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Automation Anywhere vs SmartBear TestComplete comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
554
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (3rd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (3rd), Agentic Automation (2nd)
SmartBear TestComplete
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (9th), Regression Testing Tools (5th), Test Automation Tools (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Accommodates diverse use cases and effectively meets customer requirements
AI agents need further improvements. AI agent technology in agentic process automation is still evolving. We have only scratched the surface, and there are many potential use cases yet to be explored. As technology advances, I believe it will enable us to implement more comprehensive automation solutions. Document Automation has issues related to speed. When I compare Document Automation with IQ Bot, IQ Bot is faster than Document Automation. My understanding is that they are still evolving Document Automation, and this issue of slowness will be resolved in the upcoming .35 version, so we are good with that. They are working on signature identification and validations for handwritten documents. Currently, we are able to extract data out of scanned but digital images, but there is still scope for improvement for handwritten documents.
Prakhar Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for integration automation, user-based automation, and web automation
The solution's most valuable features are the drag-and-drop feature, keyword-driven approach, and reusability of the scripts. The solution has introduced a new feature that helps us identify objects we cannot normally identify. It gives you a fair idea of objects, resolving the object recognition issue. The solution can be used to perform different tests on different machines.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Having a cloud-based deployment provides more flexibility because we just need an internet connection for connecting the agent into the AA cloud."
"The Visual Studio integration is smooth and user-friendly."
"Automation Anywhere has helped us save on both time and cost."
"The most valuable feature is the power of AI Technologies involved in Automation Anywhere's IQBot - such as Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Fuzzy Logic, and Machine Learning."
"We have been able to reduce the amount of repetitive tasks completed by operations, allowing individuals to move onto tasks which cannot yet be automated."
"it helps to save time when doing processes. E.g., when you do a manual process for eight hours, that time is saved because the bot will do that task for you. The process owners will be able to do the analysis part. The repetitive/manual part will be done by the robot."
"The best part about Automation Anywhere is the easy to use UI. It's very user-friendly. You have everything that you want in front of your eyes. You just have to drag and drop, then build your logic accordingly."
"Be it a Windows application, a web application, or a legacy tool, Automation Anywhere is able to achieve automation on these technologies seamlessly."
"The most valuable features of the SmartBear TestComplete are self-healing, they reduce the maintenance required. The different languages SmartBear TestComplete supports are good because some of our libraries are written in Python, JavaScript, and C#. It's very easy to put them all under one project and use them. The are other features that SmartBear TestComplete has but the competition widely has them as well."
"The ability to run a whole suite of tests automatically (which we did overnight)."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It's cross platform automation capabilities specially ranging across web, UNIX (via putty), and other systems."
"TestComplete fits almost perfectly with a large amount of stacks, such as Delphi, C#, Java and web applications."
"The solution is great as a record and playback tool. It also has valuable regression testing."
"TestComplete is simple, it's a very easy-to-use tool."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is regression testing tools."
 

Cons

"It is not easy to integrate APIs with Automation Anywhere without a good knowledge of APIs."
"Queue management is still missing from the latest version which is a barrier to using the platform to start implementing complex cases where you have parent and child transactions going through multiple stages."
"The conversion time of invoices to JSON File should take less time using AA2019 IQBot, the report file creation feature should be added into IQ Bot A2019."
"They want to get more accuracy in handwritten forms, which might take some time."
"The AISense recorder in Automation Anywhere needs improvement in resilience and OCR capabilities, particularly in comparison to UiPath's superior OCR functionality."
"In the learning track, I was looking at the latest feature which is coming in A2019, which is very nice, because it is a web-based. So, we can do our development while sitting from anywhere. We don't need any type of installation. It's a web-based. Nowadays, everyone has the Internet."
"We had a few setbacks because of bots getting queued and unable to force delete a task bot which kept persisting in the control room. These features should be included in future releases which will be highly beneficial."
"We have trouble with large volumes of data in Excel and are not getting good results."
"Occasionally, image comparison results in failures, possibly due to issues with resolution or font size on the server side, which can be challenging to identify."
"One notable drawback is the absence of native integration with Git."
"It is very hard to read the test log generated by TestComplete Executor if the log file is very big. TestComplete Executor is a small tool for just running the TestComplete test framework (not for developing)."
"We were testing handheld barcode scanners running WindowsCE with many menus of warehouse functions, and our biggest problem was the timing between input and responses."
"There could be API interfaces with this tool."
"The integration tools could be better."
"During the distribution of our regression test cases, the control IDs are not always recognized correctly."
"Right now, when you buy the solution, you need to pay for one solution. You receive one set up and you install it and it's just in that one machine. It would be ideal if they could offer one subscription where you can connect to different machines with a group subscription."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you compare the cost of Automation Anywhere with UiPath and Blue Prism, those others are much less. Licensing-wise, UiPath wins the deal."
"In terms of pricing, this is a good product."
"We are not receiving the right information about their features, e.g. Automation Anywhere University, or anything that they are selling. They need to improve their documentation."
"We have seen a return of investment because it takes less time to market in our current process. I would estimate a times savings between 20 to 30 percent."
"Approximately, for a developer, it is around $750 for a license a year. For Bot Runners, it is about $550."
"The Automation Anywhere license is affordable and not complex."
"The cost is anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000."
"Their overall pricing falls in the middle of the market. Cost-wise, Automation Anywhere is quite expensive because of their analytics, IQ Bots, and MetaBots. For a standalone machine, the pricing is okay. When adding in the licensing for IQ Bots (or MetaBots), it can become quite costly."
"The solution's licensing cost has increased because it has moved to some new SLM-based licenses."
"The option we chose was around $2,000 USD."
"It is approximately $6,000 a year."
"It comes with a high cost."
"The product is becoming more and more expensive."
"Our ROI is about $10,000 a year."
"The price of SmartBear TestComplete could be less. The main challenge is when it comes to node-locked. They should use a subscription model, such as a monthly-based subscription or, a quarterly-based subscription. Their floating license is very expensive, and this high price should be reduced or provide, at a minimum, a subscription model."
"The solution is around $1500. Some are perpetual licenses, and some get a yearly report card."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 very good in certain situations but lacks in others. For me, it's more the team tha...
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 applications that AA has limitations for, such as the Oracle. For web-based applicatio...
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 do you like most about SmartBear TestComplete?
TestComplete has strong reporting capabilities. The reports they generate are really good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SmartBear TestComplete?
I don't know much about the pricing, however, I think it's cheaper.
What needs improvement with SmartBear TestComplete?
The recording function, when using Python, could be improved, as it does not work well in recording testing.
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Cisco, J.P. Morgan, Boeing, McAfee, EMC, Intuit, and Thomson Reuters.
Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. SmartBear TestComplete and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.