AI Agents vs RPA: What's the Difference and Which Do You Need?

Robotic process automation and AI agents get conflated. Here's the practical split — and when to pick which.

What RPA does well

RPA follows fixed rules across apps — copy from A, paste to B, on schedule. It's reliable and dumb. Great for invoices, reports, data moves.

Where agents win

An AI agent reads, decides, and acts when the input varies — triaging email, judging a lead, summarizing a call. It handles the messy middle RPA can't.

Picking

Stable, repetitive -> RPA. Variable, judgment-heavy -> agent. Many shops run both. Our custom-agent tier designs the agent layer on top of your existing RPA.

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