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IBM Datacap vs Python RPA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (6th)
Python RPA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Bhasker ReddyPIdintla - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Delivery Head at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has improved document scanning accuracy with advanced OCR capabilities
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing feature is the ability to merge documents and present data across different UI screens. This is especially beneficial for customer onboarding where documents are scanned not all at once but periodically. Incorporating automation could also aid in this area.
Arno Krause - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at MTN
Helps streamline operations, the error handling capability is fairly good, and integrations are easy
Keyword-driven automation has been beneficial in streamlining operations. The error handling capability of Python RPA is fairly good in managing exceptions. I rate it a seven out of ten. We've integrated it with Jenkins and with our release pipeline. It was fairly easy. We had no issues with integration that we couldn’t deal with. The dashboard is simple. We export it to Excel or Power BI and make it look pretty. For our initial use, the dashboard is okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Datacap is good at processing unstructured data. You can build up some nice data flows, and it is simple to configure. The tool adopts a low-code approach, but you can do a lot of coding if you want to customize and automate your flows. Datacap also has the flexibility to integrate."
"The solution automates manual data entry."
"Both Datacap Studio and Datacap Navigator are great features."
"The feedback from our clients that this solution has increased their efficiency and their turnaround time on opening any account for end users, thus attracting more customers."
"It is the best solution for scanning purposes."
"The installation of the solution is very simple."
"The big thing these days is really the Insight Edition component and being able to build annotators to extract from literally unstructured content: paragraphs and information where there's no start anchor point to define where that data is located. There could be a number of entities in that which you have to draw information from. Being able to extract from them is really the differentiator today between that product and many of the other products..."
"It's a platform, not a configured application, so you can do what you want with it."
"Instead of writing multiple lines of code, we can do it in a single statement."
"Keyword-driven automation has been beneficial in streamlining operations."
"It's possible to use the solution with other tools. It's very agile."
 

Cons

"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation."
"It can take some time to implement."
"When I scan a document in Datacap that has a watermark or the document is a little distorted, the image output is poor. It either becomes completely black, or there is so much distortion that we cannot read the numbers or the addresses mentioned in the POD. When we scan a document, we expect the output to be at least 95 percent accurate."
"There are times when external features impact services. For example, Windows patching or antivirus updates can affect production-level services."
"The interface can be more intuitive."
"Speed of OCR is one issue. It's a challenge because we have customers that have millions and millions of pages that they want this solution to crank through. In order to do that you have to have a large infrastructure in place, and that directly impacts licensing based on the core count."
"They have to stop focusing on new development and stabilize the latest release. It is not stable."
"One of the things that we wished for was to have an easier way to carry out the customizations. Currently, if you want to customize data, you need to have a developer with C# knowledge. If IBM could implement a no-code or low-code platform for Datacap, it would be easier to adjust it without needing a developer, which was always the most difficult part."
"It can be expensive to deploy a lot of models in the cloud, especially if there are large amounts of data."
"Support could be improved."
"When we call an API and there is an error, it doesn't tell you what the error is."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."
"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."
"You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."
"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."
"This solution is the most expensive in the market."
"In Egypt, we have exchange rates that change year to year, and currently, we're facing an increase in the exchange rate between our Egyptian pound and the dollar. Since we have been using IBM DataCap two years ago we had a good price, it was not expensive. However, I cannot say now if it is expensive or not because of the exchange rate. Additionally, I don't have the data of other competitors and I don't know the prices."
"The tool is not expensive."
"I am using an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?
Pricing is in the mid-range but could be more affordable, rated at four point five.
What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing feature is the ability to merge documents and present data across different UI s...
What is your primary use case for IBM Datacap?
I primarily use IBM Datacap ( /products/ibm-datacap-reviews ) for data capture and scanning documents with OCR. Specifically, it's used for DocuSign ( /products/docusign-reviews ) as well.
What do you like most about Python RPA?
Keyword-driven automation has been beneficial in streamlining operations.
What needs improvement with Python RPA?
I've worked with file detection for secure transactions. I use a machine learning model to predict events related to security transactions by predicting possible routes in advance. They need to imp...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Datacap
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
Home Credit, Silimed, Hilton, Al Hilal Bank, Baskin and Robbins
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. Python RPA and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.