

ServiceNow vs Appian

Compared 5% of the time

IBM BPM vs Appian

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 30% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Appian

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Process Automation

June 2026

Download Flowable product report

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS

No data available

Interactive Demo

Automation Anywhere

Demo not available

Appian

Demo not available

Flowable

Overview

Automation Anywhere offers ease of use, robust system connectivity, and GenAI-driven document automation through a cloud-native platform, significantly enhancing productivity across multiple industries with advanced AI features.

Delivering a comprehensive suite of tools designed for easy integration and rapid deployment, Automation Anywhere drives efficiency by reducing costs and automating repetitive tasks. Its cloud-native platform supports broad industry adoption, including advanced AI features like process automation and Co-Pilot, streamlining complex workflows with minimal technical skills required. Users benefit from robust integration capabilities, which facilitate seamless interaction with multiple systems. However, there is room for improvement in areas such as user-friendliness for beginners, stability, flexible licensing, and enhanced OCR functionality. Organizations in sectors such as banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare gain from the improved operational efficiency and ROI Automation Anywhere offers.

What are the important features of Automation Anywhere?

Ease of Use: Simplifies automation tasks with a user-centric interface.
Robust Connectivity: Provides seamless integration with multiple systems.
GenAI-Driven Document Automation: Leverages AI to automate document management.
Process Automation & Co-Pilot: Enhances workflow automation with advanced AI.
Cloud-Native Platform: Enables rapid deployment and integration.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Time Savings: Automation drastically reduces manual processing time.
Cost Efficiency: Decreases overall operational costs by automating tasks.
Productivity Enhancement: Streamlines workflows with AI-driven tools.
Improved Integration: Enhances ability to work with multiple systems.
Scalability: Supports growth with a flexible cloud-native architecture.

In the insurance industry, Automation Anywhere is utilized for automating processes such as enrollment management and compliance checks. Its applications extend to supply chain management, financial transactions, and business performance monitoring across sectors like banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare, helping organizations to automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Automation Anywhere

Appian provides AI automation for critical processes. The platform orchestrates AI agents, people, and systems within unified, governed workflows, giving AI the structure, data, and controls required for reliable enterprise value. The result is end-to-end automation that replaces fragmented manual work at scale.

Appian

Flowable is a versatile software that streamlines and automates business processes. It is commonly used for workflow management, task automation, and digital transformation initiatives.

Users also utilize Flowable for document management, case management, and customer journey mapping. Its valuable features include efficient workflow management, seamless integration capabilities, and a user-friendly interface.

Flowable allows for smooth collaboration and task automation, and its ability to integrate with other systems and applications enables a seamless flow of information.

The intuitive and easy-to-use interface makes it accessible to users of all technical backgrounds.

Flowable

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

Hansard Global plc, Punch Taverns, Pirelli, Crawford & Company, EDP Renewables, Queensland Government Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning (, Bank of Tennessee

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Cisco 4. Dell 5. Ericsson 6. Ford 7. General Electric 8. Honda 9. IBM 10. Johnson & Johnson 11. Kia Motors 12. LG Electronics 13. Microsoft 14. Nike 15. Oracle 16. PepsiCo 17. Qualcomm 18. Red Bull 19. Samsung 20. Toyota 21. Uber 22. Visa 23. Walmart 24. Xerox 25. Yahoo 26. Zara 27. Accenture 28. Bank of America 29. Citigroup 30. Deutsche Bank 31. ExxonMobil 32. Facebook

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, BMC, Temporal Technologies and others in Process Automation. Updated: June 2026.

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