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

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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
668
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 (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
7th
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)
26th
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 November 2026, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 4.9%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is 2.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Intelligent RPA is 1.6%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Automation Anywhere4.9%
IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)2.0%
SAP Intelligent RPA1.6%
Other91.5%
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Nadeem K. - PeerSpot reviewer
Rpa Developer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Automation has freed teams from repetitive finance and supply tasks and supports global operations
In the current organization, we had trouble initially because I think the documentation and support could be better than what it is now. This is one difference between Automation Anywhere and other RPA tools such as UiPath. In UiPath, if you have an issue, you go to the UiPath website and search for it, and you get lots of help materials. In Automation Anywhere, you do not get exactly what you are looking for. You get a very large number of results when you search for something, and from this large result set, you have to filter out what you need, or only partial information will be available. User handbooks are available for each product. In that regard, I would say Automation Anywhere is lagging compared to other RPA tools. It is difficult to get hold of their customer support team. I want to clarify that it is not a matter of us building logic on Automation Anywhere and it failing. When it is a product-related issue, they have to give us support because we only know how to develop within Automation Anywhere. We do not know how to fix Automation Anywhere itself. Whenever we have an issue, trying to get in touch with them always takes three to four business days.
Mohamed-Abdelwahed - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value."
"The return on investment we see from Automation Anywhere is significant; particularly, the FTE savings represent a big return."
"I have worked on other RPA tools but this is more logical and easy to use."
"Anywhere contributed to increased efficiency, reduced manual efforts, and notable time savings across various processes."
"Technical support for this solution is the quickest and the best."
"It improved on 40+ % of manual effort which was a pain point for project budget and Project team SMEs."
"With our conversion from v11 to A360, there has been better ease of development of components within the control room for our development teams."
"RPA implementation will be always fruitful, and return on investment will be always higher than the input costs."
"Integrating the tool with SAP, EBS, or other ERPs is easy."
"It's user-friendly; even non-technical people can program bots using drag-and-drop functionalities."
"No other solution I have seen can provide this level of flexibility."
"The feature I found most valuable is the TCO."
"We can connect with different database types, and they have included a different package for a terminal connection to, for example, AS400. When it comes to UI development, it's not using the drivers or anything. It's not a selector-based development like UiPath."
"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."
"This product definitely helps with cost optimization and brings a lot of optimization to repetitive processes."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation has greatly improved the organization by improving the speed of performance, as the speed of the robot is estimated to be 20 times faster than the human being."
"The initial setup of SAP Contextor is easy."
"Scalability is fine. It is pretty nice."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Contextor is that everyone is in one place in the program that I need."
"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."
"SAP Contextor has improved our organization by giving us better operational efficiency."
"Contextor is a good solution for a Citrix environment."
"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."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"However, when it comes to the agentic capabilities, there is still a gap where I need to figure out how the token consumption is happening and how my agents are talking with other agents."
"I really appreciate the user interface of Automation Anywhere, but I would like to see some improvement on some of the automation around screen processing. This includes adding some artificial intelligence on the way that bots actually can read the screen and know when things change and be able to adapt to those changes."
"Blue Prism is more secure than Automation Anywhere. E.g., Blue Prism has a system that is difficult to penetrate. You can't simply go into their system and make any changes."
"However, it does not work as well with retrieving data from images."
"Automation Anywhere should improve its OCR command, as it's my observation that I have faced data loss or improper data being extracted."
"Automation Anywhere changed OCR features in A2019. My suggestion is to improve the OCR command scope and usability. We use OCR for PDF data extraction as we use in V. 11.x product."
"Autosuggestion of existing use cases based on the problem statement could use improvement."
"Integrations should be included with the analytics platforms and third-party SAP, enterprise-level applications, as well as if there are any built-in connectors where you can connect with the ERPs to automate the required teams."
"There are certain limitations in the solution for screen reading."
"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."
"The pricing of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) could be improved."
"The scalability of the solution can be challenging."
"We can use its inbuilt activities, and it's a complete package, but just like ElectroNeek, a limitation is that we have to depend on its inbuilt activities. We can't include our own activities or we can't introduce other activities."
"IBM’s support should improve response time."
"IBM should provide specific solutions for specific problems, like templates for invoicing processes, or general templates for creating efficient processes."
"The time it takes for approvals, and risk analysis could be faster."
"The support is expensive."
"SAP Contextor could improve by automating some processes."
"One way SAP Intelligent RPA could improve is by integrating built-in DI services for document processing."
"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."
"For potential features or improvements, one aspect I would suggest enhancing is the flexibility of the extraction process."
"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."
"I would like to see a better capacity for unstructured data, for example, PDF, or text within images."
"I found that the SAP scripting of a program is easier than SAP Contextor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It looks like it will be right around $115,000, not counting IQ Bot, which we won't renew until later."
"There is an annual license to use the solution."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are about $80,000. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"They give us a good deal on the licensing because we bundle and customize things. If you ask to get a bulk business deal, you will receive more benefit. If you take other products from the suite, like IQ Bot, you can also receive a deal on the licensing."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations."
"It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."
"Its cost is good."
"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"The product has a yearly licensing fee."
"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."
"The license is paid annually."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"It all comes with a bundle right now. Having advanced features, it is competitively priced."
"This is not a tool or software with a license as others are. The SaaS model is based on the usage of the tool."
"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."
"The pricing is not that expensive. It is manageable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise566
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...
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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: September 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.