What is Microsoft Power Automate?
Quick Answer: Microsoft Power Automate is a workflow automation platform that combines cloud-based automation, robotic process automation (RPA), and AI-powered process mining. It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform and includes over 1,000 pre-built connectors as of April 2026.
What Is Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) is a cloud-based automation service within the Microsoft Power Platform. Launched in 2016 and rebranded in 2019, it enables users to create automated workflows between applications and services. As of April 2026, Power Automate includes over 1,000 pre-built connectors and serves millions of users within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Types of Automation
Power Automate offers three main automation categories:
- Cloud flows: Event-driven, scheduled, or instant workflows connecting cloud services (similar to Zapier or Make)
- Desktop flows: Robotic process automation (RPA) for automating legacy applications, websites, and desktop software using UI recording and playback
- Process mining: AI-driven analysis of business processes to identify bottlenecks and automation opportunities
Key Features
- Visual flow designer: Drag-and-drop builder with conditions, loops, and parallel branches
- AI Builder: Pre-built AI models for document processing, text recognition, and prediction
- Approvals: Built-in approval workflows with Microsoft Teams integration
- Dataverse integration: Native connectivity to Microsoft Dataverse for data storage
- Copilot: Natural language flow creation using AI (describe a workflow in plain English)
- Error handling: Try-catch-finally blocks, retry policies, and run history
Pricing (April 2026)
- Included in Microsoft 365: Basic cloud flows with standard connectors (E3, E5, Business Basic/Standard/Premium)
- Power Automate Premium: $15/user/month — premium connectors, attended desktop flows, AI Builder credits
- Power Automate Process: $150/bot/month — unattended desktop flows (RPA bots)
- Pay-as-you-go: Available for cloud flows at $0.60 per flow run with premium connectors
Microsoft Ecosystem Integration
Power Automate is deeply integrated with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, Dynamics 365, Azure, and Dataverse. Common automations include SharePoint document approvals, Teams notifications, Outlook email processing, and Excel data collection. It competes with Zapier and Make for cloud automation, and with UiPath and Automation Anywhere for desktop RPA.
Limitations
Power Automate works best within the Microsoft ecosystem. Connectors for non-Microsoft services exist but are sometimes less feature-rich than those from dedicated iPaaS platforms. Desktop flows require a Windows machine with Power Automate Desktop installed.
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Robotic Process AutomationRelated Rankings
Best Human-in-the-Loop Automation Platforms 2026
Eight platforms are ranked here on a single mechanism: how a person enters an automated path, and what the system can prove afterward about the decision they made. Moxo scores 7.7 and ranks first; Camunda 8 scores 7.2, Microsoft Power Automate 7.1, Pega 6.9, n8n 6.7, Zapier 5.9, Kissflow 5.8 and ServiceNow 4.8, scored 22 September 2026 on the five weighted criteria. Those criteria cover the step type, the approver's account or licence, the routes available on a rejection, the audit record, and the meter that charges for the decision, and none of them can tell a review from a rubber stamp, so the methodology adds a check readers can run on any product in a few minutes: whether the decision record tells a considered approval from an instant one. Every figure was read from a vendor-owned surface and carries its own date.
Best Automation Platforms for AI Orchestration 2026
This ranking answers one question: how many real business applications can an AI agent act on out of the box? It evaluates nine platforms as of August 2026 on the reach they give an agent, not on the workflow logic they can express. That boundary is deliberate, because two neighbouring pages on this site answer different questions. Best Process Orchestration Platforms 2026 scores multi-step process control, error handling and state management. Best AI Agent Platforms 2026 scores building and hosting the agent itself. This page scores the layer between them: the connective tissue that lets an agent already built elsewhere reach the applications a business actually runs on. A platform that leads one of those pages can place low here, and two of them do. Scores derive from application and action catalogue counts, the exposure model each platform uses to publish those catalogues to an agent, setup effort, failure handling and cost per agent action. Every figure was retrieved from a vendor-owned surface on 11 August 2026 unless an earlier date is stated against it.
Dive Deeper
Moxo vs Gumloop in 2026: Texting the Client, or Building the Agent
Gumloop (founded 2023) builds AI agents a company's own staff run; Moxo, whose predecessor Moxtra was co-founded in 2012, runs processes that wait on people outside the company. Gumloop wins three rounds to two: the way in, per-tool gating and a priced overage. Moxo wins on texting a client a step and on what that client can be asked to do. Vendor pages and docs were read on 28 September 2026.
Moxo vs Relay.app in 2026: Where Relay's Approval Workflows Can Go Next
Relay.app, founded in 2021, shut down in September 2026 and deleted every account, workflow and run history; Moxo, whose predecessor Moxtra was co-founded in 2012, is one destination for its human-in-the-loop users. Relay.app takes two rounds, Moxo one, and vendor risk is a draw. The page maps which Relay steps Moxo replaces, on which plan, and what the shutdown teaches about exports, from sources read 28 September 2026.
Moxo vs Workato in 2026: The Integration Estate, or the Approval Inside It
Workato, founded in 2013, is an enterprise integration platform whose Workflow apps add human tasks to recipes; Moxo, whose predecessor Moxtra was co-founded in 2012, ships the human step itself. Workato wins three rounds to two: connector reach, change control and the way in. Moxo wins the human step and retries. Vendor pages and docs were read on 28 September 2026.