RPA vs AI: what is the difference and how to choose the right automation tool

RPA (robotic process automation) is software that operates applications the way a person at a computer would. It gets precise instructions: open the system, enter the order number in this field, click “Save”. It does not work anything out for itself and cannot cope with a situation nobody has described to it.

Artificial intelligence works the other way round. A language model is a program trained on a vast amount of text. It can recognise that an email saying “the product doesn’t work, please refund me” is a complaint, even though nobody has written such a rule. It can also read the amount and date from an invoice with a layout it has never seen before.

Hence a simple rule. If a task can be described as a fixed sequence of steps, it is a job for a robot. If it requires understanding content or making a judgement, it is a job for AI. We compare the details in the table below.

Take a hypothetical trading company that receives a few dozen customer emails every day. Today, an employee reads each one, recognises the complaints, opens a case in two systems and replies to the customer.

A robot on its own will not do this well. It will open the mailbox, but it cannot tell a complaint from a request for a quote or for an invoice. If it handled every email with one script, some cases would end up in the wrong place.

AI on its own will recognise the complaint and extract the order number, product and reason. But without a connection to the company’s systems, that is where it stops – someone still has to open the case and give it a number. Combining the two looks like the steps below.

A robot clicking through screens is a solution for systems that cannot exchange data any other way. Many newer programs, however, have an API – an interface provided by the vendor through which another program can read and write data directly. It is like ordering at the trade counter instead of queuing with retail customers.

An API connection is usually faster and more stable than a robot, because it does not break when the vendor changes the look of a screen. A robot makes sense for older systems that lack this option, or when a connection would be disproportionately expensive.

AI agents are also appearing more and more often – programs that use company systems on their own, within the permissions they have been given. They can do some of a robot’s work, but their behaviour is less predictable. In processes where repeatability matters, the set-up that works better for now is: AI recognises, and a robot or API executes.

For years, a typical use of robots was retyping invoices from PDFs into the accounting system. Since 1 February 2026, all companies have received invoices through KSeF, Poland’s National e-Invoicing System – the government platform for business-to-business invoices. Since 1 April 2026, most other taxpayers have also issued invoices in it. A domestic invoice therefore usually arrives as structured data rather than an image to be read.

For KSeF invoices, you need neither AI nor scan reading. All you need is to download the data and pass it to the accounting system – which the accounting software often already does itself. A robot is useful only if your system cannot do this on its own.

Document reading still makes sense for foreign invoices, receipts and documents that are not invoices. Until the end of 2026, it also applies to invoices from small sellers who may still issue them outside KSeF. With a uniform layout, OCR – converting a scan into text – with a simple template is enough. With many different layouts, AI models work better, for example the ready-made invoice model in AI Builder, available in Power Automate. From 1 November 2026, its use is billed in Copilot credits, which are bought separately.

Instead of asking a vendor about “AI” or “a robot”, first answer five questions about your process. The answers usually point to the technology on their own:

In the Microsoft ecosystem, a robot that works alongside the user is included in the Power Automate Premium licence at USD 15 a month. A robot that works on its own, for example overnight, requires a Process licence at USD 150 a month. These are list prices as of October 2026 on annual billing.

A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence costs USD 30 per user per month, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business for companies with up to 300 people costs USD 21. Licences, however, are the smaller part of the cost. The main items differ for each technology:

First misunderstanding: a company asks for “AI for invoices” when its problem is retyping data from one system into another. In that case, downloading data from KSeF or a simple robot is enough, and AI only adds cost.

Second: a company asks for “a robot that replies to customer emails”. A robot does not understand language, so you need AI; a robot can at most enter the result into the system.

Third: a company wants “a virtual assistant that will do everything by itself”. That is not one product but several components: AI for understanding, system connections for execution and rules for handing cases over to a person. That is why it is worth asking vendors the questions in the list below.