RPA: Waning Interest in Citizen Development

In the field of RPA, “citizen development” has fallen out of favor.

Gartner notes a clear decline in interest. They report this in the summary of the latest Magic Quadrant dedicated to this market. The finding: without centralized technical governance and active communities of practice, these cohorts rarely produce automations that are durable, scalable, and secure.

Interest is also waning for assisted RPA (triggered manually from the workstation). It is certainly cheaper than autonomous RPA (executed on a server), but less scalable and less secure, says the American firm.

The market is no longer on the double-digit growth rates it used to enjoy. Yet it continues to advance in value (US$3.9 billion in 2025, up 9.1% from 2024). Gartner explains this by the lack of a reliable alternative for automating native UI of applications. Admittedly, there is the emergence of computer use. But the technologies grouped under this banner are for now “slow, expensive, imprecise and not reliable on Citrix/RDP environments.” Gartner nevertheless believes that by 2028 they will become viable for automating web applications.

Another trend: the exodus of “big” vendors that were not pure-plays and built their offer through acquisitions. They seem ready to abandon the autonomous RPA market to focus first on BOAT (Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies). In other words, on broader automation platforms that include components such as iPaaS, LCAP (low-code/no-code application development), and IDP “intelligent document processing.”

IBM, Salesforce and SAP exit the RPA Magic Quadrant

This exodus shows up in the Magic Quadrant, Gartner notes, excluding vendors that announced they would stop RPA by the end of 2026. Classified as “challenger” last year, SAP disappears from the charts. The same goes for Salesforce and IBM, which were respectively in the “visionaries” and “niche players.”

Of the four “leaders” in 2025, three remain: Automation Anywhere, Microsoft and UiPath. SS&C Blue Prism retreats to the “visionaries” quadrant. The consequence is reduced activity compared with previous years, both in contracting and in customer interest. The cost of its solutions is a factor. As is the pace of innovation, which trails behind that of the main competitors. SS&C Blue Prism has, for example, been slow to integrate computer use. And it does not offer native tools for agile project management or backlog tooling.

The Magic Quadrant is structured along two axes. One measures “execution”—i.e., the ability to meet demand (customer experience, pricing, quality of products/services…). The other measures “vision” (commercial strategies, marketing, innovation…).

The situation on the “execution” axis:

The axis of “vision”:

At Automation Anywhere, agent-centric capabilities take precedence over the core RPA

Gartner hails Automation Anywhere’s support and account-management model, particularly the quarterly reviews and the governance tool supplied to RPA centers of excellence. Functionally, it praises the use of vision-based templates at the level of recording automations, as well as the ability to embed remote agents into Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft Remote Desktop environments. Good points also go to pay-as-you-go pricing and scaling methodologies.

Last year Gartner had pointed out that agent-centric capabilities were steering the business strategies—and even roadmaps—of RPA vendors. It notes this year as well, and Automation Anywhere is in scope. It has signaled its intention to scale back R&D on the core RPA, so its evolution will be watched even more closely. Also to watch are potential advances in automated scenario generation, an area not yet covered by the offering. Automation Anywhere also lacks a native mobile app automation component. Furthermore, smaller enterprises (fewer than 1,000 employees) may find the price and features excessive.

Microsoft remains a secondary provider label

In addition to offering a free version of Power Automate in Windows for personal use, Microsoft is generally 20% to 40% cheaper than its major rivals. It also sometimes partially subsidizes migrations from other solutions. Another advantage: the degree of integration with its software ecosystem; starting with Office applications, a primary target for RPA integration across most vendors.

Beyond the absence of a free corporate version, licensing is complex. On one hand, rights differ between Windows, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics. On the other, for most customers there are additional fees for Dataverse and Azure Orchestration. Some also report performance and reliability issues that limit scalability. Power Automate appears more as a secondary RPA tool within large enterprises, used to automate Microsoft apps, support citizen-development initiatives, or as a bargaining chip in negotiations with their main vendor.

Pricing, business model, marketing… Shifts UiPath must absorb

In the autonomous RPA segment, UiPath enjoys unmatched revenue levels and customer demand. Its geographic footprint shows up in its roughly 6,500 resellers, eight cloud-hosting regions, and interfaces in ten languages. Functionally, Gartner appreciates the level of integration of computer use and natural-language development, as well as the governance layer and the masking of sensitive data.

UiPath’s shift toward a notion of an “enterprise orchestration platform” can be confusing, according to Gartner. Moving to a results-driven model is another potentially disruptive element, which requires upfront business cases. There is also the adoption of a unified pricing structure based on credits (Platform Units). It may require adjustments for existing customers, who are also likely to encounter unsolicited agent capabilities being sold by UiPath.