Microsoft's workflow automation platform that integrates AI Builder capabilities for intelligent automation including form processing, text analysis, and prediction models.
Microsoft's workflow automation platform that integrates AI Builder capabilities for intelligent automation including form processing, text analysis, and prediction models.
Power Automate is an Automation platform from Microsoft that combines robotic process automation (RPA), digital process automation (DPA), and AI Builder to automate repetitive tasks across cloud and desktop applications, with pricing starting at free through Microsoft 365 and premium plans from $15/user/month. It targets business users, IT professionals, and enterprise teams seeking to build intelligent workflows without deep coding expertise.
Launched in 2016 (originally as Microsoft Flow and rebranded in 2019), Power Automate integrates AI Builder directly into flows so makers can add prebuilt or custom AI models for form processing, object detection, text classification, sentiment analysis, entity extraction, prediction, and GPT-powered prompts. Users can trigger flows from more than 1,000 connectors—including SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, SAP, and Power BI—and orchestrate them with approval loops, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and error-handling branches. The desktop companion, Power Automate Desktop, is included free with Windows 11 and enables UI-based RPA for legacy systems that lack APIs.
Common use cases include invoice and receipt processing, automated email triage, document extraction from scanned PDFs, CRM data synchronization, HR onboarding workflows, and copilots that summarize or classify incoming requests. Based on our analysis of 870+ AI tools, Power Automate stands out as one of the deepest enterprise automation platforms, with tight coupling to the Microsoft 365 and Dynamics ecosystem that Zapier and Make cannot match. Compared to the other Automation tools in our directory, it is better suited to large organizations already invested in Azure and Microsoft 365 than to small teams who want a lightweight SaaS-only experience. Microsoft reports Power Platform is used by more than 33 million monthly active users across over 95% of Fortune 500 companies.
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AI Builder brings prebuilt and custom AI models directly into cloud flows and desktop automations. Makers can drop an action like 'Extract information from invoices' or 'Create text with GPT' into a flow without writing code, and results are available as dynamic content for downstream steps. Models are billed via a credit pack starting at $500/month for 1 million credits.
Copilot lets users describe a desired automation in natural language—such as 'when a new file is added to SharePoint, summarize it and post to Teams'—and generates the flow end to end. It can also edit existing flows conversationally and explain what each step does, dramatically lowering the ramp-up time for new makers.
A desktop RPA tool that records user interactions with Windows and web applications and plays them back as automations. Attended mode runs on a user's PC; unattended mode runs on VMs in production. It's included free with Windows 11 for personal use and starts at $150/bot/month for hosted unattended RPA.
Power Automate ships with over 1,000 certified connectors spanning Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Jira, Slack, and countless SaaS apps, plus custom connectors via OpenAPI and on-premises gateways. This breadth is broader than most automation tools in our directory and removes the need for custom API glue code.
Process Advisor records user actions across applications and analyzes them to surface bottlenecks and automation candidates, producing visual process maps with timing and frequency data. Teams use it to prioritize which workflows to automate first and measure ROI before and after deployment, closing the loop between discovery and build.
$0
$15/user/month
$150/bot/month
$215/bot/month
$500/month per 1M credits
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Recent updates include deeper Copilot integration for natural-language flow authoring and editing, expanded GPT prompt actions backed by Azure OpenAI inside AI Builder, generally available hosted RPA (Microsoft-managed VMs for unattended bots), and tighter integration with Microsoft Copilot Studio for building agentic automations that combine flows, AI models, and conversational interfaces.
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