Top 2 Alternatives to Blue Prism for RPA/Desktop UI

Introduction and Context

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) emerged in the early 2000s to help enterprises automate repetitive, rules-based tasks performed on desktop applications and web interfaces. Blue Prism—founded in the United Kingdom—was one of the early pioneers that helped define the enterprise-grade RPA category. Its focus on governance, security, and scalability positioned it well for large organizations aiming to build a “digital workforce” that could reliably execute repeatable UI workflows across Windows applications.

Over time, Blue Prism evolved into a mature platform with distinct components that form a comprehensive automation stack:

• Object Studio and Process Studio to visually design automation logic

• A Control Room to orchestrate and monitor digital workers

• Work queues and scheduling tools to ensure robust throughput and resilience

• Connectors and integrations to extend automations across enterprise systems

Blue Prism became popular because it offered:

• Broad automation capabilities for desktop UI and legacy apps

• A visual approach that reduces heavy coding for many use cases

• Governance and security features aligned to enterprise IT requirements

• Integration into modern delivery practices, including CI/CD

As RPA matured and adoption widened, user expectations shifted. Teams now seek faster setup, cross-platform flexibility, greater AI/ML-assisted resilience, and richer developer experiences—along with predictable scaling and cost control. While Blue Prism remains a strong choice for many enterprises, there is growing interest in alternatives that align with evolving needs and toolchains.

This article explores two leading alternatives that offer comparable strengths with distinct differentiators, so you can choose the right fit for your current and future automation roadmap.

Overview: Top Alternatives to Blue Prism

Here are the top 2 alternatives for Blue Prism:

• Automation Anywhere

• RPA Tools (UiPath)

Why Look for Blue Prism Alternatives?

While Blue Prism is widely used and continues to innovate, teams often evaluate alternatives when they encounter one or more of the following challenges:

• Setup and maintenance overhead: Standing up environments, configuring orchestrators, managing upgrades, and ensuring bots are stable can require experienced admins and disciplined change management.

• Test flakiness and fragile automations: Like any UI-driven automation, poorly structured workflows can lead to brittle bots that break under minor UI changes, causing instability and rework.

• Windows-centric footprint: Many modern teams operate mixed environments. If your organization is expanding macOS usage or needs cross-platform flexibility for development, you may want tools that support both Windows and macOS.

• Developer experience and extensibility: Visual modeling accelerates onboarding, but some teams need streamlined scripting, reusable libraries, and activity marketplaces to scale faster and reduce duplication.

• Speed to value and cloud readiness: Teams adopting cloud-native infrastructure and web-first tooling may prefer platforms that emphasize quick SaaS deployments and web-based control rooms.

• Cost and licensing alignment: As bot counts increase, licensing models and operational costs become more visible. Some teams reassess tooling for better fit with their growth and usage patterns.

• Broader use cases beyond pure RPA: Organizations sometimes want a platform that spans RPA and test automation more explicitly, or one that brings stronger AI-driven resilience for screen interactions.

If any of these resonate, evaluating alternatives can clarify whether a different stack better serves your processes, people, and platform strategy.

Alternative 1: Automation Anywhere

What it is and who built it

Automation Anywhere is an RPA/desktop UI platform designed for Windows and built by Automation Anywhere, Inc. It focuses on enabling end-to-end automation across enterprise applications, with strong overlap into automation testing needs. The platform is commercial and primarily visual, making it approachable for teams that want to model automations without heavy code.

What sets it apart is its emphasis on a modern, cloud-aligned experience and enterprise-grade governance that scales across many bots and teams. Organizations often adopt Automation Anywhere for end-to-end flows that span browsers, desktop apps, and enterprise systems.

Core strengths and unique capabilities

• Broad test automation overlap: While it is an RPA platform, it can be effectively harnessed to validate end-to-end business flows in environments that rely on desktop and web UI.

• Visual development: A largely visual authoring model helps accelerate build-out for repetitive UI workflows and reduces the learning curve for non-developers.

• Enterprise orchestration and governance: Robust control room capabilities to deploy, schedule, and monitor bots at scale with role-based access and auditability.

• CI/CD-friendly: Can integrate with modern delivery pipelines so automations can be versioned, tested, and promoted through environments consistently.

• Scalable bot management: Designed to manage both attended and unattended automations with centralized oversight, enabling standardized scaling across teams and departments.

How it compares to Blue Prism

• Development experience: Both tools emphasize visual development for RPA. Teams may find Automation Anywhere’s model familiar if they’ve used other visual workflow engines. Blue Prism’s Process/Object Studio model is similarly approachable for visual design. Choice can come down to team familiarity and specific design preferences.

• Setup and maintenance: Both platforms may require disciplined setup and maintenance to run reliably at scale. Automation Anywhere positions itself as cloud-ready and streamlined, while Blue Prism’s setups tend to be traditional enterprise deployments. Your IT standards and hosting preferences will influence which is easier to stand up.

• Stability and flakiness: As with Blue Prism, poorly structured bots in Automation Anywhere can be flaky. The root cause is usually test design—element identification, synchronization, and exception handling—rather than the platform alone. Good practices matter in both ecosystems.

• CI/CD integration: Each supports integrations with CI/CD and version control. Automation Anywhere can be straightforward for teams that want to package and release bots as part of the same pipeline that ships apps.

• Use cases and breadth: Automation Anywhere is a strong fit for teams automating end-to-end flows across browsers and Windows desktop apps. Blue Prism is similarly strong in enterprise RPA scenarios with stringent governance needs.

Best fit

Automation Anywhere is best for teams automating end-to-end flows across browsers and platforms, especially when the organization values a visual approach, enterprise governance, and CI/CD alignment. If you operate primarily on Windows and want a well-established RPA vendor with strong orchestration, it’s a credible alternative to Blue Prism.

Alternative 2: RPA Tools (UiPath)

What it is and who built it

RPA Tools (UiPath) is a commercial RPA/desktop UI solution built by UiPath. It is primarily visual with strong .NET extensibility, and it’s used widely for both RPA and regression UI automation. According to the scope here, it supports Windows and macOS in various parts of its toolchain, which is attractive for organizations with mixed OS environments.

UiPath gained traction by offering a rich activity marketplace, powerful developer tooling, and an ecosystem that supports both citizen developers and seasoned engineers. Its orchestration and governance features enable serious scale, while its developer experience makes building and maintaining automations efficient.

Core strengths and unique capabilities

• Visual + .NET flexibility: Combines a visual authoring model with .NET-based extensibility so teams can create reusable libraries, build custom activities, and scale complex automations.

• Broad test automation overlap: Widely used for regression UI automation alongside RPA use cases, helping teams consolidate tooling and skillsets across both worlds.

• Strong CI/CD integration: Works well with modern workflows and pipelines so versioning, testing, and promotion of automations align with standard DevOps practices.

• Large ecosystem and activities: A rich catalog of activities and templates accelerates delivery, encourages reuse, and standardizes best practices across teams.

• Cross-platform tooling: Offers support across Windows and macOS contexts specified here, which helps mixed-OS teams standardize on a single vendor.

How it compares to Blue Prism

• Developer productivity: UiPath’s combination of visual workflows and .NET extensibility is a strong pull for engineering-oriented teams. Blue Prism also supports visual modeling, but teams that prefer expansive activity catalogs and code-based customization may gravitate toward UiPath.

• Ease of adoption: UiPath is known for onboarding experiences that shorten time-to-first-bot. Blue Prism’s enterprise orientation and governance features remain a draw for organizations prioritizing control and compliance.

• Cross-platform experience: Per the scope here, UiPath brings support for Windows/macOS contexts, whereas Blue Prism is centered on Windows. If your development teams are on macOS, UiPath may simplify tooling standardization.

• CI/CD and modern workflows: Both tools integrate with CI/CD. UiPath’s developer-first workflow may align particularly well for teams with established DevOps pipelines and code-review culture.

• Stability and maintenance: As with Blue Prism, poorly structured UiPath automations can be flaky. Adopting robust element selectors, retries, and exception handling is crucial in both ecosystems.

Best fit

RPA Tools (UiPath) is best for teams automating end-to-end flows across browsers and platforms that want visual tooling with strong .NET extensibility. If you need cross-OS flexibility and a large ecosystem of pre-built activities, UiPath stands out as a practical alternative to Blue Prism.

Things to Consider Before Choosing a Blue Prism Alternative

Before you commit to a platform, align on the criteria that matter most to your organization. Use the list below as a checklist during evaluations and proofs of concept.

• Project scope and application mix

• Platform and OS requirements

• Language support and extensibility

• Ease of setup and operational maintenance

• Execution speed and reliability

• CI/CD and DevOps integration

• Debugging and observability

• Security and governance

• Scalability and resilience

• Cost and licensing model

• Community, ecosystem, and vendor support

• Change management and maintainability

• Proof of concept strategy

Conclusion

Blue Prism helped shape the RPA landscape with a focus on enterprise-grade governance, security, and scalability on Windows. It remains a solid choice for organizations that value stable, centrally managed automations for repeatable UI workflows and that are aligned to a Windows-first environment.

However, as teams push toward faster iteration, broader developer experience, cross-platform needs, and deeper CI/CD integration, alternatives can offer a better fit:

• Choose Automation Anywhere if you want a Windows-centric, visual RPA platform with strong orchestration, CI/CD alignment, and an emphasis on end-to-end enterprise flows. It is a natural option for teams that need governance and scalability without moving away from a familiar visual model.

• Choose RPA Tools (UiPath) if you need visual development with .NET extensibility, access to a rich activity ecosystem, and support across Windows/macOS contexts described here. It’s particularly attractive for teams blending RPA with regression UI automation and adopting modern DevOps practices.

In practice, many organizations succeed by piloting two tools in parallel on the same process, using an objective scorecard covering setup effort, execution reliability, CI/CD fit, maintainability, and total cost of ownership. Whichever platform you choose, invest in good engineering practices—stable selectors, thoughtful synchronization, versioned assets, and strong exception handling. These practices reduce flakiness and create durable automations regardless of the tool.

Finally, consider standing up a small internal center of excellence to codify standards, curate reusable components, and run periodic health checks on your bot portfolio. This governance layer often makes the difference between short-term wins and a sustainable, scalable automation program—whether you use Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, RPA Tools (UiPath), or a combination that best fits your environment.