No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs SAP Intelligent RPA comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
641
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (1st), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Intelligent RPA
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
13th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 5.5%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is 2.0%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Intelligent RPA is 1.7%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Automation Anywhere5.5%
IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)2.0%
SAP Intelligent RPA1.7%
Other90.8%
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MA
Business Solutions Manager at valleysoft
Has improved analytics and reporting but needs better integration and support
To improve IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for the next release, there should be more integration with external systems, and more integration with IBM's data and AI platforms is needed. There is an AI part in IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Machine Learning, but IBM has another platform specifically for data and AI, which is integrated right now. More features are hoped for in the future.
SS
RPA Technical Solution Lead at Infomentum
Helps automate processes but needs to offer different licensing models to users
Right now, I am not working on process mining at the minute. Before I switched to the company, I worked extremely closely with the process mining tool from UiPath, SAP BTP, and the process mining that they had created. I am working with MuleSoft Automation and Anypoint. We are not doing any sort of process mining at the minute, but in my company, because MuleSoft is one of the only RPA tools that we are looking at, we have another application called Appian that we are trying to explore now. Appian has process mining capability, which is why we thought we would look at it along with AI capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IQ Bot is very helpful as it is easy to learn and implement and the data output accuracy is almost 90%. Over time, the BOT learns from the validation which is an added advantage. Whatever I was thinking for version 11.3, it's being implemented in A2019. The incorporation of Python scripts is also implemented which will be easier for validations."
"The best feature of AA is the scheduling and the triggering..."
"Adding Automation Anywhere is a tremendous value-add in the long-term."
"It can be easily learned by anyone who spends a bit of time with it."
"Automation Anywhere (AA) is easy to use and understand, even if the user didn't have previous experience with RPA (robotic process automation) software before."
"We automated these processes so they will be processed automatically, and users will get the end result for validation—it is basically time-saving for them."
"We have worked with various tools over many years and we believe that Automation Anywhere is one of the most stable platforms."
"AA has improved our efficiency and saved on manual hours because no manual interaction is required."
"No other solution I have seen can provide this level of flexibility."
"This product definitely helps with cost optimization and brings a lot of optimization to repetitive processes."
"I am satisfied with the technical support."
"If you have a business process, and once you have automated that process, you have a readily available workflow in place."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automate mundane tasks. This improves efficiency, reliability, etc. You can form critical operations which can be highly automated."
"It's user-friendly; even non-technical people can program bots using drag-and-drop functionalities."
"I like the integration with Watson and the possibility to have an intelligent reading of all the customers' documents."
"It's not inclusive, in terms of automation, you can just do it standalone, in its own silo. It's not going to force your existing system or teams, your admin teams, to create new IDs for you or even force them to create new services or APIs for you or expose something from there. They can just keep the way they are doing it right now, but you still automate it."
"Most of the details are already in the help portal and SAP notes are available. It is well documented as part of the product support."
"The initial setup of SAP Contextor is easy."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Scalability is fine. It is pretty nice."
"It is remarkably easy to configure and code, and it doesn't require an extensive technical background or coding expertise."
"Contextor is a good solution for a Citrix environment. It's the first with this tool. Other tools provide the same functionality, but not with the Citrix environment."
"The standout features of SAP Intelligent RPA are its flexibility and integration capabilities."
"Contextor is a good solution for a Citrix environment."
 

Cons

"One of the things that we did was purchase the solution originally through IBM, as they had an value-added layer on top of it. Once we had another group come on, they purchased additional bots directly from Automation Anywhere, and they wouldn't integrate well. We had to uninstall the solution that we had purchased from IBM and reinstall those bots to move forward."
"AI would enable improved automation and faster training times that would be reduced from one month to one week."
"The implementation process is complex, as there is integration with other applications."
"We would like to be able to directly implement automation for Word documents and XML."
"The biggest challenge in attended automation, every time the agent has to log in to the control room and execute bot for most of the agents this is a time-consuming activity plus they are not tech-savvy."
"I would like OCR for video and text using the IQ Bot. It should also be available in an email tag format."
"I would like the ability to extract the code. You can go line by line, then open up each line of code and dig into the details, but it would be nice to extract all of the lines of code and all of the details into a document so we could read through everything. Right now, there is no way to really consume all of the code at once, except line by line, which can be fairly time consuming if we don't really know what we are looking for."
"If we are getting input from a CSV file, we have to add one more layer of automation that first saves the data to an Excel file."
"We would like more focus on understanding AI and how it can be used to manage exception handling."
"The users should be allowed to create folders in Control Center."
"The product must be promoted more."
"We would like a decreased need for customer support."
"The time it takes for approvals, and risk analysis could be faster."
"There are certain limitations in the solution for screen reading."
"I would like it to do pretty much everything out-of-the-box without any need for any customization. However, that is not the case right now. We absolutely have to do some amount of customization with the solution in order to use it out-of-the-box as-is."
"One of the things I would definitely like to see is more of the machine-learning and cognitive capabilities. For example, now that we're starting to automate more and more tasks, there are some things that still require us to go back and modify the robots when we need to. But if we had more of the machine-learning integrated into it, I believe it would be easier to maintain, so that we wouldn't have to go back and adjust every time."
"For potential features or improvements, one aspect I would suggest enhancing is the flexibility of the extraction process."
"One way SAP Intelligent RPA could improve is by integrating built-in DI services for document processing."
"I would like to see a better capacity for unstructured data, for example, PDF, or text within images."
"The tool's licensing has been kind of a challenge...At the moment, the tool does not offer different licensing models to users."
"SAP Contextor could improve by automating some processes."
"The support is expensive."
"The initial setup is of medium complexity. It is neither too hard nor too simple. You need some background in SAP and an understanding of it."
"There should be more of an error, like a proper error feature, in future releases. Sometimes, we don't understand why that automation is not learning what, like, where it is stuck, or what is the reason like, or what is the criteria we are missing to add. So a proper error message would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Automation Anywhere is a little higher than some of the competition, such as UiPath. However, depending on the use case and other factors we are able to receive some discounts."
"The setup and licensing cost is affordable, and it is not exaggerated like UiPath."
"Automation Anywhere University is pretty good. They make it available free for everyone."
"I'm not sure what the monthly licensing cost is, as that is taken care of by another team, but I would say it's around $100,000."
"Annually, we are paying almost one million reais."
"Pricing is a bit high when compared to other available tools; however, the tool is worth the cost."
"It's very good in terms of cost and pricing."
"We would like them to change the license model of charging per bot."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The product is reasonably priced compared to other tools."
"There is a free trial for one month, so you can use it to run your payloads or proof of concept. After that, you can pay for the license on a monthly or annual basis."
"The product has a yearly licensing fee."
"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."
"This is not a tool or software with a license as others are. The SaaS model is based on the usage of the tool."
"It all comes with a bundle right now. Having advanced features, it is competitively priced."
"The pricing is not that expensive. It is manageable."
"The initial cost might seem higher, but over time, with continued use over five or ten years, the cost tends to decrease, making it a more economical choice."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business154
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise536
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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...
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...
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.
What needs improvement with IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
To improve IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for the next release, there should be more integration with external ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
My customers' main use cases for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are especially in the banking industry, particu...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
I recommend starting with the Academy to check the features and compare them with other competitors to choose the bes...
What needs improvement with SAP Contextor?
The tool's licensing has been kind of a challenge. If the tool can bring up a usage-based licensing model, it would b...
What is your primary use case for SAP Contextor?
The inputs of SAP Intelligent RPA used to come from the process mining output. Whenever we connect process mining to ...
What advice do you have for others considering SAP Contextor?
Speaking about bot creation and management features, I rate the tool as four out of five compared to the other market...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
IBM RPA
SAP Contextor, Contextor
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
The Hanover Insurance Group
BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Kabel Deutschland, Orange, Carrefour
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs. SAP Intelligent RPA and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.